Matt: Welcome back to another episode of Prosper & Publish.

Lauren: What? That can't be the thing you change.

Matt: Alright. I just wanted to see if you’d catch it. You caught it very quickly, I thought it would take you a minute.

Lauren: I have, I have the... the certain nuanced sounds of this podcast embedded in my brain in a way that I will never quite be able to get out.

Matt: I don't know if that's good or bad.

Lauren: It's probably bad.

Matt: Probably.

Lauren: It's probably not healthy.

Matt: But –

Lauren: But whatever.

Matt: I do like the fact that there is some room in that Taylor Swift-addled brain of yours to house something like that.

Lauren: There's so much room in my brain for all kinds of useless information. Whether there's anything factual in there remains to be seen.

Matt: Anyways.

Lauren: Yep.

Matt: Yeah. Thanks for joining us.

Lauren: Welcome back.

Matt: Welcome back.

[1:14] – Episode Topic Intro

Matt: We are actually doing something we don't regularly do, but we're gonna do an episode that is somewhat linked to the last episode.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Around direct sales and ecommerce platforms and things. In that episode, we did briefly touch on the idea that there are obviously fees and costs associated with selling direct. Because that's always a big question that we, we get asked, but we also see as a topic on a lot of message boards and forums and communities. We wanted to go ahead and address that as a separate component. So last episode, Episode #128, was about some of the major ecommerce platforms that exist. And why or why not you might want to use one of them to sell direct. This one we are going to talk about the fees that you could expect to be paying to, to build and launch and maintain your own ecommerce, your direct sales storefront. As well as any other types of pricing, or things like that, that you should expect.

Lauren: These are definitely connected –

Matt: Yup.

Lauren: – episodes. They are not so directly connected that you have to listen to both of them. We would encourage you to, obviously, you should listen to every single episode we put out, but they can be standalone if you want them to be. But I think that if you're in the early stages of figuring out how to get started with selling direct, these are two hopefully really helpful resources for you to give you a lot of information that you might not already have. Or to at least help point you in a direction towards the information that you need to dig deeper into.

Matt: Yeah, and again, we're not going to go into specific pricing per platform.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: That's not what this episode is for. This episode is to really talk about the general costs of building and launching a store. And then, you know, what you can expect to maintain that over months and years. You know? And kind of wrap everything up with like, what's your overall total investment in something like this? Whether it's money, resources, time spent, things like that. So. Yeah don't, don't expect to hear like, as of this date in 2026, this is what it costs for a plan on Wix at the medium tier. We're not, we're not doing that. We're going to talk about, you know, all of the holistic costs associated with building and running –

Lauren: Right.

Matt: – a storefront. So Lauren's noted that in Episode #31 we did talk about building an online bookstore.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Or a storefront. Gosh, that was a long time ago.

Lauren: It really was. We might have to –

Matt: What are we on, 128?

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Oh.

Lauren: Yeah. It might be time to, to –

Matt: Well yeah, you should still go listen to it.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: I think most of what we said in that episode wasn't time boxed. There was nothing, I don't think, that was specific necessarily. So.

Lauren: No, it was more –

Matt: It’s probably a still good outline.

Lauren: Yeah. It was more practical. Like these are the steps. This is the order you do it in. This is what you need to think about what you need to do. There weren't really like, brand-specific or tool-specific –

Matt: Gah, I feel like we just did that episode, like –

Lauren: I know, I can –

Matt: – three weeks ago.

Lauren: – remember it so, so vividly, and yet it was almost three years ago. But yes, we're – so we're not going to get into the actually how to do that in this episode. If you would like some advice on how to go about setting up and building your store that will be linked in the show notes. Go ahead and check that one out.

[4:34] – Startup Costs

Lauren: Some of the things that you are going to need right out the gate –

Matt: That cost money.

Lauren: – that cost money... Include your domain name.

Matt: This is really important though.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: So we're going to pause for a second.

Lauren: Go ahead.

Matt: Most people don't put enough thought into the domain name.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: And at this point in the game, in 2026, if you're hoping to have a domain name like Lauren's Bookshop, you can bet it's gone. So, you know, brainstorm for a few minutes, maybe use Claude or GPT to help you, or some friends. And think about all the different variations of a domain name that you would like to have.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: That makes sense. Try to pick the shortest ones possible, because you want people to potentially be able to remember it.

Lauren: Least complicated one possible.

Matt: Yes, please.

Lauren: Get the hyphens out of there.

Matt: Oh my God. I've seen some atrocious domain names.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: And that does not do you any favors. So.

Lauren: No.

Matt: Yeah. Spend a few minutes on that. You know, pick a good domain name. We've talked a lot as well about the difference between, you know, building and promoting your brand as an author and building and promoting, you know, the momentum behind a particular title or book. What you don't really want to do is, is have a bunch of domains tied to each and every title you're putting out.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: Right? If you're writing nonfiction, it is popular for nonfiction writers, especially if they only publish one or two books in their lifetime, to have a domain specific to that book as well as their author or brand domain. And, you know, it is what it is. Some fiction authors will have domains attached to a particular series that all tie back to their main author page as well. If you're getting fairly advanced in your site building and, you know, your branding, that's fine. But if you're just starting out, just try to find a domain name that really fits your author brand, your author name. Don't worry about trying to match it up to your title necessarily.

Lauren: Yeah. Keep something that can be a central hub. You can always spin off it, add new things to it. We did do an episode about using a landing page that we, we –

Matt: Also different, yup.

Lauren: Well yes. But like we, we talked a little bit more about what Matt just said in there. So there are absolutely ways and reasons that you would want to do that.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: But at the bare minimum, if you're just getting started, you need a domain name. Keep it as general as possible. In the same way that you would with like a social handle or something, you're not doing individual social –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – media channels for every single book. It is all under one umbrella. Whether it's your content channel, your brand, your name as the author, whatever it is.

Matt: Yeah I think Katie Cross, I like hers.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: It's like KatieCrossBooks .com

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Right? I've seen a few others, like it’s So-and-So-Writes .com

Lauren: Yup.

Matt: Like try to find something easy like that.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Okay, so your first cost incurred is you're gonna purchase your domain name.

Lauren: Yes. And that is generally an annual renewal.

Matt: Yep.

Lauren: In order to maintain your license on that. It's not usually that expensive.

Matt: No.

Lauren: But it is something that you have to be aware of. And you have to make sure that you are on top of that, because you don't want to lose the right to –

Matt: Don’t worry, they’ll remind you.

Lauren: Okay.

Matt: I get domain renewal reminders – cause I have a lot of domains.

Lauren: Sure.

Matt: But I get them constantly – now, I buy all mine through GoDaddy. This is not an ad for them. In fact, they're not even my favorite. It's just easy to me, cause I've been doing it with them for so long, but. I mean, they send me renewal emails like three times a day for six weeks prior to a – but yes, try to keep up with that. You can buy your domains, I’m almost positive, through whatever ecommerce platform provider you end up choosing. Whether that's Shopify, Wix. I'm not sure if you can do it through Woo, bou can do through WordPress, obviously, which is what Woo do sits on top of. Squarespace. I think almost all of them you can just buy your domains through them. But if you want to have your domain ownership separate from your ecommerce platform that you're using. Because maybe you you might switch platforms at some point, or something like that. That's the main reason why I went with a third party domain provider like GoDaddy. Because it keeps everything there, and no matter where I'm hosting a website or what I'm doing, or if my domains are sitting dormant, like a bunch of them are, they're not being used. They're just there in that account and I don't have to worry about it. So.

Lauren: So is that... is that like kind of how you can use an ISBN – you can use a Lulu ISBN, but it is going to say that the publisher is Lulu?

Matt: No.

Lauren: Versus like –

Matt: No.

Lauren: – if you... So if you, if you acquire a domain through your ecommerce provider it's still yours?

Matt: That's right.

Lauren: Okay.

Matt: So if you were building a Shopify store and you get to the point where they ask if you want to have a custom domain and you say yes, and then you type in: I want Lauren Vassallo Writes, and it happens to be available, that's what your domain is going to be. Your Shopify store will fall up under that domain.

Lauren: Got it.

Matt: It won't be... like they'll give you a free domain, but it's usually like your store name dot my shopify.com.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: But if you buy a custom domain or you bring your domain with you, like an ISBN, from GoDaddy, right? It's going to be whatever that domain is.

Lauren: Which I think is an important thing to note.

Matt: Sure.

Lauren: You know, I can think of a lot of examples, like, of this. Buzzsprout does this too, which is the service that we use to distribute the podcast. They will provide a domain for you if you want one, but it is branded for them.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: We went and acquired our own, and –

Matt: That's right.

Lauren: – went and used that as the landing page. You can do the same thing with like the wedding websites, like The Knot, that –

Matt: Yes.

Lauren: – you build your wedding website on. If you use a lower tier or a freer version of it, it's the wedding website still has –

Matt: That’s right.

Lauren: – The Knot in it. Or you can customize the URL if you pay a little more for it.

Matt: A lot of sites do that as a –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – as a way to get you to tier up.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: We’ll remove our watermarking, or –

Lauren: Yup.

Matt: – you know, we'll take our little footnote off the bottom of your website or, you know, you can get a custom domain and not have to use The Knot or Shopify –

Lauren: Right.

Matt: – or whatever, yeah.

Lauren: So, you know, that might, that might be something that is a consideration for you when you're researching your ecommerce platforms.

Matt: Yup. So –

Lauren: Which is – sorry, go ahead.

Matt: That's okay.

Lauren: Which is also then gonna be... that's the second expense that you're going –

Matt: Right.

Lauren: – to accrue, which is also could be an annual, could be a monthly expense. And that is the subscription to your ecommerce platform of choice.

Matt: I find it easier, personally, to add everything up or calculate everything annually. And then divide by twelve.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Because some places you'll be able to pay monthly, some you actually can't.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Again, with domains, at least with GoDaddy, I'm almost positive there's not an option to pay monthly. You just – But again, like you said, most of the domains that I've purchased over the years, I don't think I've ever paid more than $25 for a year for one of them. There might be one that I, I think Profit on Demand cost me a little bit more, because it was a little more of a popular...

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Set of words. It wasn't, you know. But like, I have a domain for my name, like to protect my namesake from other people. And I think I paid like, literally it was like $18 for a full year. Like, nothing deflates you like the fact that your name as a domain is like, cheap as hell.

Lauren: Womp womp.

Matt: But anyways, yeah. So your first fee that you're going to incur annually is gonna be your domain name. Second, you're right, is whatever ecommerce platform you choose to use. Or you know, website hosting platform, whatever that is. You're gonna have a monthly slash annual fee for that.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Most ecommerce platforms you're going to pay either the monthly or annual fee and that's it. With WordPress – and if you're already using it then you already know this – there are some other fees. You'll have the hosting fees that are separate, and you'll have some other fees. So if you choose an all in one like Shopify or Wix or you know, Squarespace or some of these others, you're paying that one monthly or annual fee for your, your website.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: Your storefront. If you're using WordPress with WooCommerce on top of it, there's gonna be a few extra little fees there. So I just want to make sure, before we move on to the third thing that you're going to pay for, potentially, which is...

Lauren: Your payment processor.

Matt: Right.

Lauren: This is one of those – this overarching, all inclusively – is, is one of those situations where you might look on paper and say... let's say Shopify is the most expensive monthly fee, but includes built into it a bunch of these other services and plugins and tools that you would need.

Matt: Right.

Lauren: Versus –

Matt: Like payment processing.

Lauren: A different one that has a lower subscription fee per month. But then you have to add these additional things into it, which also cost money. So don't immediately jump to what looks like the cheapest one. You have to think about these other things that need to be included in there.

Matt: This one's different though, also, because most of them include it.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: So like Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, WooCommerce is the ecommerce slash payment piece that sits on top of WordPress. You're not gonna pay monthly for those. It's transactional.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: So it's included in the cost of every transaction that happens.

Lauren: Yes. And we'll, we'll get into that a little bit more –

Matt: That’s right. Yeah.

Lauren: – shortly.

Matt: So even if you went outside of Shopify or whoever and said no, I'm going to get my own Stripe account and I'm going to use Stripe as my payment processor – Which some sites like Fourthwall, by the way, you have to get your own Stripe account. That's how it works. Stripe’s not gonna charge you a monthly fee. You're going to pay transactionally.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: This is the same everywhere. The only thing that changes is the percentage that you pay per transaction, per credit card transaction. Based on volume, scale, and who you are. Right? So with Shopify – actually doesn't matter – with most of these platforms, because you're starting out with zero volume attached to your store, you're probably going to pay somewhere around 2.9% per charge, plus what they call swipe fee or transaction fee. It's usually somewhere in the realm of $0.30. So for every transaction that happens, you're going to pay a percentage of that total amount. If the, you know, if it's a $10 purchase, you're paying 2.9% of that back to the credit card processor plus the 30 cent swipe fee. Right? So that one's different because it's calculated per transaction. So it's really hard, unless you're doing an average amount of volume every month that’s around the same, then you can kind of calculate – Like we as a business, we kind of know what we're paying every, every month, every year, in credit card fees. But most people just chalked it up as the cost of doing business. It is more common these days, like you'll go in somewhere and they'll say, or they’ll have a little sign that says, if you're using credit card, there's a 3% charge. That's why. Because a lot of people these days are trying to, to cover their, their credit card processing fees. Back in the day you just ate it. As a –

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: – business owner. It was the cost of being able to take credit cards. So. That one is different. It's hard to calculate that monthly or annually.

Lauren: Yes. The reason that I included that in this section, and we will –

Matt: As you should.

Lauren: – we will talk about it more, because we will get to – When we talk about fulfillment, upfront costs for fulfillment, we will break down a little bit about the transactions in there. But I wanted to include that that in this section as well. Because I think for all four of these, the last one of these being your actual product fulfillment plugin, like the Lulu Direct plugin for Shopify or Wix or WooCommerce, that's how you connect your products to your store. That is still a separate...

Matt: That’s right.

Lauren: Program. Like you still have to install that separately.

Matt: That's right.

Lauren: Some are free to use, some are not. So you do – that is something that you have to, that you need to have in order to launch a store.

Matt: That's right.

Lauren: And you need to be aware of those different things. But for all four of these, I think it's something that you need to think about from the jump, because it's going to kind of determine what you price your products at and what you price your services at.

Matt: Yes.

Lauren: And, and the processing, or the payment processor, is different because that is an individual transaction cost. But the other things, you know, if your domain, your annual domain subscription is $20 and your annual Shopify... I'm going to pretend that I can do 40 times 12 in my head right now, and I – we know I can't do that.

Matt: It’s 480.

Lauren: It's 480. Okay, great. So it's $500 to, to have your domain and your –

Matt: Store. Yup.

Lauren: – ecommerce platform. That's your annual cost right there. Divided by twelve... You have to make sure that you are making at least that much every month to maintain your operational costs. So you might want to build that into what you price your products at. Or build that into, you know, whatever you decide to do there. But you need to be aware of what those are –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – so you are not coming out in the negatives.

Matt: There's, there's a number of ways you can do that.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: But you're right, yeah. Some people will do that. So they'll, they'll – like I said, I try to calculate everything on what it cost me annually. Divide that by twelve.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: And then I know like, okay. You know yes, it somewhat informs what I would price my book or products at. But more importantly, what it does is it tells, it gives me a baseline of how much I need to sell every month –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – to hit my break even point and then to calculate profit beyond that. So there's a couple different ways you can come at it, but I think your your main point is correct. You need to understand what it's gonna cost you every month, every year to do business, so that you can make sure you're pricing your products at a minimum level. Right? And you know what your floor is, so that you can then work upwards into a profit level.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: Yep. That fourth one is important to, to, to to talk about, the fulfillment costs associated. Lulu is one, obviously, for books. A lot of people use Printful or Printify for everything other than books. So t-shirts, coffee mugs, hats, whatever. Right? Like. I mean, honestly, they do everything now. Like throw pillows, like curtains, you name it. You can get it done and it's really cool, most of it's print-on-demand. I've used both of them, and still use both of them, and neither of them charge a monthly fee. It is similar to the Lulu model it's, it's per product. So when one of my orders goes through to Printful and they print it and ship it, they're charging me for the manufacturing costs and the shipping cost. That's a pass through cost, obviously. But, you know, it's important to know if you're, if you're choosing a fulfillment provider for whatever product that might be, whether it's a ebook, audiobook, print book, shower curtain, it doesn't matter. Know what those costs are gonna be.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: You can try to calculate monthly and annually, or even average out what they might be, again, so you can understand, where's my minimum pricing levels? What's my break even point every month before I start actually profiting? The worst thing in the world is to be six months into an online business and realize you haven't made any money. Because you either price things improperly or you didn't understand what you were being charged on the back end for cost of goods.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: Right? So yeah, those four things are extremely important as upfront costs when you're building and launching a store. You can get yourself into a lot of water if you don't understand those.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: I also want to just touch on, on quickly three or four other upfront – not upfront, but like, day one services, tools, whatever, that you're gonna need. I would say all four of these are standard built into the leading ecommerce platforms that we talked about. I don't think there's any one that wouldn't cover at least some of these things. Or have the tools that you can add in built into their ecosystem. But...

Matt: That's correct.

Lauren: But you just, you still need to be aware of these.

Matt: Yup.

Lauren: And that is services that will help you with shipping. With sales tax or maybe VAT, international tax, whatever it is. Transactional emails, which may be your email service provider for marketing emails as well. But regardless of that, you are going to need a way to send people order confirmations, shipping confirmations, tracking and delivery updates, stuff like that.

Matt: That's right.

Lauren: And then security. This is, this is a place where you are asking people to enter their credit card number, their full name, their address, things like that. You need to make sure that this is a secure website that they are using.

Matt: Yes. I'll tell you that fourth one is a less of a concern these days.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Especially if you're using one of the top five that we talked about –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – in the last episode. That's on them, actually. Like for us, for Lulu, that's our problem.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: It's not yours as an end user. But you should be aware, like you just said, like. You should be aware of the fact that Lulu is Soc2 compliant. That we’re PCI compliant, GDPR, all the things. Like we... Actually, we're one of the few in our industry that have put that much money and development into making sure we are. But yes, somebody like Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, they're all – it's the same. They couldn't be doing business at the level they do it right now if those things weren't there, you know? Now, again, that typically doesn't cost you extra, necessarily. It's all baked into their monthly fees, right? The efforts they have to put in for their dev and IT teams to, to make sure all this stuff is what it is. But nonetheless, it is something you should be aware of, as somebody who's doing business online, that this exists, right? It is baked into the cost of whatever platform you're using. It's rare that you would pay a third party to do any of this for you, but it's not unheard of. But just knowing that it's there, it's built in. Like you said these other three things along with it are typically built in. At – even at a free tier you're gonna get some sort of, you know, shipping help, to a degree. Although it's, it's a very manual process. Sales tax, it's typically on you to figure out where you want to collect tax. But yes, they have stuff built in. Transactional emails, yes. Some of those you're going to want a better way to do it. So you may pay for an extra plugin, like I talked about in the –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – last episode. But you're right, these four are also important. They are typically built in. Now, again, if you're using something like a WordPress with a WooCommerce plugin... shipping sales tax, transactional emails, I can't confirm that all three of those will be built in for free. But otherwise, yeah, with the other platforms, for sure.

Lauren: You know, we did – I'm just remembering this now – we did do an episode where we talked about some of the available plugins and tools for the shipping and sales tax, specifically. I think it was a couple of years ago at this point, so I cannot guarantee that it is...

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: 100% up to date, but I will drop a link to that in the show notes as well. Cause that'll at least give you some direction if that is something that you want to dive a little deeper into.

Matt: Yeah, yeah.

[23:56] – Transaction and Fulfillment Costs

Matt: Alright. So we mentioned cost of goods sold. So when we talk about your fulfillment provider –

Lauren: Right.

Matt: – your plugin, whether it's Lulu or Printful or, you know, any of these other plugins that you might use to fulfill your products. BookFunnel for, you know, ebooks and audiobooks, or whoever. Right? What does it cost? Where's the money go? What's, what's happening there when we talk about cost of goods sold? Again, most of the ones that I've named, there's not necessarily a monthly fee, although some of them have a, a monthly, you know, fee or plan you can get on. Like Printful and Printify, like there's monthly plans you can get on where it gets you a deep discount on products, or you might qualify for a faster shipping tier, or something like that. But in general, what you're paying for is what it says, cost of goods sold. So with Lulu, if you're providing physical printed copies of your book, what you're getting charged by us for is printing and shipping that book. So, yeah. Now, when we charge you for that, of course we have to charge you sales tax. Although we do offer, you know, there's an exemption that's available. So if you are tax exempt based or a tax exempt based business, whatever that might be, we can apply that to your account. But in general, yes, we're going to charge you to print and ship the book. So there's printing or cost of goods manufacturing. There's shipping and there's tax, right? Yes, we also bake in our credit card fees. So there is a payment processing fee that's baked into our transactions. It is whatever it is. I don't know what we're at right now, 2.7, 2.8% plus whatever. Right? But in general, those four things are kind of what you're paying for in cost of goods. They're just at a wholesale rate.

Lauren: Which is then also what you're passing off to your customers –

Matt: Yup.

Lauren: – as well.

Matt: It's called a pass through cost, yup.

Lauren: Yes. So that is something that that you have to be aware of depending on how you want to use it, depending on what you want to pass through. Some – you know, we've talked about some cases where people want to make their products look more attractive so they offer free shipping. And it turns out the shipping is just, like the shipping cost is built into the price –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – of the product.

Matt: Yeah. It's not a bad model.

Lauren: No, it's not at all. I love a good free shipping. I'll fall for that all the time.

Matt: Me too.

Lauren: I'm absolutely the person who's like, well, this thing cost me $20, but if I spend $35, the shipping is free.

Matt: I fell for that last night, by the way.

Lauren: So did I. That was not – that was not a made up example. It's fine.

Matt: But that's, that's important. It's good to note that, you know, those those things we just talked about, that we would charge you as the fulfillment provider, or Printful would charge you the cost. They'll charge you the cost to print the shirt, the cost, to, to ship it. Built into that is obviously tax and credit card fees.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: Those are the exact same things you're collecting from your customer. So that's why they're called pass through costs. It's also how you calculate your profit.

Lauren: Exactly.

Matt: Because whatever you charge that's above and over the cost of goods sold, that's your profit. So yeah.

Lauren: Exactly. And that is what you want to keep in mind when you are figuring out what you need to price things at.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Is Okay. How much do I need to make per book, how much do I want to make per product? And like, how much am I, am I spending to cover my individual transaction costs?

Matt: And if you're listening this right now and going, well, crap. Well, how do I figure all that out? Most platforms like ours and Printful and the others, they have built in calculators –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – that will show you all that. Ours does too.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: We have a calculator on our site. You can plug in your book specs. It'll tell you what the cost to manufacture that book is. It'll tell you what it'll cost to ship one copy of it, five copies of it, ten copies of it. It'll show you what the cost will be to ship those to somewhere in the US. Somewhere in Yugoslavia. It doesn't matter. Wherever. Right? All that stuff is there. So don't freak out like you can find those numbers.

Lauren: We also have, independently from that, we have built into our actual publishing tool. When you are setting the retail price for your book.

Matt: Yes.

Lauren: We have a calculator in there that will tell you what you need to set the book at, or like how much profit you will make –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – depending on your retail channel, depending on how you've just chosen to price your book. So that is super available, like readily. And all these ecommerce platforms should, should have that in there for you too.

Matt: Yeah. So those are the costs, the most transparent costs with fulfilling.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Right? And that's if you're using, again, a plugin like Lulu or Printful or Printify or some of these others, where everything's automated, you're not really touching anything. And all of the costs are right there in front. There are other costs associated with selling direct. If you're not using an automated fulfillment plugin tool like, you know, again, Lulu or Printful or some of these others. So if you are buying your books upfront. Right? In bulk. And you are printing – or, I'm sorry, packing and shipping those yourselves, that is an added cost.

Lauren: Yep. Yep. Of course it is. Because there's, you know, storing the inventory, buying packing material, printing shipping labels, buying the materials to print the shipping labels, covering shipping costs. Especially if you have not calculated that correctly and you realize, oh I charged somebody $6 for shipping on this order, but it's actually going to cost me $8 to ship it once I printed that label and realized.

Matt: Man, I messed up one time in one of my stores, and –

Lauren: Yeah?

Matt: – a guy in the Netherlands bought a beanie. You know, like a – whatever you call it?

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: I call it a beanie.

Lauren: Yeah so do I.

Matt: Which on my site, I think at the time it was like, I don’t know, $15.99? And I had messed up with the shipping and I think what it ended up charging him was like, I want to say $7.99 to ship it.

Lauren: To the Netherlands?

Matt: Yeah. I don't know what I did wrong. The next morning I saw the order and I was like, oh my gosh. And he actually emailed me and he was just like, you know, I'm not sure if this is right, but I just bought a beanie off your site and only charged me $7.99. And I, you know, I wasn't thinking, I just responded. I was like, you know what, that's my fault. But don't worry about it, I'm just going to ship it out, you know, whatever the cost is, I'll take care of it. It cost me... it was somewhere almost $50 to ship that beanie and, you know.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: I ate the cost.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: But I learned a very valuable lesson.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: So. Yeah.

Lauren: But I, but I think even that, like, I mean, even that one little example right there, I think that is something that's really important. And, and kind of a hidden cost that we didn't really include in there, in here, that I think you should. Is that you have to be prepared for the occasion where you need to eat the cost of something. So you need to make sure that you have enough of a budget, or enough of a buffer in your budget, at least, where it's not going to absolutely break you –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – If you say, oh shit, my bad, I'm sorry, let me make it up to you.

Matt: Yeah. It's also another argument for using an automated fulfillment provider.

Lauren: Well, yes.

Matt: Those particular products I was fulfilling on my own because I had them produced locally. Right? They weren't being done on demand at that time. And so I was actually packing and shipping. If I was using, or had already been using, Printful or Printify or somebody, they would have created that item on demand somewhere local to that person in the Netherlands. So the shipping would have been much cheaper –

Lauren: Right.

Matt: – and I wouldn't have been dealing with it anyways. So yeah, that was a fun lesson to learn.

Lauren: Yeah, that's – I feel like that's one you only have to learn once.

Matt: I definitely only had to learn that once, yeah.

Lauren: So that was really just covering the – not the bare minimum. But this is, this is what you need to get started.

Matt: Yeah. I mean you could, you could genuinely build and launch a store, you know, based off of what we talked about in Episode #128 and just now, those are the, the costs you could expect to incur upfront, right? Like relatively, almost immediately. Right?

[31:59] – Maintenance and Growth Costs

Matt: And I think now we can transition into as your store’s up and running, what are you paying monthly and yearly to maintain and grow that store?

Lauren: Right.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Right. So namely for your store itself, there are some things that we've talked about already that, you know, you might be saying, why am I doing that manually? Why am I... like surely there's a way for me to automate the fulfillment on that? Or surely there's a way for me to –

Matt: Don’t call me Shirley.

Lauren: Damn.

Matt: I've been watching The Office for like ten years straight.

Lauren: Okay.

Matt: Like, I had to throw a Michael –

Lauren: Yeah no that’s –

Matt: – Scott reference in there, sorry.

Lauren: – that's fine.

Matt: You don't watch The Office do you?

Lauren: I don't. It's not my kind of humor. I don't, like I, I get such bad secondhand embarrassment that like, I just can't –

Matt: I see.

Lauren: I can't do that.

Matt: I love that stuff.

Lauren: I, I know and I know people – and like, I get a lot of the references just from them existing in the zeitgeist. But it's, it's not a show for me. It's not a, it's not a relaxing thing for me to watch. It makes me like, stressed and anxious. So. But also is that not... is that not a reference, an older reference?

Matt: Yes. It's not –

Lauren: Isn’t that from... is it Airplane?

Matt: Probably.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Yeah, it's not just from The Office. It's probably from something much older, like the movie Airplane or something like that.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Or maybe even before that. Michael Scott says it all the time though.

Lauren: Isn't it, ‘Surely you can't be serious? I am serious, and don't call me Shirley.’

Matt: Right. Exactly.

Lauren: Okay. Somebody is listening to this episode right now absolutely screaming at us.

Matt: Oh for sure. And a bunch of people just turn the episode off.

Lauren: That’s fair. That’s fine.

Matt: That's alright.

Lauren: Well that's okay.

Matt: Yeah. So we're talking about maintaining and growing your –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – your store. Right? So now –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – now we've built it. We've launched it. There are some, you know, monthly associated costs and some things that you're going to start adding in, you know different types of plugins. Maybe you're tired of, you know, calculating taxes and things like that, or mapping the shipping yourself. Or, you know, maybe you want more than just the analytics that you're gonna get from your store and some other things, and you want to layer on top an analytics tool, or...

Lauren: Yeah, a lot of these things are things that are, again, add ons. You're not –

Matt: Email.

Lauren: – you're not replacing... Yes. Email service provider. Customer support. Maybe – and we'll get more to that in a little bit. But also, customer and product reviews, those are not always built in. It's not always like a built in thing on your storefront that people can leave reviews on your products. You might need to add...

Matt: I think –

Lauren: A plugin for that.

Matt: – for the most part they're there, but what I would say, and most people will probably echo this is, you know, if you go to a site or a store. These days it's a good chance to Shopify one or something. And they've got reviews there. If they're not third party reviews, you're less inclined to trust them.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: So, you know, I think once you get to the point where you're selling a decent amount of volume, it probably makes a lot of sense. And it's probably very beneficial to have a third party review plugin where people can feel a little more trustworthy of the reviews. Because I go to a site and I see the they're using the built in review tool for their Shopify store and they're all five stars. I'm like yeah, okay. Yep. Cool.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: You got all your friends and family to you know. Now whether or not that's what they actually did, I don't know. But that's just, I think, natural human sort of psychology around like, I don't trust Amazon reviews. I never have, but I definitely not these days. They've been proven to be, you know, 70% bots mostly.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: So yeah, if you can find a third party review plugin that you trust or that you can afford or that makes sense, then that's what I would do, yeah. So there are lots of things like that.

Lauren: Right. You might also want to look for something that gives you more robust promotional options. And by promotion I mean sales and discounts. Not things...

Matt: Oh.

Lauren: Like the The Lost Bros. I'm pretty sure The Lost Bros website is powered by Shopify.

Matt: It is.

Lauren: And they have built in a loyalty program where you get points for every purchase that you make, and you can cash those points in for a $5 off coupon or something like that.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: That's not standard default. And you have to, you have to build that in. You have to add that on.

Matt: That's right.

Lauren: And that's not necessarily something that is valuable to spend your budget on when you're in early days.

Matt: Right.

Lauren: Or when you only have a few products. Because how many repeat customers are you going to have if you only have two or three products in the store? But over time that is something that is attractive to customers, and specifically to returning customers, and giving people a reason to come back. So that is something that you don't need at, like, right up front, but could be great later on.

Matt: Yeah, it's definitely an investment for later on.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: For sure. I mean that's more of a growth tool than a maintenance tool.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: 100%.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Yeah. And you know, kind of hand in hand with that, if we're talking about other ways that you can maintain or grow your, your customer relationships. When it comes to customer relationships, you might want to look at those things like those loyalty programs. Or maybe you want to create some kind of subscription for your regular customers that instead of them having to come buy every new book that comes out, they can automatically subscribe.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Or maybe you have been up until now, providing customer support manually, and you have reached a volume of sales where that's no longer sustainable for you. So you want to look into... I'm not saying automate everything in your customer, like, customer service or customer support, but if you can look into something that helps filter –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – customer tickets.

Matt: I feel like you're dancing around the word AI.

Lauren: I am, I know.

Matt: So I'm just going to say it.

Lauren: Go ahead.

Matt: If you get to the point where you need, you know, a higher level of customer service help, use one of those tools. And most of them are now powered by AI.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: I don't think they're all bad. Now, that being said, you can absolutely plug it in and use it the wrong way. Actually, I wouldn't even say absolutely, but there are ways to do it. But. Most people are now using AI chat bots, at least for deflection. At least to understand like, is it something simple like where's my order? An AI bot can handle that, no problem. Finds your tracking number, let's you know. Because quite frankly, anybody that's asking you where you order is one of two things happen. Either you failed as a merchant and they didn't get a tracking number, or they failed as a human, and they got the tracking number, and they're still bugging you. Because they're lazy or just too dumb to figure it out. An AI bot is perfectly capable of handling both of those scenarios. So yeah, I won't dance around it. I'll say it.

Lauren: Go ahead.

Matt: AI, AI bots are great for early stage customer service stuff. Of course, more complex things... Yeah. But you can train the AI bot to say, you know, if it's one of these things that needs to come directly to whoever or whatever, right? But yeah, I would absolutely look at one of those, those plugins, those things as you get to that level of volume. The last thing you want to do is have a stack of, of support tickets piling up in your queue. Nothing turns a customer away faster, and will burn a bridge with them, than, you know, their support ticket or their, you know, email inquiry going unanswered for more than 24 hours.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: It's just –

Lauren: Right.

Matt: Yeah. And you don't need to. Like.

Lauren: No.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: No. And we've talked about this in other episodes.

Matt: But I respect your your desire to, to not just throw the AI word out there.

Lauren: Well I know, I mean beyond even just the, the feelings, like mixed feelings about AI, I know also just people in general are not always enthusiastic about any kind of automated customer support thing. I think it gets a bad rap.

Matt: Same.

Lauren: I do, I really do think there's a time and place for it. As long as there is an option and a way for people to ultimately wind up speaking to a real person –

Matt: As long as I'm getting support –

Lauren: – in the long run.

Matt: – I don't care –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – who it's coming from.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: If I'm getting some AI slop back, that is not even what I asked or it's not helpful.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: And then I try to reengage and I still that's when I'm going on the warpath.

Lauren: Absolutely.

Matt: But if I'm getting help and it's helpful. Like, I don't care who it's coming from, whether it's a bot or a human. I don't care if they're in the US or – you know, it doesn't matter to me.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: So the real crux of the problem is not the fact that people are using AI. It’s that they're not training their AI support teams properly, that's all. So.

Lauren: Yes. But this is actually I moved on and, and didn't bother checking if there was anything else I wanted to add to the maintaining your store part of this. One of the things that we touched on in, in the conversation about choosing the right ecommerce platform was understanding when you want to build channels out on your site. Because we talked about how Shopify does not really have a great solution for plugging a blog –

Matt: Right.

Lauren: – into your page or something like that. So if that is something that you are thinking about when, when you're growing your brand like this... If you want to add additional channels, or you want to add the opportunity to – maybe you want to host your podcast episodes directly on your website in addition to the standard podcast distribution channels. Or, the reason that this just triggered that reminder for me, maybe you do want to have a dedicated customer support landing page on your site that has a searchable knowledge base –

Matt: Like a knowledge base, yeah.

Lauren: And an FAQ. You need to make sure that you have those tools available to you. And if they're not, if you did wind up setting yourself up on a site that doesn't have those additional features available to you, that is going to be an additional cost that you're going to have to build in to –

Matt: Yeah to get a plugin or something.

Lauren: – to do that, yes. And to create that bridge. So definitely something else to keep in mind.

Matt: Yeah. Along with maintaining your store and your, your customer experience and support, you want to maintain your brand and all of that. So undoubtedly you're going to need to, to create new things. Variations of your logo at times, you may want to do a refresh of your, your color palettes, all those kind of fun things. So you may find yourself at some point investing in, you know, some design tools. There's obviously the free ones, which I think even now the free ones are basically starting to cost a couple of bucks, at least.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: I do use Canva, but I use Canva Pro. It's worth it in my opinion.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: But nonetheless, I think it's... it doesn't matter, it's like 20 bucks, but it doesn't matter. It may change by the time comes out, but that's a fee that I have to calculate into my cost of doing business every year. Right? And so for somebody who does create different designs on a fairly regular basis, although not lately, you're going to be looking at potential tools like that.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Or, you know, depending on what it is that you're selling, besides books, if anything. Again, you're gonna wanna need to, to have something in your arsenal that’ll let you do that.

Lauren: Because one of the things that you have to think about when you are building and maintaining your own store is the stuff like product images. And how you're actually going to display and promote the products on your store.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And, you know, you're going to want – whether it's for, for ads, or for the actual site itself or other situations, you're going to need some kind of way to actually showcase your products. And...

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: You know that's, that's important. Or if you are somebody who's like, heh, that's not for me. That's, that's somebody else's job not mine. You're, you're going to need the funds to be able to pay someone else to do that design work for you.

Matt: Yep. That's true too.

Lauren: You also might start out with... You know, again, early stages. You're, you're just launching. You're figuring things out on your own. You might decide that in the beginning, you're going to use some of the free templates that are available for building your website. And then once you're established, once you have the extra money in your budget, to say, okay, I really, you know, I want to create something custom here. I really want to pay somebody to give me like a good custom makeover on this existing store, on this existing website. Great idea. I love when people do that. It definitely costs money though.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: So something to keep in mind.

Matt: Once you really get moving there's obviously accounting and bookkeeping and things like that. And, you know, at some point you're gonna hit nexus where you're needing to collect sales tax in various different states and things. There are plugins for that. But ultimately, hopefully, you get to a place where you do need to, to pay somebody to do that. That's a good thing, in my opinion.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: It means you're actually doing good business. But nonetheless it's, it's a fee, it's a cost around maintaining your business and your brand. There are other things, you know. Virtual assistants, maybe, if you need those. Most of us at this point are using some form of GPT or Claude. There's obviously a monthly fee associated with that.

Lauren: Which, you know, I think a lot of these things that we talked about, especially in the difference between the, the upfront costs and then the long term investments. Something to remember with those is that there is a sliding scale with these fees.

Matt: Sure.

Lauren: So, like you know, maybe in the beginning you were able to get away with using the free version of Claude, but your needs over time have reached a point where it's worth it for you to upgrade to the Pro version. Or –

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: – the Pro version of Canva. Or maybe your email service provider. Most, most of those ESPs have a tier that is free to use, or very low cost to use, up until you had X number of subscribers on your –

Matt: That’s right.

Lauren: – mailing list. And, you know, it is best practice to regularly clean out your subscriber list, so maybe you can keep it under that, that number for a decent amount of time. But you do want to grow past that. So there might be a point where you haven't been paying that much for your ESP every year, and then all of a sudden you do have to now go, oh, it's unavoidable. I have to upgrade to the next tier on that.

Matt: Yeah. Some people are probably asking also like, why would we associate, you know, a Claude or GPT subscription with, you know, maintaining your storefront?

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Your online store. It's because I could tell you from experience, using something like GPT or Claude to help you write – When you're creating products and loading products, you're creating like five different pieces of copy for every product, right? There's a headline, there's subtext, then there's a little description you want to write about the product, and you want these things to be compelling and clever every time. Then there's website copy that you're creating and changing and updating fairly regularly. It's just so much easier to have a tool that helps you do that. And when you're using something like, let's say Claude, all of that's just getting stored. And so it gets easier and easier and easier every time. Because now it has context, it understands what you're doing, what your store is, what your business is, and it can really help you crank those things out fast. Secondarily, now with the onset of MCPs, it's a great way to use something like Claude, for example, to handle a number of different things associated with your store. Like the customer service stuff, or some of the email stuff, or some of the other things, where you can build an MCP to connect those things together, to handle a lot of those things. So that's why I would group that cost with the cost, the maintenance and running of a storefront.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Versus maybe just including that in a cost that I incur monthly, you know, as a content creator or something like that.

Lauren: Yeah, I agree, I think that a lot of these costs are operational costs, but they are still connected to maintaining a store.

[48:10] – Tangential and Unseen Costs

Matt: Everything we just talked about, these are costs that we consider necessary to build, launch and maintain a store.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Now of course there are other things to consider which we're going to talk about very quickly. You know, these are other types of costs or actual costs. They're not always necessary.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: So, you know, one of those things would be money spent on marketing.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Like driving traffic to your store. Or driving traffic to your social media sites, where you can then talk about your store and have – you know. Some of those costs are not necessary. It's nice to have those or have that at your disposal, to be able to spend the money to drive the traffic. But you may have to rely on organic efforts for a little while. In which case now you're talking about your time and resources.

Lauren: Right. Right. And, and that's where I think that, you know, if you're listening to this episode and you're like, okay, that's a lot of costs, that's a lot of things, that's all going to add up very quickly. This is a very expensive endeavor. Why... is it worth it? Why would I want to do these things? Are there solutions out there that cost less and take less effort on my part? And first of all, to that last bit, the answer is no. There, there’s not –

Matt: Well there is one.

Lauren: Yeah?

Matt: And it's – you're not going to make any money.

Lauren: Right.

Matt: And your stuff's gonna get stolen and –

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: – then your account’s gonna get shut down. And that's called Amazon.

Lauren: Yep. I didn't expect you to actually say the name.

Matt: I said it.

Lauren: We all knew what you were going to say and what you meant.

Matt: No, yeah.

Lauren: But. I know you're not afraid of saying it, but I, I was like, well obviously. It's fine. But, but yes. No, I think that that is something that... this is always gonna take work. No matter how you do it, it's always gonna take work. And ultimately, I think it comes down to how much is your time worth? And how much is your time and effort worth? And if this is something that, that takes a little bit of time and effort in the beginning, that you can then grow and spend less time on this. Which we talk about so much, but it's important. The more time that you can buy back from the operational tasks by doing automated fulfillment, or using these kinds of tools, paying a little bit of extra money to get the best version of whatever service you need provided. The more time that you have for yourself and content creation and everything that goes along with it.

Matt: Yeah. And, and again, there's obviously alternatives or other solutions out there. But we really wanted this to be a complementary episode to the last episode. And again, we do get a lot of questions about, you know, fees associated with direct sales. Or if we're at an event and somebody is asking us about using, you know, Lulu Direct with Shopify, what are the other fees associated or what are the other things I need to do? And so we really wanted to be able to lay this out in such a way where, you know, with the last episode, you understand what, what the ecosystem looks like right now as far as third party ecommerce providers. Right? And who you could use, and who each platform is best suited for. But then we wanted to do this so that you get an idea of like, yeah, there are upfront fees and then there's going to be monthly and yearly fees. And you know, at the end of the day, if you're doing everything you know, as properly as you can. And in tandem, you're building that audience, you're doing what you need to do to, to grow your follower base and sell more books. Most of these end up being a pass through cost. You're still going to maintain a higher profit margin, and you're still going to actually grow a customer base that you control, that doesn't belong to some other platform, that will allow you to grow more exponentially in year two, three, four, and five. Versus if you're relying solely on distribution or some other way to sell your books where you're not getting to keep that customer information, you have very little to zero control over how you price your products or what your profit margin looks like, and very little to zero control on how to adjust and manipulate things to get that profit to a better margin.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: I am the absolute queen of looking at something and saying, like something physical, like I, I will see a... like a really cool keychain that somebody made for a backpack. And I'll look at it and go... that's cool. I can make my own version of that though. And then three times the amount of money spent on materials, and fifteen hours later, and I have an amateur looking version of the thing that I originally saw and I'm like yeah that was... totally worth it. And you know –

Matt: Nevermind.

Lauren: Okay. You know, sometimes it is, sometimes it is worth it. But I think that the older I get, and the more valuable my personal time –

Matt: Yes.

Lauren: – becomes, the more that I realize that it is worth it to invest the money into the top tier services or products, or the experts that know what they're doing that can do these things for you. It's worth it.

Matt: Yeah, I agree with that. The older I get, the more valuable my time is to me, to do the things that I want to do with it. So I'm willing and able to spend the extra money. But on top of that, the older I get and the more I've learned about what we do, and the industry that we're in... in general, you know, people who are creators and solopreneurs and – The more I would rather just support them in their efforts and journeys too.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: So if I see somebody with a keychain on their backpack and I'm like, oh that's really cool. Like, my first thought is now not oh, I could make that, or I could get one of my kids to make it. My first thought is, let me find out where they got that. And if it is, you know, a solopreneur creator type of business, or – Like, I'm absolutely just going to go buy it directly from them.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: I don't go and look for it on Amazon.

Lauren: Nope.

Matt: I don't go to Michaels and see if I can buy the stuff to make it. I want to see if it's somebody that I can go and support. Because just like your favorite Los Bros or some of my favorite places where I order stuff, like Violent Gentleman or whoever that might be, you know. I would much rather support a creator, a creator-led business, a small business, however you want to frame that, than support big box stores, Amazon, or waste three hours of my day trying to make something that, like you said, is going to turn out to look like the toddler version of it anyways. And it just goes into the garbage can or gets relegated to a dark corner of my house, never to be seen again.

Lauren: Yep.

Matt: So there are all kinds of reasons why I think it's, it's, in the long run, more beneficial to protect your time. Right? Because the added side benefit is you're supporting, hopefully, another creator-led business.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: And a lot of the people listening to this are creators themselves.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: And so it's an ecosystem that if you, if you want it to thrive, because you want to benefit from it, then you need to put into it as well.

Lauren: Absolutely.

Matt: So don't beat that drum like, oh, I'm a creator, I'm an author, buy directly from me, but then turn around and go buy everything you know, you, you purchase from somewhere like Amazon. Like, try to support other creators. And, and sort of perpetuate that, that, that ecosystem.

Lauren: Which is how you create that, that really great symbiotic relationship.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Where you have that network of people that we're all supporting each other.

Matt: Yeah, it's a community-driven type thing.

Lauren: It absolutely is.

[55:57] – Episode Wrap Up

Matt: Alright.

Lauren: Well, we know how valuable everyone's time is, not just ours. So thank you for choosing to spend your valuable time listening to this episode. I hope it was helpful.

Matt: Oh.

Lauren: Yes?

Matt: This is worth the extra two minutes –

Lauren: Okay, go ahead.

Matt: – of everybody's time.

Lauren: Okay.

Matt: What do your bracelets say today?

Lauren: That's such a great question, thank you. None of them are new. They say This Version of You, Damn Regret, and To the Core. I have worn some new ones recently, you just didn't ask about them on the days that I was wearing new ones.

Matt: Yeah. I’m getting old.

Lauren: So they'll get sprinkled back into the rotation.

Matt: I forget.

Lauren: It’s okay.

Matt: Alright.

Lauren: I’ll allow it.

Matt: Do all the things. Click all the buttons, leave all the reviews.

Lauren: Please do.

Matt: Send all the emails.

Lauren: Podcast@lulu.com

Matt: Yep.

Lauren: And then come back next week for another new episode.

Matt: And I promise she'll have some new bracelets.

Lauren: Not in next week's episode, but for the one after that, I'll do my best.

Matt: Boo. Where's my sign?

Lauren: Oh, I'm so sorry I took it away from you.

Matt: Alright. Later.

Lauren: Thanks for listening.