00:00:00 - 00:01:13

that product has sold over a million units through Tik Tock shop and has also propelled it to the number one bestseller on Amazon in health and household I think the products that I see do really well on Tik Tock shop are ones that are relatively low consideration products um that are from a both a use case standpoint and a price point and a price point standpoint as well as ones that are highly demonstrable it's great to have you here so you're you're from New York you live here I wouldn't offend a true New Yorker and

00:00:39 - 00:01:35

say I'm from New York I've just been here for 14 years now yeah all right well after 10 years you're you become a New Yorker yeah so they say yeah um no that's cool I'm excited to have you uh obviously I don't know what the stats are I was just looking at your Instagram but you've built an impressive following um on Instagram Tik Tok talking about brand strategy how did that like how did you really start thinking hey I want to I want to start putting content out and talking about these things yeah so I got

00:01:06 - 00:02:09

on Tik Tok from a brand standpoint so there's a brand that I operate called Oklahoma smokes we started using Tik Tok towards the end of 2020 and that had been a great Channel and is a great channel for our business and so our organic content really works there we were kind of early on in terms of being a brand on the channel and so I got I was creating content for that brand basically every single day and I was studying what good brands are doing versus bad Brands like how to make content that resonates and as I was

00:01:39 - 00:02:33

operating that brand I also operated this agency and I'm having all these conversations working with clients around branding marketing design so on and it's a series of topics that I really like talking about so I'm like okay I generally kind of know what to do on Tik Tok let me see if this somewhat Niche content works on Tik Tok and so I just made a few videos um kind of given what I knew about how to create some of these videos and pretty quickly it started gaining traction and I was like

00:02:06 - 00:03:05

all right let me keep going um I want to say you definitely incepted uh EMT from chin Lane PLS because I saw some of his recent videos and I was like these are these are sick did you guys have a conversation about that uh yes he messaged me he's like dude I love your content I want to make the same stuff um and so yeah we've been trading notes a little bit but his stuff is great too yeah I like I was like this is Allah Ashwin but different flavors because he brings the creative Direction

00:02:35 - 00:03:40

perspective um yeah I mean I think that's definitely relevant to so basically it started with um Oklahoma smokes being a platform and a for for you to basically like understand and learn Tik Tok exactly did you guys so that was early days of Tik Tok too 20 that was relatively early on Tik Tok and we were just talking about how there are like layers of platform saturation that make it you know more difficult to um reach you know new audiences organically and therefore you know paid comes into

00:03:07 - 00:04:02

the equation more um so how has the platform changed just generally broad Strokes when we first got on the platform with Oklahoma smokes our first five videos each one of them had half a million to a million and a half views and they were just here's the product here's three features of the product and here's this trending sound that was working and so PE people nowadays who haven't been on Tik Tok or haven't spent much time on Tik Tok they're like oh it's just a place for like the sounds

00:03:35 - 00:04:38

and the dances and that was very much the ethos and 2018 2019 2020 and that was a lot of the content in the feed so you could ride some of those Trends either as a personal Creator or a brand and do very well today you cannot do those things it's actually almost shifted out of there are Trends and kind of memes happening on Tik Tok but the bar for quality in terms of content that you're putting out and that doesn't mean high production value stuff it just means there has to be far more substance

00:04:07 - 00:05:05

or kind of interesting edits and interesting Cuts in a way that captures people's attention that is not just here's the sound here's my product you need more uh basically foundation and structure to how you're going to create and grab attention million percent hooks you know different sort of visual Cuts making sure you can get people to watch the body of your it's like direct response advertising exactly exactly um so has your growth stalled then on on Tik Tok on on Oklahoma smokes because

00:04:36 - 00:05:31

it's really interesting when I look at Brand profiles I think to your point you could have just posted something that was on Trend with the product and you're getting followers I don't think that's happening nearly as much as as more as it was to your point and it's like how do Brands stay relevant and create content that people actually want to follow correct when it's a video-based platform yeah so I think what's really important is that there are certain things that work for

00:05:03 - 00:06:04

us so for for example with Oklahoma smokes there is a Content style where we sample our product out in Washington Square Park and we're filming reactions that people have to the product that's a Content kind of pillar or style of content that consistently performs well and so you know when I say consistently performs well maybe 20,000 views to a million views on on some of these videos and for a handful of Brands I know there's a couple of hard Seltzer Brands and food brands that do this kind of on

00:05:34 - 00:06:37

the street sampling or kind of street style interviews that content style works really well it's not a Content style that will work well for every single brand um if you have a a product that's say like a um a slime or you make sunglasses that have really cool cool frames that are visually attention grabbing then you might benefit a lot from like really fun interesting product demos and so it's very dependent on the product or service that you have that the type of you have to kind of tailor

00:06:05 - 00:06:53

your your content strategy yeah it it makes sense so basically Brands need to be a lot more thoughtful about their content strategy and they need to make it more personal in some way yeah I think the kind of dub tailing with that I think the biggest mistake that Brands make is they say we just need someone who gets Tik Tock and they'll they'll always say this kind of like we just need this young person who's like we need a Tik tocker Can you hire someone who's like 22 for us to make content I'm

00:06:29 - 00:07:20

like that's not what we need for this brand you also risky too though what happens if someone matriculates out you basically you know lose the entire representation of what your brand was yeah yeah exactly I always thought about that when there was a huge push in Trend when people were like oh [ __ ] Tik Tock is a legitimate platform we need to be on it um let's just hire a Tik tocker there you know all these different agencies that would literally just install people I think for some Brands

00:06:55 - 00:07:58

that's been really successful like I just had Steve from mipop on the podcast who was like I brought you know someone in who really understood tiktock and could make our brand really relevant um ollipop obviously has a ton of organic traction already people want to see them on Tik Tok yeah um for Brands just starting out it's you have to be a little bit more inventive of course um and I think Tik Tok as a platform I'd love to get your take on kind of what's happening in the in the legislature and

00:07:27 - 00:08:24

uh legally and where you think that's going to go we can speculate a little bit but I also think it's going to be one of the most important platforms um it already is but in terms of gaining traction and then as they perfect this Commerce component with Tik Tock shop um I think Brands who don't figure out a strategy for it are are going to be you know losing a large chunk of Their audience there yes I mean Tik Tok shop is a wormhole that I'm happy to to let let's we can we can talk about it let's

00:07:55 - 00:08:57

talk about let's speculate real quick though yeah so you know there was this period um I first built my audience uh kind of like personal brand audience on Tik Tok first and I was not on Instagram until basically one year to date until last March but I've been on Tik Tok for like you know 20 months let's say um when that first wave of hey Tik tok's going to get banned started coming about I was like oh I got to diversify a little bit let me start getting on Instagram and and putting the content

00:08:26 - 00:09:29

out there so yeah so so I think one thing that it is doing which is Maybe a benefit to anyone who dubs himself a Creator or influencer anyone with an audience is hey this could be serious so how do I diversify my audience whether it's taking them to YouTube or Instagram or newsletters or so on um what is the what do I think is I think there's some really smart commentary on what the assessment of the situation is on Tik Tok itself I've seen some great videos about this um I mean there's two

00:08:57 - 00:10:12

decision points it you know has to then then now go to um the Senate and then see if it gets signed into signed into law so two points there and then the third point is will they sell in six month if both of those things happen I have no idea if all three of those things are going to happen if they divest this arm of the business and sell it to a us-based company um I can see you know I can understand certain reasons why the American government would not want Tik Tock you know in in the states um but I mean I I personally

00:09:34 - 00:10:30

love it um I love it too I've been I've been going deep on Tik Tok shop I think the I can understand the the the rational be between reciprocity and basically like saying hey we're not allowed to have any of our social networks in China like we need either reciprocity or we're going to have this sort of we make this sort of decision I'll speculate I think if it does go that far I think they would sell off the US business in some way and monetize that it just seems like yeah I think

00:10:03 - 00:11:03

there's this the flip side of that argument people say they will never divest this part of the business the American user base is only 10% of their Global audience they have over a billion users and to that it's like okay maybe from a percentage standpoint where a small percentage of the total Global user base but I would suspect we probably the heaviest in terms of like potential dollars for consumption on the platform I mean the American population just consumes a lot product the largest

00:10:33 - 00:11:34

consumer Market in the world I mean I was just at a prosper and you know Tik Tok shop was out in droves they're obviously subsidizing so many of the purchases right now yeah they want to onboard as many Brands as possible and and make that interaction from a Commerce perspective like really sticky y um and and I do think the way that they're integrating content uh and commerce is it's a lot more compelling than when Instagram launched jop um 100% I'm curious to hear your take on

00:11:04 - 00:12:09

on how you're thinking about strategies for Brands and where Tik Talk Shop makes sense um we've spoken on on this podcast about how you need to start with the fundamentals in organic yeah before you can even approach it it's not like Amazon in that respect yeah but we' love to hear you a point on that yeah I think the products that I see do really well on Tik Tock shop are ones that are relatively low consideration products um that are from a both a use case standpoint and a price point and a

00:11:36 - 00:12:31

price point standpoint as well as ones that are highly demonstrable so two examples that immediately come to mind there is this product there's this kind of selfie light that they're that they branded the Alex Earl light you know but it's like it's it's it's any one of these ring lights right but but some brand just got on there and they're like no ours is the Alex Earl light which is a really smart a really really smart strategy for selling a just a regular selfie light on Tik Tok shop so they

00:12:03 - 00:12:59

called the Alex Earl light and then every one of these creators has this 20% affiliate to sell that product and it is probably a $30 item so you get six bucks on every sale and to demonstrate it it's just like I've tried every one of these lights here's my bathroom light now here's the Alex earo light and the second they turn on the Alex light their face looks beautiful the shot looks beautiful it is so instantly demonstrable everyone of those videos that I see has like hundreds of

00:12:31 - 00:13:36

thousands of millions of views comments saves shares Etc and that is so perfect for that economy of Tik Tok viewer because there's a good chance that they might be a Creator and it's like want to be a Creator and they just buy it let me buy this 30 bucks um so I've seen that there's also this other product which is selling at this point tens of millions of dollars on Tik to shop uh called gurunanda oil and gurunanda oil it's a coconut oil mix that is used for um oil pulling so like through your teeth you

00:13:04 - 00:13:59

swashed swish it around for like 15 minutes one of the claims is that it whitens your teeth so I see all of these videos of these creators who are like this this was my teeth before like look how white they are now and then half of them they're like super white but it's like I don't know did you edit that or was it actually the product here um that product has sold over a million units through Tik Tock shop and has also propelled it to the number one bestseller on Amazon he household and

00:13:31 - 00:14:32

probably the number one Tik Tok shop uh item as well yeah I would I would think so I would think so that's really interesting so they're like and that's like these are like vanity products uh yes yes which is interesting BK beauty is another one um so I think there's there's vanity and beauty products that work really well I've seen supplements work really well too um it's kind of a question of uh also a question and this goes back to the organic content how what are the kind of compelling hooks

00:14:02 - 00:15:04

that you can use for this product so I've seen some kind of coffee supplements that like help boost guys testosterone let's say and and I'll see all of this content that are kind of Tik Tok shop ads for them and it's like you know people who you know like testosterone clinics like don't want you to know about this you know coffee brand and it's it's somewhat similar to what you might see in kind of hook testing on Facebook just done on Tik Tok organically um and it's it's kind of

00:14:32 - 00:15:37

working do you so I'm curious uh in terms of you know other people being able to manufacture and build up to that and like how they get the strategy really right so for um any of those brands that you just mentioned um their Tik Tok like tell me about if you if you can speak on it like is their organic strategy already dialed and then they're leveraging Affiliates and influencers are these ads coming directly from the brand themselves let's let's talk about that yes so in most of these instances

00:15:04 - 00:16:19

the organic is already dialed um in that they've had some presence on the platform for quite some time maybe have whatever 25 50 100,000 followers um however what I think they do a really good job with is either seeding the product in in a mass way to creators who are interested in creating content on shop um and and it's almost at that point their own organic owned and operated organic Channel matters much less because they have this universe of creators just who are incentivized right

00:15:43 - 00:16:40

it's like perfect beautiful incentive alignment I'm going to talk about this product that I got for free or even if I bought it but I'm going to make money off of it directly yeah no that's why affiliate programs on a Marketplace and if you have this like limited friction in terms of you can create content you're posting it directly on the platform and then there's Commerce in the platform and it's trackable one to one is I think really powerful for this particular platform especially because

00:16:11 - 00:17:27

now there are more creators than ever because of you know the the power that we have to just Reach people organically which Tik Tok really pioneered before Amazon uh before Instagram 100% um I want to talk about creators because um 33% of Instagram users users have over 10,000 followers um and 7% have over 50k and I think once you cross that threshold and that's I have it written down over here it's 98 million accounts so there's obviously a lot of uh company and and and uh other sort of pages that aren't

00:16:49 - 00:17:59

necessarily people but a large percentage of of those people are you know humans and they're just creating content like yourself um and they inevitably start thinking about monetization um and launching products or service are a natural like that's where your head goes I think that's a Natural Evolution and if you're not a massive influencer like an Amber Chamberlain or um Mr Beast you know you really have to put a lot of time into building a a product that actually has value and you know can actually sell and

00:17:25 - 00:18:36

I think that's a whole different domain for creators because in many instances uh they're not necessarily business people who understand operations and Logistics and Supply chains there's a whole economy of tech and services helping them do that but I want to know in your particular uh situation in case like how has your psychology changed as your uh own personal page really taken off um about monetization like what were what were the different inflection points um and then I have a couple of

00:18:00 - 00:18:51

other questions that I'll I'll hold but based on your post today actually regarding your audience how many of them aren't on Tik Tok which is so interesting yep um but let's just talk about your journey for a bit and and Creator monetization yeah I think Creator monetization is an interesting one because like you said a Creator gets to a certain size and they're like the easiest thing is like I'm going to make merch right I have 500,000 followers I'm G to make merch or I'm G to make XYZ cpg

00:18:24 - 00:19:28

product and you see creators at kind of these minor scales doing this and then you also see large celebrities doing this and you see a lot of like failed celebrity backed Brands and I think the Common Thread um between the person who's has a following of 200,000 people who's like I'm going to make and sell candles to them versus a huge celebrity who's like I'm going to make a new vodka brand is if it is not if there is not something if it's not something that your audience knows you for or finds and

00:18:57 - 00:19:47

and this is the kind of like conversation around authenticity if it's not authentic to who you are and what you talk about it doesn't make sense so if I look at my audience right now it's and this is just one piece of the problem the second piece of the problem is the actual operations of scaling and growing those businesses and so much more than just hey I'm going to post it on my Instagram feed um and hope that drives a ton of sales if I look at my audience right now you know the type of

00:19:22 - 00:20:17

content I create is really around branding and marketing and design for Consumer Brands and and products if I were to launch a like really nice hoodie I don't know maybe I'd sell 10 of them it just wouldn't align with the type of content you make yeah or I mean I wear hat every every day in every video I don't know people be like what does he know about hats outside of just wearing them you know as he done something interesting there and so it doesn't make sense but for me it's kind of like my

00:19:49 - 00:20:54

content is around ideas and information and so you know I one kind of so I had this agency so it leads to a lot of work for the agency it leads to a lot of one-on-one consultation calls um I put together a course on Tik Tok short form organic for Brands because that's also work that I do so it's like that's a product that I can sell that people are like of course like that makes so much sense I think for you and uh B2B influencers are becoming a huge thing a thing because of this uh services and

00:20:22 - 00:21:27

digital products make a lot of sense and you see these creators uh building serious businesses multi-million dollar businesses with one employee you know yeah and I think that's going to be a serious Trend that that continues um and that's where you see a lot of I think CEOs even like myself someone like EMT who's like I should there's a huge Advantage uh to building in public and creating meaningful content it's it's an asset yes um so I would I would I'm I'm curious like most of the Tik toks let's

00:20:54 - 00:22:10

F let's focus on like creators though not necessarily B2B influencers creators on TI to though where where do you see that inflection point because I've seen so many creators uh fail at introducing products and spending a ton of work on creating the apparel line or whatever it is um what's your advice really so I think that you know a Creator who is launching so so so one it's kind of can I launch a product that is that fits so well with what my audience knows me for so an example of this is um one of the

00:21:32 - 00:22:30

founders of Bloom it's a husband wife couple but Mari is one of the founders of Bloom she was on Instagram prior she has an audience of about a million people she's been been on Instagram and she's documented since day one her weight loss Journey going from like 250 PBS to like 115 pounds or something and all of her health issues and complications and she was that was her profile on Instagram and so when she launched Bloom it was this like detox gut BL bloing like you know supplement

00:22:01 - 00:23:00

this powdered green supplement that helps address all of these issues that was such a natural fit for what her audience look to her for you know health and wellness advice from someone who I've seen in public make this transition themselves and it's like hey this is a kind of culmination of everything that I was doing so there's a product that's a great fit for that Creator now they also had it set up right in such a way where you know the they knew from a oper operational standpoint everything else

00:22:30 - 00:23:33

that they needed to do from a retail standpoint retail standpoint from a paid marketing standpoint from a supply chain standpoint and got the right people involved to actually find success with that business um so so one is kind of really making sure that you know that your audience knows you for something you can have an audience of 10 million people but if your content style is just reaction Clips to viral videos your audience actually has no idea who you are or why it would make sense for you

00:23:02 - 00:23:47

to launch a certain product but sometimes those creators say well I have 10 you know 10 million followers get a couple million views on each one um so I'm going to launch a candle brand or a coffee brand and I'm going to open up my videos with that and it's like why is anyone going to buy coffee from you you know just because cheap advertisement basically yeah it it's a cheap ad and it it's G to dilute your core content because you're going to keep plugging that and people aren't really going to

00:23:24 - 00:24:20

buy the product and um yeah that's a really interesting point so basically you've built bu up a skill for you know having an audience or getting attention but if you don't diversify in some way it's going to be hard to launch a product so you kind of need to you need to think about both together you have to think about both I mean here's here's a great one are you familiar with something Navy so something Navy this big Creator like Millennial mother Creator Ariel charos she had you know

00:23:53 - 00:24:47

couple million followers on on Instagram my wife was like a huge fan of of her content lived in New York City just like Sheik lifestyle you know just like a great lifestyle content creator she launched a brand and she was like very into fashion and like looked really good all of the time and built this kind of following around this and then launched this brand called something Navy kind of eponymous brand um called something Navy in its first year kind of like grew to like 24 million bucks that's crazy wait

00:24:20 - 00:25:08

how big was your follower crazy I think like she had a couple million followers but then what you'd find is in all of her she was making these pieces and then the first thing that my wife would say is like the fit isn't right or like that doesn't look right it's like not up to par with all the stuff that she wears and then in all of her content she's never wearing her own clothes she's wearing the stuff that's like a $3,000 blouse and a $2,000 thing and she's like

00:24:44 - 00:25:27

never it's there wasn't an authent it it was an authentic fit in creating fashion line but it's like executed poorly well it sounds like the product was executed poorly but like it would be something that maybe fit into the style of content she had but yeah why people bought it but it's almost like she didn't believe in it enough to even support it herself and then it went to nothing they were trying to sell it for a dollar you know and it's like they haven't that's okay

00:25:06 - 00:25:56

that's exactly what I'm talking about where like you private label something this a great example you're like private label something and you're just like we've worked with a number of different creators who are like you know we've worked with top of the top like Dwayne Johnson top C top you know aist celebrities and then we've worked with creators who are in this Niche where they have they have audience they have engagement but then they'll they make the step to moving towards products and

00:25:31 - 00:26:26

they'll private label something because it's easier and it just doesn't fit people don't give a [ __ ] basically people don't give a [ __ ] and people can tell they can tell people tell when things are dialed like phoned in now something like summer Friday is very well executed and I think well this is this is what you know I'm I'm just thinking through this talking to you for launching an actual product I think e despite this economy of all these different tools to help people launch

00:25:58 - 00:26:56

things it's hard to develop something really good you got to put a lot of time and attention you have to become an entrepreneur to build a product yeah um and I think in that in that respect people like you who are creating content about you know services or you know can I have some sort of digital product around courses like you can scale a lot faster so I think that's that's interesting yeah you you know the the best kind of I saw this comment somewhere out there uh someone was talking about so the demos have a

00:26:27 - 00:27:24

footwear brand some's like what people are just kind like is this foot I don't know what the numers are on theot but I can't imagine it's like ripping astronomically and um I remember watching this video where someone was talking about like Hey we're on like the downfall of the demilios and one of the most liked comments in that that was a viral video one of the most liked comments had like 50,000 likes was like what they should have done is actually started a dance studio and that

00:26:56 - 00:27:43

would have had lines around the block forever because it's so like that's what they got popular for that's what they were good at that's what they knew and it's like okay if I'm you know if the if the comp to me is like okay I'm sharing ideas let me put together a course them is like hey they're dancing they're good at dancing okay what if you had a dance studio or class or something for you this would be a really interesting idea in terms of what sort of venture Studio

00:27:19 - 00:28:19

would a make a lot of money and be really valuable to these creators is figuring out like what's most authentic to them what works for them yeah yeah yeah like that idea would be you know they would have 100% capacity line out the door like you're talking about all the time um and that would just be one business unit for them yeah right yeah um it's dangerous don't give me ideas of stuff to do plates full right now but I like that right I like that a lot um so okay I was checking out your Instagram I

00:27:48 - 00:28:55

saw 66% of your followers or whoever responded to that they're not on Tik Tok yeah so okay someone's lying somewhere okay it's so Tik Tok says half of Americans are on Tik Tok they spend 56 minutes a day on it most used app you know mo most most used app and so I put up this poll on my Instagram and I say quick quick check like how many of you how often do you use Tik Tok and it was like never few times a month few times a week and then daily and 66% said never and then I got a lot of DMS saying well

00:28:22 - 00:29:28

your audience on Instagram is older so there's like a few things so so then misconception yeah yeah there's a couple misconceptions because now also Tik Tok says hey our largest demographic is actually older the demographics were identical the demographics were identical so I shared my Tik Tok stats and my Instagram stats and the demographics were exactly identical um so something somewhere is like incorrect um so your demo I feel like it's it's like I mean actually just just tell me what is your demo so from a um

00:28:56 - 00:29:52

from kind of like audience stats standpoint or who is the type of person that follow person that's following you I feel like they're educated and yeah so so so yes yes definitely so it's interesting they kind of fall in two buckets so one there is this audience of people who work in marketing or branding or operate a brand themselves that is actually not the majority of follower that I have the majority of follower I have is like people who just work in different things but have now found

00:29:24 - 00:30:18

these smaller nuances of marketing and branding quite interesting to them and so they're like just follow along because like interesting to know um you know like sometimes I'll get this message I got this message the other day from uh one of my one of my buddies who's a skin cancer surgeon and we were in a personal Instagram like post together and one of his friends from med school was like dude how do you know that guy Ashwin and he was like oh he's like a close he's a close friend of mine

00:29:51 - 00:30:35

and he was like that's one of my favorite Instagram followers and this guy is like skin cancer surgeon somewhere in like Ohio you know it's like why does he follow me you know and he he just found like there was a kernel of something that he sunk his teeth into and for whatever reason I think that's what you're doing is beautiful and that's one of the beautiful parts of the internet is like you can find things that really interest you and you know at least your content's educating you know

00:30:13 - 00:31:17

what I'm saying yeah thank you worst things to follow yeah yeah yeah um okay so that's that's interesting and then the other half um not the people who are like oh good to know like are they in uh like in the creative world yeah very much in the creative World um so a lot of people who work in marketing and a lot of people who operate Brands a kind of maybe not on the marketing side but they're an operator of brand does 100 Grand a year all the way up to 500 million bucks a year and um so your

00:30:44 - 00:31:47

agency what sort of what sort of services you told me briefly but yes so we really work with consumer brands at the early stage going from idea to launch so they'll come to us say hey we are thinking about launching a new like super high clean protein supplement um but we need help with everything from like understanding the the landscape understanding what the positioning opportunity is then how do we translate that into a brand that's going to resonate packaging design digital design development copyrighting and you guys

00:31:15 - 00:32:27

are doing um obviously all the brand strategy but visual identity work as well correct packaging website design correct okay that's incredible um I am curious to know just some of the projects you're working on right now yeah so right now we are working on a new non-alcoholic sparkling wine so that is a super interesting category like a Gia type a lot of growth um yeah so so there's this also this there's this category of wine proxies and then there's categories of wines that are

00:31:52 - 00:32:58

have been dealcoholized so it's in the deal it's in the deal category um so we're working on a product there and then we're also working on a supplement a drinkable supplement brand so I think like kind of Five Hour Energy Shot but it's built with made with supplements is your goal with the agency are you trying to um are you trying to scale the business or you're trying to expand tell us a little bit more about like uh agency life yeah so myself and my partners kind of fell into the agency

00:32:25 - 00:33:15

everyone man you know and then you do it and you you have the idea we had this idea we were in the world of building consumer software before and uh we started this agency because we had worked on a couple of consumer software Brands we'd raise some money for them like built them to a certain scale we're like we're just like this good like design engineering product team like let's keep building stuff on the side as we like encounter problems and to pay the bills we'll like take on contract

00:32:50 - 00:33:48

work and so we initially started with working in the consumer software space or like B2B software space um designing UI and developing front-end experiences and then maybe in 2018 2019 one of our buddies came to us and he's like hey I'm launching this candle brand I need help with branding Shopify design development Etc do you guys do that like not really but we're good enough at design will help you figure it out so we figure it out with him we do a good job there that brand was very successful in

00:33:19 - 00:34:17

their first year and then he was really plugged into the space so a lot more work came and as I'm sure you know it's like work begets work right you do good job for one client they refer you out refer you out so then we kind of shifted into the space of kind of brand identity working with these consumer Brands but I think there is we I really like playing in the space I don't want to be in a position where I'm not doing the work and I'm managing the growth of an agency yeah um and so that's just a kind of

00:33:48 - 00:34:41

personal like we kind of like the idea of remaining kind of like very Boutique working on specific projects um but yeah that's kind of it for us that's the like that's a really important decision I think anyone starting an agency like I think you need to have that intention going into it because if you're like hey I want to be in the man managerial spot where I'm like scaling and you know you're adding headcount which is the position I'm in right now you need to develop systems and processes and like

00:34:14 - 00:35:23

figure out how to productize whatever you're going to offer yes and then it's just a question of you know how quickly you can generate demand and and scale and make sure you do good work yeah you know you're at a point I think where you can affect a lot of change on on the on the clent clients that that you work with develop more meaningful relationships and yeah I think so I think so much of the work around positioning positioning a new brand coming up with the Creative Vision for the brand it's a little bit hard to

00:34:48 - 00:35:45

scale I think um where you know some creative work it's almost hard to productize a little bit um where you know having conversation with Cent recently and he was like what does the process look like for arriving in a name for a brand and I'm like it's a lot of work and then it's it just comes to us one day you know when we're just walking around during the shower like I can't Pro I can't train someone I can say here the what I think the parameters of a good name look like and here's a peak

00:35:17 - 00:36:22

into how I arrive at it but I don't know how I train someone to do that and and and kind of do that well so um I think there are some types of services that are maybe a little bit hard to scale um but it's it's question certain things that are super new on so at dark room we have like uh maybe like 20 to 30 different services that we offer every single one like we've gotten to a place because we used to not necessarily spend so much time on like scoping and like training and like that is literally your

00:35:49 - 00:36:50

secret sauce as an agency so now the 20 I mean for for the type of agency we are but like these 20 Scopes they all have like really specific deliverables processes they're linked to trainings for each of the resources that are on them yep um that's what's that's what's allowing us to grow but there are certain subsets of of services usually mostly strategy that are impossible to like Divine deliverables for we have a growth strategy service that's like ongoing it's more strategic leadership

00:36:20 - 00:37:11

support for growth teams Y and it's like you just it's kind of like you need this uh I don't know what to say I'm kind of a part of the team right now and I'm going to help you grow this business but I can't bullet it for you yeah one of our one of our clients I was actually having this conversation yesterday with uh one of our directors of growth who's a brilliant individual like one of the one of the smartest Minds in the space um we're talking about one of our our clients they do

00:36:45 - 00:37:46

baby food and they like really would benefit and there's she only has like certain time allocation on the account and we're like trying to tell them we you know trying to tell them like hey this is something need like and these are all the reasons why but like it's totally different than us managing your retention marketing or your ad program or you're getting these creative deliverables every month um and I think when you're a Founder like yourself um and you have a reputation right in your

00:37:16 - 00:38:10

case you have a following like people know your brain because of the content you have a much easier time selling those Services which is why because they trust you right and I think that's why so many uh so many so many Founders and so many people in the B2B Ser in in the services space are trying they're they're realizing he this is really important and I think that's why your message is really hitting home right now yeah I think it's I I mean I say this all the time like it changed the

00:37:43 - 00:38:41

trajectory of the agency change the trajectory of the how we even have conversations like give us a give us a sense of like what that looks like like how has it changed lead and lead lead gen for you guys so in prior to creating content there was always this question of like where does the next project come from the type of work that we do it's not really kind of long-term retainer based work we're getting the brands to launch and then once they need to start running paid they might come to you guys

00:38:12 - 00:39:00

or like any number of businesses that do a lot of paid work and maybe some ongoing like cro work and testing and here and there they'll come back and we'll do these kind of one-off projects but it's really like building the foundation to launch this brand so you're kind of playing this game of kind of new customer acquisition so you're hoping hey we well we'll put this work out there we'll talk about it and then maybe get some referrals or our last client was super happy with us let's

00:38:36 - 00:39:39

just like Ping his Network or like intermittently like send updates to our you know 50 person email list saying hey if where we have availability for projects surprising by the way why haven't you explored newsletter or as a channel so I have a newsletter that is just around Tik Tok organic content for Brands okay um and I just have a kind of newsletter flow for that that kind of leads into the course so you're just you're a lot more comfortable creating Tik Tok style the Tik Tok Style videos

00:39:07 - 00:40:02

like some people like writing you know what I mean everyone I think has a different medium one of my really good friends his uh fiance now actually uh her name is Kate she's the runner girl on Tik Tok like in New York City yes yes yes of course yeah and people were just be you're the runner girl like that's how she's in New York um but I it just didn't happen um before Tik Tok there's like three runners New York Runners that I just know and like Kate's Kate's one

00:39:34 - 00:40:33

of them yeah um it's funny so okay most of your content centers around like rebrands like packaging um when Brands get things right when they get things wrong um I think a lot of early stage businesses it's so important to obviously like get the Aesthetics of your of your product right and I think there's a lot more money on the line with rebrands actually for or you know I was just looking at your tropic Tropicana example um and there's a whole you know I think data science around

00:40:04 - 00:41:03

that talk talk us through like I'm curious if you have a thought about like what makes a brand like good like what do you look for do you have any Frameworks that you kind of go back to um when you're in the creative process yeah that's a I know it's a very broad question it's a it's a loaded question so I think we we use this term like brand Loosely and I think for people who are we not designing or in like The Branding agency world most people when they say brand like we're referring to

00:40:34 - 00:41:24

the packaging we're referring to like packaging design you know the logo it's like I love the The Branding of it and it's like I just love the box of it you know I love like last crumbs box um and so so I'll often just like indulge that because I don't want to like create this unnecessary like distinction if the average person says hey that's like the Pepsi can is like the Pepsi brand I'm like okay that's how I'm going to talk about it right Pepsi rebranded here's

00:40:59 - 00:41:58

like the new look but I think there's so much more to an entire brand right all of their communication touch points across social across advertising across activations and so on and like you you know you understand this that it's like this kind of encompassing encompassing piece is is the brand so there's so I guess my question is there's things that I think that are good like good packaging tenants or like a good framework for like good packaging and then I think there's a bigger question

00:41:28 - 00:42:33

around like is there a 10in or framework for a good brand and so yeah I guess which one which one should we talk about let's talk about packaging I think because most of the recent videos that I've seen you develop you focus a lot on visual identity and the things that make people remember your brand let's start there yeah so I think the most important question that a brand needs to ask when they are going to when they're designing their packaging and kind of Designing their their brand and aesthetic is what

00:42:00 - 00:42:54

is their distribution Channel and so for some Brands the distribution Channel May right off the bat be retail maybe you sell alcohol product yeah and um it's going to be retail you're not really going to build this like dtoc business like very painful to even try to figure out how to do that so okay we're going to be selling in retail okay what kind of stores are you going to sell in are you going to sell initially in specialty or are you going to sell like Mass Market Total Wines and Spirits BevMo Etc

00:42:27 - 00:43:39

just making some of these distinctions of what you think is possible at first is important so that you can understand where your product sits on shelves because for a lot of the consumer your point of Discovery is going to be on shelves so how are we standing out relative to the competition in that space on the Shelf um but also what are we how clearly are we communicating to people about what our product is about and so one of the kind of gripes that I've had in the past is you know like the aesthetic of all of the dtoc brands

00:43:03 - 00:43:57

like from the era of like 20a yeah it's a kind of bland era right it's like super like minimalist packaging just like has this fun like font on it like says something but it's like I look at it I'm like what I was like what's in there I have no idea what's in there and and that's okay to the degree in which you build the entire business just D to see because you do all the communication elsewhere you do the communication on the website on the Facebook on the Instagram ad on the social channels so

00:43:30 - 00:44:24

so the packaging itself doesn't have to communicate a whole lot but you see this happening for a lot of these brands that were like d Toc first built that kind of packaging then get into retail they're like oh [ __ ] it's not retail ready because we're not communicating anything about our product to The Shopper that's like scanning a 100 things and like making these split-second decisions so you see packaging like these packaging changes have to change pretty dramatically to even like find some

00:43:57 - 00:44:53

success on the retail side such a good point so starting with distribution and where you're going to sell I think is like the foundational question of like what's important then it's the question of like information hierarchy then we have these other pieces of like What feelings are we Comm are we like premium are we Mass Market are we this are we that um what kind of call outs do we want to have it's a really good point uh just on the distribution side because I witnessed it firsthand when I think when

00:44:25 - 00:45:27

direct consumer was so in Vogue because of like the perceived benefits of you know cutting out the middleman and the and the retailers um how many cpg Brands where like in hindsight it's so obvious that the product was going to be bought you know in the store like beverage is a great example Y and people tried to optimize for D Toc and the unit economics just didn't end up working they needed to kind of Traverse such an important point that I think is also forgotten is you have to consider what

00:44:56 - 00:46:09

existing consumer conser behaviors are for that product category and if it's something if it's a type of product that is maybe an impulse purchase and you just need it the it's either an impulse purchase or convenience matters so much and you need it kind of same day um here's a great example is next day like uh next the morning after pill like next day contraceptive device right that'll never be really like a dtoc business cuz like oh [ __ ] like I I need this thing I need this thing right now so it's like

00:45:32 - 00:46:27

you have to be in every single CVS right and it's like you can't fight that like core consumer need and consumer behavior for purchasing that type of product um and and there are categories where that is true and there's categories where it's a little bit more flexible and I think just putting some critical thought into that so you don't just fall into the thinking that like oh D Toc is hot I can go build D Toc what what sort of brands are you looking at right now and like looking up to and or or are seeing

00:46:00 - 00:46:56

that are coming up and you're like they're they're crushing it you know it's I mean one brand I was just having conversation about like oats overnight is crushing it they are crushing it and they're actually doing a really interesting job building a d predominantly D Toc business um they have this Facebook group with like 200,000 people in it just talking about like oats recipes and like health and wellness and like I I just don't get it right but it's like it's happening in

00:46:27 - 00:47:38

Spade they built a super strong bus and what I like about that actually is the name is obviously so stupidly simple packaging is not anything special it's not like this hot brand that you'd see at like popup grosser or like any of these like aesthetic spaces it's not like an aesthetic brand but it's like a really good business and there is this like category of I think these brands that hit maybe like more Mass market and kind of like don't enter the scenes of like New York and la like arow like

00:47:03 - 00:47:44

people who are like super into like cpg and D Toc and branding and all that stuff that are just like really robust great businesses and then on the flip side you see ones that are like super hyped then in like 3 years they're declaring bankruptcy [Music] [ __ ]