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for those of you guys who are not familiar this is a partnership we have with Shopify tonight it's being sponsored with by firmat if you guys are in the Shopify ecosystem as I assume you are and you're launching storefronts running ads firmat is a micro store experience specifically for paid media we've been using it with our clients it's been very successful um so check it out it's it's it's it's relatively new uh in the geni space and it's been doing wonders for our portfolio getting back

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to office hours you know we're putting this event on for for you guys this is really meant to be uh tactical and useful information we're bringing together Founders from fast growing brands in the New York City ecosystem um and we're just going to talk and answer relevant questions that are going to be helpful for your growth so um just by a show of hands here how many of you guys are founders okay nice H how many of you guys are founders still kind of working up to that a million dollar uh annual

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revenue mark So Below a million dollars okay nice um how many of you guys are building fashion businesses okay all right so we've got we we have the right people here then for those of you guys who don't know me um I'm the co-founder and CEO of dark room we're a growth agency in New York City we're about eight people in New York and La we work with fast growing brands in the Shopify ecosystem and we invest in those businesses too we invest mostly in Commerce technology businesses and

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consumer Brands um and then we also assist uh on their data analytics and growth today we're going to be talking about strategies and tools to drive brand growth the way I'm going to structure the conversation we're going to start with strategy so a lot of uh strategic growth type questions stuff that's going to be relevant for you and then we'll talk about tools I'm going to guide most of the discussion I've got a few curated questions for this incredible panel tonight um and then I'm

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going to open it up for basically an AMA and you guys can ask uh whatever you want based on our discussion so I'm joined here tonight I'm really excited to have Brandon who is actually at the last event and uh we have d as well and Ally so I'm going to ask them to introduce themselves uh day is the founder and creative director of Sunday school day would love for you to just describe the the the brand and your mission and what you've been building hello an here I'm Korean so saying hello

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in Korean my name is z I run a brand called Sunday school we make high quality goods for high-minded people we sell weed and we also sell clothes uh we sell weed in around 200 dispensaries in California and we sell uh clothes we call them smoke wear through our Shopify store and we are about to launch in retail awesome day thanks so much and yeah guys just pass on the mic we've got Brandon next uh I've known Brandon actually for a little while uh excited to have you he's the founder and CEO of

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L Al fry it's a men's wear line um that's mostly direct consumer right now Brandon I'll let you introduce yourself talk about the business yeah uh my name my name is Brandon um founder and CEO Le Alf FR uh started the company last year and we've grown to you know different collections different kind of retail shops around the US uh but like Lucas said we're mostly direct a consumer and we just opened our showroom in Nomad not too long ago on 27th in Broadway um so yeah that's us I love it love it we have

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Ally as well last but not least um Ally was uh really early at Lively scale that business uh then worked at hatch uh two apparel businesses and uh is recently the founder of over lunch so uh I will let you introduce yourself Ally thanks so much hi guys I'm Ally like we talked about I was uh first hire at Lively uh Bri Andes D Toc brand disruptor in the category in 2016 really LED everything that fell under organic brand building and marketing um it was an amazing really fast-paced growth uh they got

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acqu IR ired uh after 3 and a/2 years and so those three and a/2 years uh that I was there was really kind of jam-packed with a lot of sort of startup D Toc boot camp went over to a brand called hatch and now uh run my consultancy over lunch uh brand strategy and marketing um advisory and podcast production thank you Ally thanks guys so much so I mean this panel is really relevant to everyone here like you know most of them are growing their business they're in the trenches it's a lot of

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hand toand com that um they're full-time on their businesses so I've curated a list of questions that seek to kind of you know answer what does it take to build a brand in 2023 what does it take to build a fashion business what does it take to get from zero to a million dollars in Revenue uh they're all going to speak to that tonight and then we'll also talk about some of the tools that can help you guys out uh the obvious one's Shopify so uh if you don't know what it is look it up um so let's start

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with question number one this is going to be for all three of these guys building a community has been crucial for each of your businesses how was your approach to community change over time D let's start with you then we'll go to Ally and then Brandon so like in all honesty I really never meant to start a brand I was high at home and I was in soul and I was like oh what if God was high and created this world and that's called Sunday school and it was a really silly idea but you know most importantly

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you know after that I use some like Photoshop skills that I learned uh over years to make some T-shirts and hoodies and you know for me I always really like to think of things like iteratively even if it's not perfect I just try to get it out there because even though you may think it's perfect and you put it out there I will tell you it's definitely not perfect uh so Community has been such a great like feedback loop for that so even when I first launched I was like what should I call this brand you know

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and the first event was at this Cafe called Greek colies and I asked them oh should we sell weed you know just getting feedback as much as possible I actually think the Approach at that point was it a was it a brand yet you just hosted a Sunday school event yeah we didn't have a Shopify store no Shopify not selling anything you're just like let's throw a party yeah it was just like let me print some T-shirts and let me let me try to get it to as many people as possible and somehow like a

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Vogue writer came by and like a hype Beast writer came by and then they wrote it up they were like what the is this and then we got into Barney like it was it just all happened so quickly but in terms of like building Community our approach to community hasn't changed at all I think uh still you know who the Sunday School customer is um the archetypes that I set back in 2018 is still relevant you know now we have new archet types as well um and we have really funny names for them but you know

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I think for us what's really important is you don't have to buy anything from us you know like what's really important is we want you to take life less seriously uh and that is kind of reflected in the pieces that we make that is reflected in the content that we make but what's just important is we want to honor you know our heritage as you know Koreans but also you know building up that a what Asian-American identity means and then beyond that what a cannabis consumer means in 2023 and

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Beyond so yeah it's just all about discussions it's all about learning it's all about higher education so let me just let's double click on a couple things that you said so how large is the community like you have a couple thousand people like what what does that look like and it sounds like there's some crossover asian-americans people who smoke like people who like fashion too yeah yeah I think uh I you know I I don't know how to measure it but like we just had a popup in New York uh for 3

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days we rented this we collabed with Mr Softy and we collabed with Heist Nai this magazine and uh we drove around this truck for 3 days and basically you know we're giving out free ice creams and 4,000 people showed up to wait in line for 2 and a half like even if it was like a Balenciaga truck I would not wait 2 and 1/2 hours for it you know what I mean but I think like that was like when I was like oh I need to launch our cannabis products in New York ASAP but then I think on IG like that we

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talk we get around like 50 to 60 DMS a day and we have around like 120k followers or so but they're like our ride or die you know uh when when people try to spread wrong information and when we discuss it like they will fight for us you know and we will fight for them you know what I mean it's that sort of a relationship and then on Tik Tok we've seen a lot of growth um so and then our customers like our order volume has been increasing quite a on Tik Tok right now yeah and yeah and I think for us it's

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really just about authentic Community Building approach like Community now I feel like is such a buzz where everyone's like oh Community this community that and I'm like it's not that hard and it's not like it's only hard when you're trying to force it into an angle if you just take a very natural approach and don't go too broad because you can't form interest groups based on really broad interests that's not going to have that much loyalty uh so you know for us it's we're as nishas you can get

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you know Korean weed brand uh so we just stay true to that message and you know if we want to talk about things that we don't have the full information about we work with different experts and different collaborators in order to share those stories so like kind of knowing your lane and really just delving deep has been our approach and that will continue to be our approach I like that um lot in there for those of you guys who are at office hours one we just focused on community a lot of similarities with what uh D's describing

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Ally how how do you approach this question I mean to be honest Community is at the root of all of the work that I do and I feel like I learn the power of Community with the early days of lively it was 2016 as day said it was before a time where Community was such a buzzword and it came in such an organic authentic way we rolled out social again when Instagram was a very different Beast it was you know the algorithm wasn't driving it the way that it is now and so we had sort of a landing page of our

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Instagram grid and it really was ethos first it was not product it it was very vague what the product was that we were going to be launching it was still pre-launch and to roll that out and wake up to and again early startup days Scrappy I'm the one doing it and you know late night posting and wake up to DMS sort of flooding in from women around the country discovering this somehow and talking about how much that ethos was resonating with them it was um you know entrepreneurial but also free-spirited and I I feel super seen or

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I've never seen I always feel like I have to choose one or the other and so again today's point the idea that like we came in sort of authentically finding this Niche that we felt like was our Persona and really was that driver the community power was really leaning into those initial people that that felt connected to what we were doing and starting conversations with them jumping on call s really nurturing those relationships and those people sort of helped us shape the blueprint of what we

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were going to do to build sort of Brick by Brick with our community and so that two-way dialogue was always there we looked to them to see where we should be who we should be popping up with and community events were again small and Scrappy and and in New York because we were here and we could do it but we had 125 community- based events our first year and and with those did you just focus on like density like let's just go deep on New York City I mean to be honest it was it was you know I know

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we'll talk about this but budget first it was we can you know jump in a cab and pop into a collaborator a brand partner that already has a space and we can do sort of a mixer and you know showcase what we do but really have people get to know us and so you know things like Soul cycle or the sill or things that were kind of Buzzy Heyday things that were happening in the city that we knew our community really loved doing when they weren't you know shopping for our category so okay so there's like a vent

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diagram there it's like people you have connections with that like you can kind of lean on to provide like services in kind really to help out the brand but then it's also that businesses that have like direct relationship to your product there's like a brand overlap yeah D I'm curious with you know you mentioned Heist nety Mr Softy like could you have done that on day one is that just because they know your business now or or you know are those relationships that you've had you you can't do that on day

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one but what you can do is literally what Ali said like lean on your network lean on you know your community uh Beyond just as a business right uh and yeah but we were lucky um I think because we were so we are so Niche um we even though I didn't know many people I could just easily Reach Out out you know Tim over there he uh is in our team team but he's one of the first people that I reached out to being like Oh you're a Korean founder like I would love to chat with you and learn about this yeah so I

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think you know that's been something that was really great for us um Brandon you can speak on this too because you've done a ton of stuff in New York it's been very dense um and you've relied on relationships too can you speak more on this yeah um first off I would say your community doesn't change I think the thing that you have to consider and understand is that it's your brand that facilitates the community right if what people are attracted to what makes people want to

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buy the product DM you ask about you know your events DM you 50 60 times a day it's the brand and the Persona and the archetypes that you're building and the experience that you're creating for those people so a lot of people I think think about Community as all right who's my community no you should think about in this perspective of what's your brand and then people will be attracted to that brand and that's your community so you shouldn't I think think of all right

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this is my community I'm dead set on all these people trying to force them into what I'm building if you're building what you're authentically creating there's going to be a lot of people that are going to be attracted to that so I think that's kind of like the underlying theme of community so I'm just curious for both of you guys and to the extent the I don't know the founder of lively how you obviously worked in finance and your brand like speaks to you know that

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consumer I'm assuming you smoke weed you're South Korean would you describe yourselves as your your brand like the archetype I I would but also you're you know you have to start somewhere where I think that's also this kind of nuance and kind of vague gray area of yes I worked in finance the Brand's only for people in finance absolutely not right like you know he has a Korean brand that smokes weed do you have to be Korean and do you have to smoke weed absolutely not so these are just like the the basis of

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who the underlying kind of culture is of the brand that you can extend and understand uh just different ways of packaging and marketing that you know still people are going to you know enjoy yeah it's a really good point um it also helps when you Niche down and like you go deep on something and it naturally resonates with a population and they become your Beach head go ahead I think uh there is like one uh singular kind of word that I describe to uh address our community and I think it is be you you

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don't have to be Korean and you don't have to smoke weed and actually a lot of people don't don't smoke weed a lot of people are not Korean but they're all high achieving degenerates that's what we call them you know you work hard but you also chill hard like and even Beyond marketing right because marketing is just marketing you don't have a if you don't have a product you can't really Market anything even in our products like these pants I'm wearing they have

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elastic in the back so that when I will munch a few hours later even though I you know my underbelly will grow it'll still fit me perfectly you know so for us like we really pay attention to the to those details and I mean yeah sometimes I want to make like really slay pants out of leather that are skin tight but like that's not the brand I can I should just buy that somewhere else you know what I mean so really staying true to your messaging and what your kind of community overarchingly

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wants I think that focus is what's really hard especially when you first start the business because you don't know what people want and you don't know uh you don't you may think something but most times it's not true so the only way to address this is to talk to your customers talk to your potential customers and talk to people you know who you don't even know to just gather information this was awesome you guys have anything else to say on community let's go to the next one Brandon this

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one's for you uh so and I think this kind of really ties in well with like facilitating and building Community cu nowadays you don't need a yes the events are really important and we can talk about the importance of in real life events cuz they do stimulate community in an important way but you can build very publicly on social platforms that connect you with people who have similar interests Brandon's been building L off fry very publicly you have pretty how many followers on Tik Tok uh like 26,000

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so but like just as a Founder just like post yeah just so I've been you know I started this basically without knowing anything similar to day I didn't know I was going to start a clothing brand um so everything was basically new to me so as I was going through all of these challenges obstacles you know fuckups whatever you want to call them I think as a Founder especially in these early stages you kind of have to build your brand through who you are as an individual uh because that's I think the

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most interesting aspect of what you know Community is in a sense right like and it's the easiest form of getting people to buy into what you're building right if I just created a brand with a product and tried to Market to you that's far less interesting than you saying oh well this guy quit his job you know at 23 started from scratch went to Portugal found factories and you're actually looking at all of these videos and pictures and mistakes and kind of ideas that this guy has actually starting the

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brand so the ladder is much more engaging and uh it kind of gets you more involved yeah so there's like a degree of Storytelling in there but you're just like documenting the process which I think is really important for everyone here to understand because I met Brandon before you know Le Al Frey started blowing up and becoming popular watch the entire journey and you know we talk about all these strategies they're really important but like there is an element of capital that's needed to to

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be successful and launch a business Brandon's about to close his seed round and imagine a lot of that was due to building in public so just speak on that yeah I mean I actually like we've been raising money for the last 6 months and about I'd say like a quarter to a third of that investment has come through Tik Tock of just me posting and building the company in public um because people are understanding you know what I'm actually doing how I'm thinking through things how I operate how I grind all

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the time um and so people are actually seeing that and so yeah Tik Tok is something or and I don't even just do Tik Tok like I'm building publicly on LinkedIn and the voice that I have on LinkedIn is different than the voice I have on Tik Tok and then I it's a diff like I like LinkedIn as a channel for for Brands I really LinkedIn if if you guys don't Market on LinkedIn your personal brand organically you start you should I like that cuz it's very underrated as a marketing channel well

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well well you did work in Consulting there there is a there is like a corporate guy underneath all that I haven't updated my LinkedIn since I left consulting or sorry I haven't updated my resume since I graduated from college actually yeah so this one's for you day so I think everyone's kind of wondering like cannabis and fashion like how do those two things go together I mean I think you get I guess you you know did you launch with the intention you said like no how did that happen yeah this

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it's probably like a what the right cannabis fashion Korean Asian American like you know it seems all Buzzy but it honestly started out with a story um to Echo Brandon's point like I think people are obsessed with reality shows right like I love is blind I just finished that it's I don't like this season but you know I still finished it and I feel like there's almost like once you buy into a brand and once you buy into like a personal story you're even more hooked you're like oh my gosh what what are

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they going to do next so for us you know we I just was like oh what if God is high and made some T-shirts but then somehow we got an opportunity by um Hypes to Showcase in New York Fashion Week and they were like oh but you have to whip out ready to wear and I was like oh my gosh what is that but I did and we got into some wholesale accounts and then from there on we started asking people people hey what do you guys want you know on Instagram um polls had just launched when that happened so I was

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like should we make knit vests or should we make you know more pants and they were like just drop ounces drop e and I was like o but we didn't do that because we don't have a farm and I'm not a farmer uh so you know I can't authentically tell that story um so we were like what can we make and we decided to make gummies because I love gummies I actually prefer gummies because of just like the inine and you know you never know what's happening and I love that adventure and uh my favorite

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snack still to this day um is uh duck which is rice cake um and we launched our Mochi gummies based made out of rice flour and Tapioca And yeah we did it in flavors that are authentic to our childhood like Yuzu uh in Korea we call it yua uh Boba you know I used to get boba every um after real Sunday school or after after Sunday school I used to get boba at gcha so uh from that memory we created those flavors yeah and then it all happened really naturally in the beginning people used to laugh at us oh

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my gosh what do you know about cannabis um I remember I went to go pitch medmen and I was so excited and they were like but you guys are in Barney you don't know anything about weed and then I was like what do you know about weed you just started working here we obviously didn't get in to medmen but now we're for the best yeah now we're in and we're in all the stores and we are constantly stock there so so like paint a picture of the business today you do you treat it as like two separate businesses like

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same marketing strategy because they're obviously two totally different Supply chains different skill sets different inventory planning the whole thing so how do you manage that yeah so we are are about to launch in a few new States this year but the brand is strong enough that I have licensing deals like incoming for the first time and it was never like this I used to always go chase and convince people but then now they're like oh my gosh you know we have a huge population of you know artsy

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Millennial kids like can we can we get your brand out here um so in terms of marketing um it's pretty streamlined because it's all about content whether it's photoo shoots whether it's video shoots uh we have like some we've kind of we're still developing that Tik Tok formula we leave some for like Trends we leave some for like tea time to just kind of spell the tea on stuff but we always make sure to have weed content in our portfolio whether it's like ASMR content whether it's like you know

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talking about it talking about the sigma we talk about clothes we talk about Korean Heritage and how our clothes are inspired by it um so yeah basically in terms of digital marketing and digital marketing Communications you know it's the same designer same content creators working to produce that obviously in terms of operations it's a whole separate vertical besides packaging you can use the same vendor yeah but so like for expansion just to boil it down expansion on the Cannabis side you're

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just like I'm going to do I'm going to Leverage The Brand build the brand and then cut distribution deals or licensing deals in different states we know where our customers live so it's much lower lift for you can basically expand using someone else's infrastructure exactly and then you're scaling the fashion side of the business though yeah exactly okay cool that's good for us we can understand that this is for all three of you Ally we'll start with you because you have so much experience uh across

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multiple fashion businesses so fashion is a tough space obviously a lot of people here are trying to break into fashion launch their own businesses how did you each strategically approach breaking into the market and like selling product I think now there are a lot of resources to figure out how to make product but like how do we get people to buy it how did you figure that out yeah I mean you know I feel like we talked about community and that being kind of where this idea starts and really understanding what might be

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missing in that landscape and it was the same for lively in terms of approach that it was for hatch there were these communities that were quite different one was much younger and one was older and uh hatch as a maternity brand and so so it's an you know just a different kind of stage in life but it really was about how do we come in to be a resource to be the goto to be the support that this demographic needs that this community needs at that moment in their lives and really kind of thinking that

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through for for me my Approach has always been in that Grassroots capacity in kind of creating that ecosystem of all of these organic kind of levers or moments whether it be these in real life moments whether it be you know having the founder be very present and having these longer form conversations podcast panels Fireside Chats you know we talk about the mix of like uh what happens on on the organic side and then what happens um in a more sort of Performance Marketing side and it really is like how

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are you bringing people in and what are they seeing when they get there and so for me it's always been about making sure that at all of these touch points there is an entire ecosystem that somebody can kind of come to and understand all of the facets of what the brand is kind of standing for okay um and Brandon I guess just take it from from Ally and talk about you know how you approached breaking in was it all organic and content driven like what alli's talking about so I yeah it's all

00:28:51 - 00:30:09

Grassroots but um I had a you know someone who started their own own company kind of tell me this early on where it's called kind of boots to the ground so literally do every possible thing you can do that doesn't require any money so in the beginning I would and this is stupid as hell right it sounds stupid but I would I bought a picket sign I would walk around New York and just hold my shirts up get feedback from people I had a QR code so people can follow me on in stagram because I didn't have any money to do Performance

00:29:31 - 00:30:36

Marketing or any paid ads so you got like samples made yeah I had samples samples made I had a picket sign with a QR code with like a funny thing that said like we're not in GQ yet but we can be like follow us on Instagram and it was front and back I would strategically go to Trader Joe's and stand in line with the picket sign not no I'm not kidding and just like cuz I knew if I was like we in line people would scan the QR code behind me right so I would like always like walk up in front of

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someone so like they can just see the QR code but then you start getting like you know 100 200 followers that's 200 more followers than you had right and like that mentality like you need to have every single time I don't do that now but if I needed to I would but it's like those kind of stages of okay what's like the most effective thing because at the beginning your time is your most valuable asset you don't have any cash you don't have any like connections you can't just like do

00:30:37 - 00:31:38

anything you want so your time is your resource so use that time effectively where you can actually grow so you know that was like one strategy LinkedIn is another strategy Tik tok's another strategy uh like Instagram reels now that you can go viral like there's a milli so there's 200 people who like followed you from that tra Joe's line like are they still do do you have any tracking on that they still followers but doesn't matter like 200 is 200 you know like at that point you need as much

00:31:07 - 00:32:03

traction and visibility as you can get like for sure I'm trying to make the point because I've heard this with so many early stage fashion brands that like you just need to start building and that creates a Snowball Effect where these people who are following you when you were nothing like they become your customers eventually cuz they have such deep loyalty the business yeah just I mean just keep doing I mean but you have to be strategic right like there are a million and you have to test everything

00:31:35 - 00:32:36

right like that was a little test to see if it would work LinkedIn was another test you know I did ads a little bit in the beginning that was another test so kind of do all these little tests to strategically grow so I I like this point and we had another discussion at one of our other events about like it's really important to lean into friction one of our clients brunt work where they're fast growing Shopify business and they did a podcast and it became a top 1% Spotify Podcast Fashion brand in

00:32:06 - 00:33:21

the boot space that's an $100 million company today how did you guys also lean into friction and do things that were like not best practice for launching a fashion brand well on the me mental note real quick I do want to add every day as a Founder every day God will test you and it will feel like there's no tomorrow at that moment but what you always have to remember is you are that girl you know like you are that girl you have to really channel that and you have to push forward and you have to do like

00:32:43 - 00:33:58

wear the QR code and wait in Trader Joe's you just have to do it and like that's I think one of the most important thing that makes or breaks your project your company whatever it is is you got a story for us when you were that girl I'm always that girl like I'm that girl right now you know I mean honestly when we like I I am not you know when when I'm in a room with people I'm great but I'm not the guy to just go out and talk to Rand like I hate going to bars and hitting on people like that's just you

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know I I don't know I can't do it uh and you know but for me I'm like I got to get this out I got to get this brand out here I would go up to random influencers and I would be like oh my gosh like I am this person and I really like your stuff and I feel like you would really like my stuff you know what I mean like yeah you're putting yourself out there yeah you just got to do it and like there's no other way around it you are your best asset you know like okay but what was the question sorry yeah like give us a

00:33:48 - 00:35:00

story like give us something good you know I mean number one like so I was doing this on the side um 2017 and 2018 cuz I needed to pay my bills obviously I was working at a consulting company um and you know basically they like even taking that leap of faith to leave my cushy job was was not easy right and it was right before we got into Barney but I was just like you know I I was like talking to a few people who I could raise money from obviously we couldn't raise any money they were like you're

00:34:24 - 00:35:28

not even doing this full-time you know what are you talking about you don't believe in it and I was like I will just tell you right now and I'll prove you wrong like in a month we're going to be in Barney sacks all these stores that you shop at and then he was like okay good luck and then we got in and you know you have to manifest we got in and I was like where's my check and I got that check so yeah it's just yeah and that guy is still like one of my investors he's great yeah so I feel like

00:34:56 - 00:36:02

you just have to you just have to really take care of yourself and really take care of your mental like mental health aside like mental strength you know have this iron face you know do stuff that you would normally never do and just go for it determination Ellie any thoughts on on like leaning into friction I mean at Lively we had it was an overall very positive environment and we had this you know and I think that starts from the top we had this uh idea of like a learning tax and you know you have a

00:35:28 - 00:36:35

team and a startup you know a young team and and this idea that like a learning tax was I mean you're making mistakes all the time and you're hopefully trying to break something and test something and see what's what's sticking what's resonating and so if something didn't work uh if a city wasn't you know as Buzzy or as uh kind of picking up momentum that we went into as you'd hoped it was a learning tax and what whatever spend was there or budget went towards that or a feeling in the room

00:36:02 - 00:36:57

like we just kind of chalked it up to you know that learning tax of it's okay and what can we take from this and kind of apply and keep pushing forward that mental Muscle really good thoughts guys um we've got a we actually we're like halfway through with the questions this is for each of you Ally you can start what was the Tipping Point when you decided to start your own company so you were working at a couple of uh other companies where you running marketing when were you like I'm going to go do my

00:36:29 - 00:37:46

own thing I mean it was the end of 2019 I was at you know a company in house that felt very cushy and felt very kind of comfortable and there's security there and you can't I mean I feel like everybody in this room must feel this where you know when something is that fire in your belly you know when something just feels like where you should be and I realize that you know I went from first hire in house and building to a company that was eight years old and so I feel like that early stage pre-launch you know the grit of

00:37:08 - 00:38:15

those early days of of uh building your business was missing and so I just knew that I had to kind of Follow that feeling and so I launched a consultancy that would work with primarily female founded uh Ecom directed consumer Brands um podcast production ended up becoming a big part of what do now and what the consultancy focuses on but really as an extension of brand so talk about are you placing ads for your clients on podcast or you're producing podcasts for them yeah producing podcasts interesting

00:37:41 - 00:38:35

finish so like that the the example I gave has it been successful in terms of like driving sales like what's the what's the mission behind that yeah I mean the origin story behind that is that we were having these Fireside Chats and panels at Lively and we were having them often and you you know there's 50 people 100 people in a room and you're getting kind of again the community is flooding in with I wish I was in New York for that chat this feels like such a valuable thing and so we look to

00:38:08 - 00:39:17

podcast in those like early days of podcast as a way to scale these kind of conversations to like really give back to the community and so I have come in in a number of other podcasts since at that intersection between podcasts as an extension of brand you know what are the bigger conversations that this brand wants to have that they may not be having in these quick snippets on social or in a caption or you know it's it's been amazing and so it's a it's an opportunity for a brand to Showcase

00:38:42 - 00:39:43

their values to have longer form narratives and storytelling and it's obviously like a very Buzzy kind of sexy area to to get involved in as a brand or as a sort of personal brand what about for you day what was kind of so so both of you guys came from corporate backgrounds cushy jobs like Ally when were you like I'm doing this I actually before you answer that for the audience how many of you guys like are still in the deciding phase of like going deep on your Venture just probably like a show

00:39:12 - 00:40:20

of hands so a couple of you okay great think carefully so yeah I'm a little bit of backstory I studied applied math not because I love math I do like numbers uh but I don't love math but I did it because my mom was like you got to do it it's either that or biology and I was like I'm not about to cut up rats you know so I studied applied math I went into Consulting and it broke me in a lot of ways I got really interested in health care so I was doing a lot of Health Care Consulting like

00:39:46 - 00:41:04

pharmaceutical products uh Hospital systems and then I worked at a pharmaceutical company and now that case is on Netflix and that project really really helped me understand what it means to have professional values besides it being a buzzword you know so then I was like okay I want to have agency over the work I do right and but you you don't need to start a company to find that right you could find that perfect job for you where you can Excel um at what you do uh in that organization uh but I really think it

00:40:25 - 00:41:35

was based on Community not to be Buzzy about it because when I saw uh you know when I saw just responses from being like Hey we're doing a community photo shoot you know come through and when we did this ice cream truck thing two years ago uh when the right after the first wave of like the pandemic opened up and I think per day like 400 people came and even that like I mean not even that like that just really was like oh my gosh like this is so incredible that 400 people you know cuz like your weekends

00:41:00 - 00:42:11

are so valuable right like who wants to you know spend time to wait in line on the weekends but like that just was such a incredible experience and because I built this company for two years just organically while having a job it just gave me so much more faith that this is what I have to dedicate my 20s to and yeah here I am as a 30-year-old and there are no regrets happy birthday was there like a specific point where you like crossed the revenue threshold and you're like I'm going to jump in or did

00:41:36 - 00:42:36

the community get to a size or you just had a gut feeling you were like I need to do this yeah I'm like a gut feeling guy like I just and I always remember that I'm that girl so you know for instance we just put in our we're about to launch puffers which we're super excited about and I was at the Thundercat concert and I was like texting with our team being like Oh my gosh like what do we have to do what do we have to do and we were going more conservative but there was like a great

00:42:06 - 00:43:15

price break that we got if we just made 400 more units so I was like you know these puffers are that girls like we have to make it we have to take that leap of faith and and then we did some back of the math calculations even if I sell it at a discount I will still make money so and you know I just want to get more of our clothes with our stories and our souls in them to our people so we were like let's increase that production run yeah I like that uh Brandon what do you think yeah very on par with with

00:42:41 - 00:44:02

them I think you you know like for me I was working in finance for a year and it it gets to a point where if you don't wake up and you're genuinely enjoying what you're doing then you should probably switch and I know that's really really difficult given that a lot of people have responsibility families money Etc but you know if if you do I would try and utilize your time and energy to try to create something on the side as much as possible for me I was kind of in a weird situation where I

00:43:21 - 00:44:26

left and I was supposed to have another job lined up and kind of like in this limbo of not having a job and this is when I kind of got the idea and if you're doing something then you better do it you know you don't you don't want to half out you don't want to allocate 20% of your time to it if you're like fully invested in yourself and in your idea so before that point were you did you know you wanted to launch a company or absolutely not you had this break kind of happen stance

00:43:54 - 00:44:59

yeah just like nothing going on and I'm just like searching for jobs trying to figure out what I want to do next and again like when when day says like you're that girl you're that guy like yeah like I'm I'm I'm that girl you know like you honestly have to have that mentality I'm going to use that expression now but yeah you you just got to be super confident in yourself to to execute and then with that you know your lifestyle has to change dramatically like no more going out you're eating

00:44:27 - 00:45:30

groceries you're like I'm still doing that like I pick and choose what I do where I go out how I spend my money because all of that should be reinvested into your business and you know if if you're not willing to sacrifice your lifestyle and what you do and who you spend your time with then you know I wouldn't recommend you know starting a company yeah no for sure you need in in some respects you need to be able to just like lean into the friction and rough it for a few years to reinvest in

00:44:58 - 00:45:54

the business I think that gets harder as you get older and have more responsibilities and obligations so it's something to consider if you guys are are thinking about going deep in in your particular vertical okay so we didn't we talked a bit about marketing I guess we talked more about like starting the Venture and Grassroots marketing fact of the matter is like most of the businesses you guys are going to be founding are going to be direct consumer to some degree maybe some retail allocation but uh a a lot of your growth

00:45:27 - 00:46:26

is going to be driven by marketing there's a bunch of different times types of marketing this one's for Ali how do you determine where to allocate Capital since it's a scarce resource like time yeah and when to go deep on a particular Channel or an initiative like when do you start seeing feedback yeah I mean I think it goes back to what we were talking about before and again I mean those early days resources are so tight and every you have to think about every dollar and so the way that we approach appr it that

00:45:56 - 00:47:07

Lively and I feel like I've always kind of taken that um with me is that it really was starting with something that felt manageable like we were doing the events here in New York and we would you know kind of create a formula that worked here to to be able to do as many as we could and then we said okay where could we go that also didn't cost uh that much a drive instead of a flight so we packed up a a SUV and would go to somewhere like Boston or Philly or something and do the same kind of

00:46:31 - 00:47:38

activation there and you know were you measuring Roi on the activation by like sales and just cost of the event I mean it was such early days that cost of the event yes but we saw value in email acquisition in those moments or uh follows on social or you know meeting brand ambassadors in person and and leveraging those relationships after the fact and so those days for us really were about almost those intangibles that you know but we made sure that there were things built in that we always did

00:47:06 - 00:48:11

capture that email that maybe we had some swag there from the brand to incentivize signups or to incentivize somebody looking at our brand ambassador program or that kind of thing and you know I I kind of think of it like Brick by Brick so we would we would do those sort of pop in like Road shows and then we started you know that showed so so much traction that we said okay why don't we look at a space that we could take over for a week or two weeks in another city and really blow out the activations have a popup you know have

00:47:38 - 00:48:39

uh retail kind of operation during the day and have events every night where we're bringing in our brand ambassadors locally we're partnering with local brands that have already cultivated uh community in that market in that City and how do we get in front of those micro communities and do that and you know then you start to see this traction pick up where we did a popup in Dallas and it was exactly that it was two weeks a full buildout our entire team there and we you know it had such a

00:48:08 - 00:49:13

nice response amongst the community there that we left and and people would say you know can't you keep the store open it it really was meant to be a popup we left and you start to see the lift in the Dallas area in the surrounding areas driving to the site in the weeks to follow I think we were at a 200% lift to online traffic in those areas and so you know those early early days it's really hard it's more for us it was the sentiment of what we were building and then you start to see

00:48:41 - 00:49:51

things actually impacting the bottom line and then you say okay what if we had Community retail hubs so we we open a retail store in New York and then one in Dallas and then one in Austin and one in Boston you know these cities that we've already tested in these micro ways um and that we've already so when you left Lively how big were they um yeah so we had 155,000 women in our brand ambassador program that was from those early DMS pre-launch those women those 50 DMS that was you know built upon and

00:49:15 - 00:50:19

built upon and built upon we had stores uh a store in New York a store in Boston and a store in Austin and we were acquired 3 and a half years uh after after we launched and so it's incredible um and you were there for that entire time that's unbelievable days just opening a retail location you just mentioned that to me and if I remember you did not you haven't really spent any money on paid acquisition paid ads it's been organic which is why it's taken longer uh for sure but like how long

00:49:48 - 00:51:01

have you been working on the project five and a half years yeah so but when you don't have money what are you going to do you know you just got to go viral so that's what you know you know for us I think it's a it's less of in terms of allocating Capital like as Brendan said like in the beginning it's you know time you can buy time with money right but you you can't buy but in some ways you can buy uh money with Time by just doing the stuff Brute Force you know for us some things that things that work right

00:50:24 - 00:51:36

now will not work in the future but there is a Time window that it'll work again like for fleeces and puffers that's our main seller or fleeces are our main seller I hate that I was late in production and I will have to Airship these from Korea but I will because there's a Time window that you have to maximize sales for you know vers like ocean shipping a fleece is like $3 versus air shipping it is like $12 so and that's just just you know going to fuel so I think it's really just you

00:50:59 - 00:52:11

have to really look at what the costs are and then what the projected benefits are and what the different scenarios are and then make those decisions with paid like you know we're just starting to test it out but I don't want to be doing paid like everyone else is doing paid being like Oh my gosh let me show you this sweater like no uh so you know for us we are just really trying to stay authentic to our Voice work with creators who can you know there are there are people with like huge

00:51:36 - 00:52:47

followings um who DM us and who's like oh I will do a content for you we don't even respond because she's not on brand you know or he's not on brand it doesn't matter like sure she may have a million followers but someone with 20K followers someone with 5K followers like who can represent our brand and who will passionately talk about our brand is so much more valuable I look at my bank account at least once a day like I'm kind of obsessed with it just because like you have to be you know you like if

00:52:11 - 00:53:18

money is going out the door you have to understand what's going out the door how long you can last that money going out the door if like every probably once or twice a week I like built like a cash flow model and it's just like looking at what I'm spending just projected this month next month all right what's coming in inventory wise what am I going to spend on uh advertising popups you know am I like forecasting like miscellaneous spend because it's Christmas and like I'm going to have you know Ubers you

00:52:45 - 00:53:46

know when I go back home to Chicago like from the airport it's like all these certain things that you have to understand that to grow a business you have to understand the business you don't understand the product and the marketing you understand the business and the cash flow because that's what's GNA actually make or break whether you can actually Market or not and so like understanding like a s simple income statement like using QuickBooks you know if you really need an accountant or like

00:53:15 - 00:54:14

someone to look at your books and like a bookkeeper hire them right like there all there are a lot of services out there there's also you know I'm a big YouTube guy like I basically started the company on YouTube just like watching and researching so you know I use YouTube a lot if I don't know something I'll watch videos on it you know or I'll just do research on Google so you guys mentioned uh some tech that you use that's important you know just as you've been growing what's been the most useful

00:53:45 - 00:54:54

piece of technology uh that you've used can't can't say Shopify I mean I I I think email marketing is big I use clavo um I think that understanding of acquisition from like you know there are different ways to Market in email marketing where it's post post purchase when they're in the funnel after they purchase you have different segmentations different audiences you can segment on how many uh orders they've had if they've abandoned cart if they've browsed their website and

00:54:19 - 00:55:22

haven't purchased there's a lot of ways that you can facilitate uh different encounters and engagement that you know can be pushy or also just you know on Fridays we send out like cool mood board uh images just as like a Vibe because like who doesn't like a Vibe on Fridays right so like that this is through email so you can kind of see your engagement uh and analytics through that I mean mine is a is a little bit different I think in building the consultancy and you know historically I've just I think

00:54:50 - 00:55:57

to to immerse yourself in the brand in the way that you have to to really be in extension of it and do the work alongside the founder and the team and staying connected slack has just been essential I I you know I I started when at the end of 2019 and obviously everything happened around March 2020 and and that inperson sort of Creative Energy and Magic that happens in these you know my consultancy is called over lunch because these moments of over coffee over drinks over lunch over that is where the sort of co-creation and

00:55:24 - 00:56:28

Magic has happened for me in my experience with clients and Founders and that's what fuels me and so slack for me has just been a really important way to to stay connected and to stay immersed in that like real time way and and to the point there's there's ways to use it and and build culture and build rapport and have channels that are just a Vibe and you know are hasht random or hash you know shopping finds or whatever it is that the team is kind of looking to do and I I love love that and and you're

00:55:56 - 00:57:03

able to kind of lean in and and be a part of it so um slack is is my go-to I don't use a lot of Technology but I think three things I'm just going to number one very tactical it's this Shopify app called cart bright and uh it's like a back in stock app sometimes we just like kind of fake it and we just put a mockup up and we say it's sold out and then based on like the number of people who are like requesting uh it to be back on stock I'm like okay I know how much I need to make those are

00:56:30 - 00:57:37

products you've never launched before it's just like t-shirts and hoodies that we just Photoshop con design exactly that's cool uh number two is Discord for us we have a pretty big Discord all Community yeah just DJ it's called dgen Channel and it's like it's like 20,000 people or 25,000 people or something like that and they it just kind of runs on itself um no Community managers no Community managers uh we you know we are you active in there uh we I am not active in there but we have few like

00:57:03 - 00:58:06

fashion team is and they you know send them oh what should we make haha you know what weed are you smoking so stuff like that yeah and then yeah three is telegram love telegram I am going to skip this question it's a fun one but actually just really quickly 30 seconds for each of you cuz we're we're we're at 3 minutes and I want to make sure we can answer some questions what's on the horizon puffers puffers podcasts podcasts our our first fall winter collection I'm wearing one of the right

00:57:35 - 00:58:47

now beautiful okay let's do some open Q&A how do you acquire the funds to invest in the project while you're working your day job and it's still a side project uh who wants to go first I can go just luckily like I don't have kids or just like any responsibilities which plays honestly a huge Factor like it does I be lying if I was saying it wasn't and I basically just saved like I'm the type of person where I genuinely can eat like five things from the grocery store and they're really cheap

00:58:11 - 00:59:20

and not go out and I'm just like paying my rent that's it that's all I need and you know that's kind of like how I started and I just like used my savings it's a tough decision right like spending your own money being successful on your own dime you become very frugal very easily like more than you thought you would um and I'm I'm still like that like so it was just mine and then once you like start having those you know ways that you can organically grow also another strategy that was really helpful

00:58:44 - 01:00:07

early on more than the QR code thing was uh yeah the trader Jo thing uh go on Instagram and DM go to your friend's Instagram and add and DM every single person and tell them you're starting this company I got like 700 followers it sucked but I got like 700 followers in like a couple months just by doing that constantly and then obviously you get unfollowed a ton but I guarantee you like 300 of those people are customers just by doing that that's I mean for me it was having that feeling of wanting to do something of my

00:59:26 - 01:00:38

own and build my own thing similarly once making that decision I said okay if H how much do do I need to save to carry me over and bridge the gap of like a 3 to six month Runway while I'm kind of out there pounding the pavement and you know building a client base at the same time while I was still in house and knowing that I was building that little Nest Egg just setting like it's so easy to get caught up in that dayto day and and for me it was like giving importance to setting up a coffee before work

01:00:02 - 01:01:16

setting up a a lunch meeting you know setting up drinks after just reconnecting with my network and and allowing that momentum to come and it ended up being where I really didn't need that much of that Nest Egg because I was able to just line so much just momentum and almost verbal like we need to do this together uh before I left so just I feel like the power of network is is huge first thing I did when I decided I'm going to leave my job was like quit Equinox change my hairdresser now my

01:00:39 - 01:01:48

haircut my haircut used to be like 60 bucks now it's $8 you know you just I I'll I'll give you Chinatown meing Shing is the place it's in Elizabeth and Canal shout out to Bob but yeah I mean b you just got to you know I used to be a Whole Foods girl now I'm a Trader Joe's girl you know like you just got to make you just got to change your lifestyle I think there I think I really do want to Echo that sentiment of network if this is like the right project for you your people will ride for you you know what I

01:01:14 - 01:02:14

mean like cuz not every project will be right for you you know um I had another silly idea which was like oh I want to make like the bubbles like soap bubbles but with glitter and there were like oh that's cool good luck uh versus you know this it just happened much more organically um so I think it's and then I would say like Leverage social media Beyond you know you can make Tik toks and YouTube shorts but you could also do like only fans you know what I mean like not no not like that but like just

01:01:44 - 01:02:42

content they have like a paid content Channel like building your company we're about to launch only fans with all the weed we smoke you know what I mean um and it's just it's grab the money when you can where you can so I think the question is just around like how do you prioritize and know when to either fundraise or invest in other things can you just continue to build community without actually like having the full product category built out this sounds relevant to both of you too if it's free

01:02:13 - 01:03:20

you know just build it but I think you know the question if it is like the authentic lifestyle that you embody right it's not going to be that hard for you to continue it if it's something that you know you know I see like videos of influencers going on fake private jets and stuff like if it's like that that's going to cost you money and you'll run out of money I think at this day and age getting eyeballs and getting engagement is key but rather than just staying like if it's an aspirational

01:02:47 - 01:03:55

thing rather than just staying aspirational making people really feel something you know is really important so I would say if you don't have a clear Concept in mind don't rush into it just keep doing what you're doing but if you are like this is going to work then start testing it out to the eyeballs you have yeah I think it's different for every single founder in terms of like when to make that next step but if the question is can I validate the concept on like Instagram you for sure can

01:03:21 - 01:04:15

before you actually invest in like tons of product um they referenced you know creating surveys and polls to figure out what people want there's been tons of different brands that have come out of like literal Instagram mood boards or Tik Tok channels so I think that's that's a viable way to grow so the question was how do you go through and organize content ideation and you know figure out the Cadence and the type of content to post I don't no I mean know I'm just trying to think because it's

01:03:48 - 01:04:52

it's so diff it's so like complex of a question just because there's different collections that you have fall winter spring spring summer you might be doing a limitation drop with a like a person or a company um and so that content I think I would focus on what specifically is your end goal for that month or for that quarter so if you want more emails what is your strategy in terms of content to get more emails if you want more Tik Tok followers what's your strategy and it's like it has to be

01:04:20 - 01:05:30

authentic to you and like what your stage is like if you you know if you're just starting out like film like you starting out right like don't try to force you being this Big Brand uh because you're just not there yet and that content is going to correlate with your stage I actually just did this exercise so I have some tactical points but number one it really depends on your personality I I don't know if people know what mbti is but I my mbti type is entp so I'm chaos so B basically how I

01:04:55 - 01:06:10

kind of organized it number one you don't need to make content for the sake of making content um people don't want to hear random from you you know you should just make content for things that you can speak confidently and you can speak with expertise about um so for us that was really regarding Korean Heritage weed API culture uh and just you know eating food and gaining weight whatnot so we bucketed those ideas we did it as topics formats and uh channels and then made mind maps and then

01:05:32 - 01:06:42

allocate we're doing some testing to see which one performs best and then develop franchises based off of that Tipping Point of success what strategy LED you to be successful where were you like you know this is it this is working I mean in my own business I feel like I originally thought that my entire career sort of background was going to be the Crux of my consultancy and brand strategy and marketing and podcast happen to be coming up a lot for people and for Brands and you lean into kind of

01:06:07 - 01:07:11

what is presenting itself and showing itself and it was something that I felt also embodied what I wanted to be working on and so for me it really was this idea that it wouldn't it doesn't necessarily have to be everything that you thought it was going to be but going through these motions putting you know your expertise out there and seeing what comes back felt like you know if this is the if this is where you know there's so much opportunity and you're able to play in that space lean in and see you know what

01:06:39 - 01:07:36

that could become and so in a very real way I'm now thinking about what does it look like to build out a podcast Production Studio and as opposed to a brand consultancy and podcast uh studio so I really think it's you know kind of seeing where those opportunities are you guys can ask questions too at the end of this there you can speak directly to these guys um I'm going to wrap us up right now we if you really like this session we're going to do a lot more of this but I want to just say if you're

01:07:08 - 01:08:13

launching a startup we have a ton of different courses at dark room so you can sign up they're free right now it's about launching fashion brands things like that so the URL is uh dark agency.com university- beta and you'll also get all of the office hours night school programming so we're going to do this stuff monthly in New York but thank you guys so much for coming out we're going to do more fashion stuff too so just sign up follow us on Instagram dark room agency um thanks Shopify for the space

01:07:41 - 01:08:00

um you guys can ask do you have a couple minutes to stay and yeah you can walk up directly ask questions thank you guys so much thank you Lucas