Hey everyone! Scott Austin here. And in our episode this week, I'm going to be talking to a brand owner. I reached out to a bunch of Shopify stores and said, hey, I would just love to hear from you what apps are really helping you build your business. And, Skip from Catholic's body responded, so we're here today to talk to Skip.

Welcome, Skip.

Thanks for having me, Scott. Happy to be here.

Why don't you tell us a little bit about your brand, what it is that you sell?

Sure. So, we're a personal care brand. We sell primarily natural deodorant. So, we actually created a natural deodorant that we actually are getting our patent. This Tuesday is our actual official patent day, which happens to be National Coffee Day, which is pretty amazing because apparently I invented a new way to make deodorant while on a mission to try and figure out how to keep my triplet sons from having horrible body odor when they were teens.

So I got tired of all the products out there and nothing worked. I'd pick up my kids from school. They wouldn't smell great. So, I put a bunch of things together. I was put in for my beard care products, wasn't selling anything. Put coffee oil in it, because that's what's in my beard. To keep it nice and soft.

My one kid has sensitive skin. Did that? Had no idea what I was doing. All of a sudden, all odor was gone. I was a gym owner at the time, so I was doing workouts all the time. I tested the product. It was just working great. Had my kids try. It worked great.

So, I made one video on TikTok and coincidentally they had just started, a beta program for TikTok shop. That video went viral overnight, and, I had 50 sticks made just for fun, thinking maybe somebody might have the same problem that went to a million views overnight. And that Shopify ding didn't never stopped. It was like ding ding ding ding ding. So I sales coming in through Shopify sales coming in through TikTok shop. And it basically made a business where I never planned on having a business.

So we sell a full line of personal care products around that coffee oil now patented technology. The coffee oil has antimicrobials naturally, so it kills the bacteria, which is why people don't smell when they wear it. So, that product has continued to not just be one viral video, but turned into a business that I had to quickly learn how to be an e-commerce business owner.

Love all of that, right? Because you have so much going on there. I have like a dozen questions. And, I think it's going to say something about me on the first question that I ask and that is coffee for deodorant. Like, I assume you're not a scientist, I assume you're not a chemical expert or whatever. Like how did you figure out that this worked for that scenario? And then how did you prove that? How did you test that out?

I love that question. I got a solid seeing chemistry and I was really proud of it. So I am so far from a chemist. I could teach you how to do a clean and jerk. I could teach you how to do a lot of different things with a barbell. But this definitely wasn't my forte.

So, I had been making beard care products for my own. I had researched because nothing felt good in a beard when I first grew it in. I wasn't growing in great. The skin was flaky, so I did a bunch of research about how women were using coffee and coffee oil in cosmetics for years for skincare. So I said, well, maybe if I learn how to infuse coffee into an oil, maybe I could put in my beard. It will help with that. So did. And I was doing that for a bunch of years.

So when I went to make this product, I had no idea what it would do. And my wife actually was the one who suggested said, well, if you're going to try making a deodorant, you should put your coffee oil in it. That's kind of your thing.

Well, the only way I even knew this worked was when that one video went viral, as I had a bunch of nurses commenting on the video saying, hey, look, when we are in the hospital and we have a room that smells and we can't get the odor out, and it's just horrible. We put coffee grounds in that room. We think you might have invented something here. And I'm like, now, you know, that's kind of crazy.

So then I had law enforcement come in and they said, somebody's in the back of the cruiser has a bad time back there. They put coffee in there to get rid of the odor. Nothing gets it out but coffee. So then it started me thinking, and I was like, okay, I need to figure out what's happening here.

So early on, I hired a patent attorney. They did a full research, their team came back, said, there's nothing like this. And he was a chemist as well, so he wanted to start having a lab test. It so took a year and more money than I'd like to admit to try and get the testing to prove our claims. And it came back that coffee is flavonoids and it's an it's a natural antimicrobial. So basically by putting it in a deodorant, it attacks the bacteria, kills the bacteria, and you don't smell like coffee, but you don't smell like body odor either.

So I didn't know any of this. This was a big old accident, Scott. I never planned on selling this. I never planned on having a e-com business. I never planned on any of it. It literally was just frustration for what was on the market. Most products were full of chemicals and garbage and and naturals just didn't work for an active family. So it literally was like the frustrated dad scenario where I was like, I'm done, you know? And it pushed me to try and find something. I honestly, I just say I got really lucky.

Well, I'm sure there's some luck involved, but there's also that persistence on your side. Right? You know, you kept digging and doing the research, you know? So, yeah, you're being humble and all, but the luck part or no truth to that. But you also did the work right, which is just awesome.

Which leads me to the next thing. Like I said, I it probably tells you a lot about my personality questions that I'm going down in your whole story. I'm looking at your website right now and I'm on the, coffee shop, coffee, interviews, natural gear, real coffee sentences for. All right. So you talk a little bit about the authentic coffee set. Smells like walking to your favorite coffee shop. But what you don't do here is you don't talk about the scientific research you had done. And I'm wondering why you chose to do that, or is that coming up soon, that kind of thing?

Yeah, it's it's tough because early on we leaned a lot into the science side. And what really we found through marketing was that, people didn't care so much about how it worked. They cared that it worked. So the consumer confidence really came from the reviews and the repeat buyers, which it really kind of on social media, developed its own kind of cult following.

And when I go live, I talk a little bit more about the science, but you can watch your your viewer rate kind of drop when you get a little too sciencey. Right. So I have real time analytics. It's like, I would love to have this if I was talking to you face to face and you start to get bored because I could see that dropping. And that's basically what's happening when you start talking too much about the science.

So what I do is I try and just keep it nice and simple. I try and keep it at a base level. When it comes down to a deodorants kind of a personal thing because it affects relationships, right? Or if it affects your work, it affects if your clothes are getting stained, if you're sure, if your, skin is getting irritated. So people kind of like just want to know, is it safe? You know, am I is it going to be gentle for my skin? Can I just put it on once a day? They don't really care too much about the science.

The coffee thing early on. Also, a lot of people, I actually didn't want to make that deodorant. The one that you're talking about, because I said when I made this, everybody's going to think these deodorants all smell like coffee, so I'm not going to make a coffee scented one because that's backing up that claim. And then early on after this took off, people are like, you have to have at least one of these smell like coffee.

So it's really been after three years now of just listening to the market and seeing what they want and trying to keep it simple, but keep it very clear, like, why is why is coffee in a two year term? First of all, it sounds super weird. So right away it's a good hook, but it's also like you have to explain yourself a little bit, but over explanation tends to turn people off.

That totally makes sense, right? And I've been focused a lot on a oh know I optimization, whatever they call it these days. One of the things we're seeing is you know, if you have in your structured data the technical back up to your claims, it gives you more street cred to the AI engines. So maybe your consumers don't need that, but it's going to help your AI engines to say, hey, this is scientifically proven to work by blah blah blah citation just like you have.

I'm looking at the structured data on your product page right now, and you have an aggregate rating, right? It shows the review count and the rating review in the structured data. So I knows that if you also had you know, scientific study information in there, the AI would know that it would be able to say, hey, this one isn't some crackpot concoction like some of them actually probably are. This one actually has some scientific backing behind its claims for smelling kind of thing, right?

Yeah. And it's a great point. And as soon as this it's also been a dance with this patent because it's been three years of getting this patent. And like I said, a year of testing, which most labs in the country could not test for a coffee oil, we were actually coming up their machines, and then they were making us pay to have their machines cleaned. Because this has this isn't a typical thing.

So, you know, it's been a dance because you want to hold some of that back. You don't want to be too transparent on all of it until that patent is complete. And then once that is complete on the 29th, man, I'm we're having a patent party. We are having a patent sale. We are like, we are hitting. We actually have a whole marketing campaign to coincide with National Coffee Day, because that's where I want to sing it from the rooftops. Once that protection is in place, and then I can really nerd out about the side of it that I find the most interesting is that coffee that I love drinking every day is actually making thousands of people not smell, which is kind of mind blowing to me still.

I'm a big believer in 2026 that e-comm brands need to be very content heavy. And I see in your TikTok, your YouTube and your Instagram, you're definitely making videos. You're definitely making content. You're totally putting yourself. Your family out there loves you and all that. What do you think your differentiators are with your brand? And some of that might be content, some might be the story, some of it might be the science. Right? What what do you think is your differentiators that resonate with your customers?

And for me, I and you know, I don't I actually have grown after doing this for this long to not like the word authentic because I feel like, why do you have to tell somebody to be authentic? But it's just I show my losses, I show the struggle because the journey of this is it's fascinating to me.

And apparently, like when I test different pieces of content, it's the real content that performs the best for us. It is showing how hard this is. It's showing my machines catching on fire at 1:00 in the morning and me saying, well, now I'm down another machine. All of those struggles.

What it does is it changes it. Instead of having a customer, which I don't even use that word. I have a community. This community is really turned into a lifestyle brand because everybody's along for the ride. They have a seat at the table. When I go live, they talk to me about what sense they want, what products they want. They talk to me about my sales. They talk to me about my wins. They celebrate with me. They're not sitting on the sidelines. They're in the bus and we're all doing this together.

So for me, what performs best is showing how I have been completely incompetent and in the beginning stages. And I've grown some competence throughout the way, but I'm still learning as I go. And that really that connection.

I mean, one of the craziest thing I heard early on is when we had, an account manager at TikTok. They were like, you know, you have one of the most viral deodorants on all of TikTok, which blew my mind. I'm like, that can't be. There's huge brands on here. But when we talked about it and we looked at it more, it was those brands weren't reaching people. What they were doing is they were advertising to people where I was just trying to tell people about what happened for my family, and that connected in a different way.

And they couldn't find that lane, because that lane is not a necessarily a big legacy brand lane. It's something where it's just pure is clean, it's honest. And, that connection is where we've stayed now this whole time. And I love that there. You know, I mean, I get comfortable there. I have no problem showing my my losses. I probably weigh more than wins. And, my community super supportive. They love it.

I fully believe that you have to learn from your own mistakes, right? You just can't watch a YouTube video and know how to do something properly. And you know, it's it's it takes a confident person to admit when they're wrong. You know, I'd like to think I'm covered because I admit I'm wrong every day. Because I'm wrong every day. Right kind of thing. And and people love that.

Like you're saying, you know, there's a lot of overused words, but sometimes those overused words actually apply in some situations, like authentic, right? The one thing I want to caution the audience here is you're doing a great job building a brand, being authentic with your your story, your family's story. But there's something that happened before you could do all of that, right? And that is you had a great product, right?

What I see a lot of brands and this is not you, right? I'm talking to the audience here. I've seen so many brands go, all right, how do I build an authentic style like a get a great product first? That's your own product, right. Most people don't do that. Table stakes, like any brand that's gonna be successful in this has to make their own fabulous product. And it doesn't have either own. But I'm going to say 90% of the time it's going to have to be and you know, so don't just think if you you have a sparkling personality and can be authentic and admit your mistakes, you can build a brand.

You need the product first, and then the differentiator becomes the authentic story and the connection that you're making. Right. Because I, I started off with what's your biggest differentiator? You started off with the connection my audience has with the brand, which is beautiful, but that's based on the product working. Right?

Definitely. And you know, it's funny you say that, Scott, because I've seen when I started in 23 with this, there were a lot of other small brands doing similar things. And, you know, I was talking to my wife about this the other day and they're gone. They're not around anymore. And what happened was they they did exactly what you're talking about. They had a lot of viral success from maybe their personality or a video. People bought the product, but then the product wasn't strong enough to bring them back and make them now a lifetime customer. You know, that LTV was a shop, you know, a short drop, and now there's I can't even tell you where they are. They've gone out or they've changed.

So it is about the product when it comes down to it. You know, when I look at social commerce, live social commerce, which I'm a huge believer in, like with TikTok, Shop Live and things like that, it all comes down to there's an entertaining element, right? People do want to be entertained. They don't want to be sold to, they want to be entertained. And sometimes that's just giving them a look inside your life of what's going on.

But then if that product is not strong enough to back up that entertainment or that attention, for lack of a better word, then they're going to fall short. They're either going to leave, they're going to scroll past, or they'll buy once and then I'll give you a bad review. And now you got to deal with a bunch of bad reviews for us.

We thought, I mean, we are a 4.9 rated star shop on TikTok, which is crazy to me. That's all because the community is so strong of like pumping up those reviews, giving us feedback. If I didn't have that, we wouldn't have made it to three years. This would have been a one year venture. I'm sure we would have been done. And it's it's always about the product and it's always about refining the product, too. For three years we've made the product better because of the feedback we receive in real time on these social channels.

Yep, yep, that makes a lot of sense. Now, what do you think is like your big challenge for the next, you know, year or so? What's the but your focus for your brand right now?

It's really scaling right now. So we've come to a point where we're now looking at retail about how to get into retail. We actually just, we're we're fortunate enough to be approved for a state grant that's going to help us with exporting where the state is going to act to facilitate us into, now an exporting arm of this business, which is super exciting and completely intimidating because I know nothing about exporting, but the states providing a lot of resources to help us with that, and then just continuing to take this growth and try and get it in front of more and more people.

Retail like we've never even explored, really, because we've been so strong on the e-commerce side. We really haven't had to. But really, that next level requires a retail, you know, footprint. So those are the two big things.

And we're also at a stage where, you know, the bigger the business gets, the more product needs to be on the shelf, the bigger my machines get for manufacturing. Manufacturing in-house in a state like new Jersey is a challenge every single day, and is something I feel strongly about because I was born here, you know, lived here my whole life, and I really want to provide jobs and manufacturing in the state. You know, we struggle every day with sourcing machines, you know, stock inventory or changing all of our containers soon. So every single day is a struggle. But to get to that next level, to answer your question is really looking at retail export and just getting the product in front of more and more people.

So you have the horrible challenge of, you're so successful, you have to just keep selling more.

It is, it is. Yeah. I'm not complaining in any way. I'm a fortunate guy. But, you know, more than most, you know, when you have a product, it costs a lot because the more product I make, the more product sits on the shelf. The more this system on the shelf, the more revenue is tied up in inventory. And then the larger our machines, the bigger that investment is. No one knows machines break, then it's another big investment.

We are definitely at that point where funding and getting grants and things like that will help to bring us to that next level. We also don't want to lose any equity in the business either. So we really run, you know, people say bootstrapped. I say we're more like flip flopped over here because we try and run as, as cheap as possible on every possible level. And that's where I lean into things like I as opposed to like hiring people just to hire. I really use a lot of resources so we can run as clean as possible.

Yeah, that totally makes sense. And I'm glad you brought up grants again, because you brought up a minute ago, and I wanted to follow up on that. And that's because, you know, once again, for the audience listening, I think 3 or 4 of my clients this year have told me about the grant they got from their state, also. Right. States love investing in small businesses in their state. I don't know how that grant stuff works, but I'm going to ask that in a second. But, you know, go figure out what grants are available in your state and start applying because people do get them and it does help their business. What how did you find out about your grant and what's it for?

I, I my I runs my business. I say I work for my eye because literally every day it has a funding report where it's scouring everywhere, whether it's a state grant or a corporate grant, it is scouring every single day and then presenting me with opportunities. And then I sit, I look at it, and then it actually takes me through the application to try and stack it in my favor.

This grant came directly from. I told me to apply for it. I said, this is an export grant. I'm not ready for it. It knows about my business well enough. It said, yes, you are. You can do this and the state is going to help you do that.

I actually just came from an event yesterday, which was, 40 different, representatives from the state that all had different services provided by the state of New Jersey to small businesses. And my wife and I went and we attended it. And, you know, there's so much money out there. The small businesses don't understand. It's just sitting there. But they're not going to advertise this money. You really have to be assertive. You have to be looking for you have to either use AI or spend the time to find the resources.

But it's exactly what you said. The state wants to see small business grow in their state. You know, I asked, the woman that was helping us out with our grant, and I said, why would the state want to help me this much? And she said, look, if we have a small business who's manufacturing in the state of new Jersey, now, you're exporting to another country. This is a huge feather in our cap. The state's happy. We're happy. You're happy.

So those situations work for everyone. It's just you have to you have to start looking. So many people I know that are in ecom and they're just sitting on their hands saying, I can, I have no money. And I'm like, look, there's money out there. You just have to look for it.

You're a little more altruistic. I would have said, you know, the reason the states cares tax base, right?

There's that too.

So it's all Win-Win in that space.

And that's what it comes down to, right?

So let's, shift gears a little bit and let's start talking about some tools that you use in your day to day business that that you see as essential. And, you know, the email we did beforehand, you know, what I want you talked about was Max Bundle. So can you talk to me about how you use that in your store and, you know, some pros and cons behind it, or maybe the decision making journey you went through to pick it?

Sure. We early on, again, going back to TikTok, where we had, another manager who it wasn't an account manager, but somebody was working with us in our lives, and we were selling a ton of single sticks of deodorant. And she came in and looked at the business and she said, look, you got a bundle. She's like, that's where you're really going to make a lot more revenue. You're going to get that AOF. And I didn't really understand the concept of it at the time. I was brand new, but as soon as I made that switch I made, I saw immediately aura of shot up.

So then I wanted to bring that over to the website. And on Shopify, you know, especially when you're new to Shopify, like I was, you do what most people do. You just start buying every app or trying every app out there until you find something that works. So I wanted to make it where somebody could come in and mix and match a bundle. So if you wanted to get three deodorants are, free shipping markers at $40, right. So my goal was to get them to that $40 left, take our AOV from in the like mid 20s to get it over $40. And to do that I really needed a bundle app to make that happen.

I tried a few of them. I stuck with one for a while and like some of these were so glitchy, so buggy, they were actually causing more problems than I could even tell you. I was doing a lot of back and trying to help people out and say, why isn't this bundle working? Why isn't that working? So it was a lot of frustration.

And then I moved to Max Bundle. And Max Bundle has been glitch free. Knock on wood. It's been simple and what I love about it is if you come to my site and you want to buy one stick of deodorant, you scroll down, look at description, and immediately that upsell is present. Or it's saying, well, if you're buying one, why not buy three? And now you're going to get this price break, but you're also going to get free shipping with it as well.

That has been, a game changer for the website. It has completely changed our AOF getting the our average of B, I checked before we went live is $40.45. So that's our way of right now. And so I get them over that that, you know, left where I want them in that $40 range. They get the free shipping, they get a small discount. And they also get to mix and match their bundle.

This thing, it was easy to put in, easy to customize. I want a simple app. I don't want to sit here and some of the apps. I mean, I'm sure you know, you have to spend a little bit at a time just to try and learn them. I have a high level of frustration when I'm spending too much time trying to learn how to use an app that should help me. I tend to bail on it, so this one has been easy. Easy set up, user friendly, customizable. And it's most importantly, it's consistent and it works.

Can I give you some advice on it. All right. So I'm looking at your page now on desktop. It displays horribly but you're optimized for mobile displays better on mobile. So that's good right. But when I'm looking at my bundle, what's the differences between my products.

Yes. The sand and it doesn't allow room for all that. It doesn't allow enough space to really give a differentiator.

Can you, instead of putting in the product title, have a product short title or a meta field that it uses instead?

I think you can. I think I could even change the title to work in the title, where we could have some kind of description in the title. So I mean, I could probably go to my titles and even make that scent profile part of the title. I don't think it would have a negative effect.

My recommendation is the opposite, right? Is I don't want to see more words on the screen. I want to see less words. Right? So, for example, you know, I see the, caramel apple. Right. And there's a tobacco bourbon in cedar, right. The tobacco bourbon and cedar, the text reads. And by the way, this is on one fourth of a screen on a mobile phone. So it takes one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten lines. Right, ten rows, 19 tall, coffee infused natural deodorant, tobacco, bourbon and cedar.

What I would recommend you show they're tobacco, bourbon and cedar. They're all the same product, their deodorant. Right. You don't need all that other stuff. The difference is and correct or I'm wrong. The difference is, is the scent. So just show the scents. Right?

Definitely I love that. And part of that has been because I've been using AI to do product description and titles, which is supposed to help my SEO. But the downside is exactly what you're talking about. Since it's altered my titles, it's made them crazy long to try and optimize the SEO, but then it makes it where it's just way too many words on screen and you know, you confuse you lose. Right? So as soon as somebody starts trying to read too many words, it—

Is a com behind everything, right? They're absolutely right that that is a definitely SEO optimized thing, which is the right thing for the product page for SEO. But everywhere else that product is shown like on collection pages and ear. It's the worst thing. So a lot of times we'll make a product short title field and just replace it on the collection page and stuff like that. But yeah, that's more work, right? It's it's harder to do, but—

As well worth it work though. Yes. The kind of work I need to be doing. So I love that. I'm definitely doing that.

Yeah. Because I look at your thing. Right. And I just said I just it's ten lines. You have so many deodorants. I have to there's a scroll bar. It's it's more in the screen on phone to see them. All right. And if you could combine, you know, consolidate them down it would just help. Right. There's just my little piece of advice there.

And why did you pick the 10% discount for buying three.

Because it was it. Well, first of all, with our margins and everything, it worked out just enough where I've tested more and I've tested less. So in the beginning, you know, honestly, we were getting so many sales from from social commerce. The website was secondary. So we were testing all different things. I had a much larger discount on there, and then I wanted to shrink it down and shrink it down.

So I've tried to find that sweet spot where it would still get enough sales, where it was worth it. People still felt like they were getting a good deal. They were getting a discount trying to push them to get more than one stick. And that 10% was kind of the sweet spot. It's now stackable, so they can use it with an opt in or anything else. It is purely at 10% and that's the only way to get it.

So another you know, just give me advice there.

You can take it I love it. Bring in my friend.

Well, you know, you. So one of things I learned from Amazon and there's very few things I learned from Amazon. Right. The number one thing I well, the thing I've learned from Amazon, to be fair, is, you know, same day shipping is fabulous, right? Same day delivery. Right. But on the website, the only thing that they do that I love is they show the price per when, when you, you know, you buy I buy coffee pot. Right? K-Cups.

Sure.

There's 100 pack and here's a 20 pack. And the Hunter pack is $0.25 per K-Cup. And the 20 pack is $0.58 per K-Cup. And I all of a sudden I see when I buy more, I spend less per right. So 10% off. They're getting the concept right. But if you could show that price per hour, they see that difference, right? They don't have to do that on their heads kind of thing. It might it might help. It might not come.

No, I love that I my brain works the same way. I want to know what I'm saving, you know, what is it come down to. And the only place it does show that is when you move to a checkout screen. Then it will show that. But that's not like that's getting them to that checkout screen. So if we're not getting them there, it doesn't even matter that it's not being shown. So I would love it. Yeah, I think that's a great idea of showing it earlier to try and get them to actually pull the trigger.

Yep, yep. And and I don't like the way that Max Bundle. I've never used this app before and it's probably fine. Right. It's just a criticism. They have the powered by Max Bundle thing on it.

I hate it.

They don't let you take that off.

No, no, it's part of it's it's a paid, you know unit that I'm using and it is part of—

You're on the paid level and they have branding on there? Oh, that's bullshit.

I know.

You guys are scum.

I know, I know, and I mean, I don't want to mention the one I was using before this, but the one I was using before this, I was paying a good amount. And I mean, when I tell you, Scott, like, periodically the prices would get changed, you know, I mean, it was just these glitches. I was like, whoa, what just happened? You know, I the glitches were real and it was causing massive problems. And I did everything I could. I tried talking to a support.

So it's so difficult with these tools to find stable tools because a lot of times, you know, when they do an update, all sudden they do an update to break the thing and then we suffer for for X amount of time until it's fixed again. So, you know, for for me right now, this has been an answer. I wish I had better ones, but we do live and die by bundles, so I'm really, you know, I'm just happy to be able to have something as not glitching or changing, you know, cost price on it.

Totally. This is not meant to say Max Bundles should not be used by people, but it is meant to say Max Bundle, you're you're scum for putting your branding on a page.

For throwing your name out there.

Yeah, yeah, but I agree. What a lot of because we have like nine apps in the App Store, what a lot of brands do with their apps if you actually put it in the code. So when people inspect code, they can you'd see they're using this. But that's what we do. Or we've seen people do like so if you're like, what is that app? I want to use it. You just put it right in the right in the code when you inspect the terminal to to see what.

I'm fine with that.

Yeah. Totally. Totally. So let's move on to your next tool that you love, which is, Looks which is your customer reviews.

Sure. Looks has been great for us. We've tried different we tried different review apps early on, but really we settled on Looks for the simple reason that it was clean. It was stable. It's a large player. We is it has a great way of getting more sales for us because it's really pushing people to get that reviews, to give them a discount to get it. I love the way it encourages people to do video reviews, which we're very lucky to get you. Those videos, the imagery, all of that helps. Just consumer confidence is going to help us, get more customers.

It's also easy. I don't have to think about it too much. It's it's a simple, you know, plug and play. I love the customization with the carousels, how we can just change the way it looks on each page. And again, like, I don't have a lot of time. I spend so much time. I mean, from I'd be embarrassed to say how many hours I work a day on this, but it's it's all day. All night. I usually turn in around 1 a.m., so the last thing I want to be doing is sitting here customizing and changing things constantly and Looks. It's just been a constant, consistent, easy to use program. Easy way to get reviews without having to think about it too much.

I think we completely, by accident, have a theme here. I'm looking at your home page carousel, and, which is great, you know, and what I love, by the way, is instead of stars, you have coffee beans, right?

Yes.

So you're totally on brand about that. Was that a customization that's built into Looks, or did you guys code that yourselves?

We didn't code it. They literally just came out with that upgrade just about probably about two months ago. And they suggested it there. I suggest it because I think the I think they sell coffee. So he suggested the coffee beans and so yeah, why not? Let's just roll with that. So we changed it from stars to coffee beans.

Nice, nice. But they have a powered by Looks on your eye.

Yes, yes. And that's not a cheap program like this. Not cheap app man. It's like so I know it's the same exact thing.

How much are you spending with Looks?

I can't remember off top of my head, but, I mean, it's like 100 bucks a month or something. I mean, it's not cheap. It's not like, you know, it's probably higher than I haven't looked at in a long time, but, it's definitely should not have powered by Looks on it. Put it that. Yeah.

Yeah, totally. It's absolutely crazy. But you know what I love about just like you said is, you know, your customers when they leave the video reviews, you even have one on the home page right now on the carousel. That's two of them. That's totally awesome. They're uploading photos. Why don't you have a reviews page that shows all reviews?

We did have that early on, actually. We had one page that was just reviews, and we looked at the metrics on it and the traffic was horrible. We weren't getting the traffic on it. It literally was like a dead page where people weren't finding their way to look at the reviews. They were looking at the reviews under that product of what they wanted to buy, but they weren't taking that extra step to go to that review page.

And I kind of thought that was a no brainer page. I was like, I, this is the page that should be selling the product in my opinion. Like you had that review page. That's where I would go to see, you know, real time, like what are people saying about it? And it was getting zero to no traffic. So we pulled it and we just it's again like test learn, test learn. So we pulled it for a while. And you know, they haven't put it back. It just wasn't working.

Yeah. And I love the fact that you actually tried something. Look at the data and change. But here's something to think about is it is an SEO best practice reviews page like Google likes to see a reviews page. So your customer, it's sort of like when you put ads on, Fox News in DC, right? You're advertising to one particular person these days, right? You know, with putting the reviews link in the footer, you're advertising to Google for SEO purposes.

That makes sense.

Usually why people do the same thing with like privacy policy and that kind of stuff. You know, Google Google wants to see that stuff in your footer. So it can get that information for you.

Well, that's an easy turn back on. Believe me. I loved having that page. I mean, it's a switch, so I would love to turn that back on.

Now, on your collections, you're showing your reviews. Why did you decide to do that.

I made that collection. Go ahead.

While I was going to say and let me, let me let you know why I'm asking that question.

Yeah. Please.

Because on the Amazon. Right, which most of us look to Amazon for guidance on how an e-commerce store should be set up. Right? Amazon literally has 4 billion, certainly more than 40 million products. Their store. Right. And they have no skin in their game about any product at all. They don't care what you buy. They want you to buy what's best for you. Right? Because you make money on everything. And they're a little biased. But let's not talk about that.

And they also don't have a guaranteed quality bar on all their products. There are some good products. There are some bad products right there. You're not in charge of that stuff right? So reviews are super essential at their decision making. Of which product am I going to look at? Which brand am I going to look at? Right, right. Your store, all your products have a guaranteed quality bar. So the reviews are going to help me find the good ones versus the bad ones.

That's true.

So all your reviews are going to do all your reviews. There's one that's a four 4x4 star. Everything else is you know more than that all the way up to five kind of thing. The only value they're getting is they can see which ones are most popular, because I can see which one has 529 reviews. Versus the one, you know, might be a newer set with three reviews. So.

Correct.

That's adding information on the page that confuses the decision to be made at the collection level. Because the decision is a good question. There is only one thing that I think right. Which is set right. Yeah. So said all right. Here's the sense like don't confuse people with this other information. Now once they're on that product page, let them absolutely read the reviews. They can learn more about the scent and how people love the smell of blueberry muffins or whatever it is. Right.

So once they click into that, then they're getting those reviews, but they're not getting it prior. Yeah, that because one higher scent makes—

Confuses the situation, right? Yes. In some stores you do want that there. But in your store where it's a small confined set of products, they're all yours. The quality bars all the same, the reviews don't help at the collection level. They don't help me decide which product to choose. They help me know that I chose the right product on the product route.

Very true. Yeah. No, I love that. I love that you're giving me more than I'm giving you, Scott. So I feel like—

I don't know about that. I don't know my friend.

Are you kidding?

All right, I'll send you an invoice. Not a problem.

Fair now, fair enough. All right.

Okay. So we talked about Looks your last, one on the Shopify side of things is Page Fly, right? Yeah, I'd love to, you know, do you have a page that you built in Page Fly that that I could look at while you talk about why you like it?

So I have a landing page, but I'm going to be honest with you. So this is why I like Page Fly. And this is a little interesting, is because I had I build the entire page from scratch, every part of it. So we had a landing page for for top of funnel, which we were running ads to for just trying to get first time buyers.

And I had a page I had made and I didn't want to spend money on a landing page. I had been spending money on a landing page, wasn't performing, so I got with chat started like hammering out what? Where is the weak link here in my funnel? What's happening? And it really came down to landing page. So the page I had made, which I thought was decent, got ripped apart by I and said, I said, well, why don't you just build the entire page?

So I used code excuse work, had it completely make everything from imagery to pulling reviews from my site, and that is now performing quite well. It is, it's great. It's, I love the way the I was able to deal with it. I like the quality of the page. I forget who I was. I was using, Shogun or something, for landing pages prior, and, it was too complicated. It was too much work. But for this a couple as well, with the AI enough that it was able to build the entire page, I'm now getting great traffic. It's converting.

I was it's actually, ironically, a lot of what you suggested is what it did. It really simplified the page. It got rid of a lot of the extra text, a lot of things that would confuse people, kept it very simple and kept it very sent based. So I'm kind of laughing because everything you said is pretty much what my I decided to do, really simplified it by which scent was which and just took away all the other objections. And it's been converting quite well. So for me is really because a couple so well with the AI, I was able to build so well on it, wrote a lot of code for it to customize it. And so that's why I like that app so much.

Yep. So then I'm looking at the it's the we couldn't find the decoder that works. We made one page.

I believe so yes.

Yeah yeah it's funny you name it KFC's landing page. So so that's how I found it. I did a search for landing videos. It's. That one came right up. Yeah.

That's beautiful. I'm trying to find it, too.

So, you know, to let the audience know you're using Sean, right? Which is one of the free themes in the the Shopify App Store. And that's why you have to go to a landing page builder. Because the daunting. Yes, it's basic. Right. And during dancing's great. Right. But it's you know, I always consider themes a toolbox. And the Dawn theme is the 12 tool tool set right where you want the craftsman 248. I just aged myself by saying craftsman is a brand, but you want the craftsman 248 tool set, right? And that's why you had to go to a landing page builder, because you had the 1212 socket set, right, kind of thing.

And that's been the struggle with Dawn all along, is I mean, Dawn is a great basic page builder, but if you wanted to do anything, you're probably either going to have to go super app heavy or you're going to have to write code, or you're going to just have to change themes because it and you know what? It's it's great because it's consistent, it's reliable, but it's also very, very basic. And you outgrow it very quickly.

Yeah. They're there. And we use the and we at premiere we standardize on one theme because it allows us to do something in one store and then copy that and paste it. And sure. Right. So we become really good at one theme. It could do anything and then anything can be completely customized. So we use the enterprise theme and it's like 420 bucks or whatever, and it's the best 400. And I have nothing to do with them. Right? I make no money off of saying, this is the best water in 20 bucks a store can spend. If they can afford it, right? Yeah.

So now you start with Dawn, but the 420, I tell my clients all the time, they're like, well, I'm using Dawn today. I'm like, all right, you can stay using Dawn, but when you work with me, it's going to cost you literally an extra $1,500 if I stay in Dawn. Because I'm gonna have to code things for you manually that are already built into enterprise kind of thing. So, you know, as you as your brand starts maturing, my humble advice to you is you're probably ready for that. It's time to get a real theme, to give you some real tools, and you'll be amazed some. You opened up the box. I have this, I have this, I have this, this is fabulous, right?

That sounds like Christmas compared to what I'm dealing with. With Don. Yeah. And I mean, it's it's so frustrating, you know, it's so limited. It's and you know, you have all these grand ideas and then you get into Don, you're like, I can't do any of this. I can't do any of it. And the more apps you start putting in which, you know, I've made that mistake early on at app after app, now your page is slowing down and now it's lagging and now is a train wreck. And now everything's crashing. So, definitely, I'm more than eager to change on that.

Well, and that's, that's going to bring up my my second piece of advice about page builders is don't use them. Right. Yeah. And the reason for that for me, I'm a brand Nazi, right. The first page I make for a client stores or brand guidelines page and we, you know, do their colors, their fonts and the graphics and all that kind of stuff. This is how we're going to do everything, right.

And the biggest challenge for any brand, as you just said, right. As you add apps, you have to implement that brand guidelines in that app. And every app different, it has this, it doesn't have that. The spacing is different, blah blah blah. I'm looking at your landing page. You're like, this is not on brand. This is not your brand right now. And it's it's a lot of little details. The fonts, the font size, the font weights, the way the buttons are done, you know, the the the radius of the buttons on every little detail. Like this is not the way this site is right now. If that's the desired fit, great. But it's one more thing, right?

It's what I always tell my clients. We're not going to a page below. Let me go build your custom section. It does this thing. I can do that. I 100%, and I probably done it for my customers before, and I just copy and paste it into an app that just dropped into their store form kind of thing. Right. But when I look at your landing page, I'm like, that's not your that's not your fonts, that's down at all. No stuff. So it is and I don't I totally get why you're using it, right. It's easy. It works. It gave you functionality needed. That's awesome. Right? When you get out of dancing down the road, whenever you do that, you can get rid of this app too, at the same time.

Totally, 100%. And it's it's a shame night Dawn doesn't even have a landing page builder in it. You know, that's kind of crazy to me. You know, it seems like the most basic thing that every, every team should have, right?

Well, sections anywhere is landing page building, right? Yeah. So but they don't call it a landing page. But you know, so you've only been in Shopify since 2023, you said?

Yeah. 23.

So back in like I got started in 2013. Right. And back in like 2016, you know how you can like add sections on any page? Yep. That only existed on the homepage. Right. It was a oh yeah. It was a completely different world back then. Right. Oh six is any higher. Didn't come out until like I think 2020, 2021. They promised it forever and it took a long time to build. That was a total game changer, right? Building a Shopify store today is so much easier in that respect. It's harder.

Sure.

So much easier in that respect where you can put content anywhere you want. It used to be a best practice in 2015. You build your web, your store in Shopify and your website on WordPress because you couldn't build all the rich content you wanted. Now, no one does that anymore, right? That's horrible. Shopify is so much more robust with sections anywhere. As you see in Dawn, that's just beginning. You get a more premium theme, you get even, you know, more tools to play within that toolbox.

Sure, that makes sense. So, you know, for me—

Go ahead.

For just for me, it's been, you know, my journey because there's been so much social commerce side. First, the website spend an afterthought like and I know it's a little opposite for a lot of businesses, but it's really been I mean, for the majority of this ride, 80% of our, you know, revenue came through social commerce.

So the website had to be there because you get, I mean, for a couple reasons. For one, people could come on to social commerce, like TikTok and be like, I don't want to buy here. I don't feel safe buying here. And then they they'll go to my Amazon store, then they'll go to the website and then they'll purchase there. So it's really having those diverse areas where somebody is going to be comfortable buying.

But the website hasn't really had to do much up until recently. I mean, we've only even put that much effort in. I mean, Scott, if you saw six months ago, you probably would know. I mean, it's way worse. So it's like it's been a slow evolve and really it's been the last piece of our puzzle because the other side of this was so strong, it didn't really even merit it. It wasn't even need it. So it's really just been kind of like playing catch up on the backs on that, which is where most people start. Most people are going to start on a website first. We we definitely had the opposite problem.

When as you get into retail, right, your website's going to be really important for two reasons. One, to sell the retailer. Right. You're you don't want to look at your website and see how you present yourself. And to once you sell your product or people become aware of your product on the shelf and they look you up, that's the place you're going to go to. Is your website.

Definitely, definitely. That's where they do a little research wrong.

Yep, yep. That's where your your brand becomes justified and real, right?

Correct. Yeah I agree 100%.

So let's you did a nice Segway there. You're talking about social commerce and all. Let's talk about your live shopping stuff because I don't have any clients that do live shopping. So I'm I'm anxious to hear what you got to say about this.

Sure, sure. So early on, when TikTok shopped, you know, came about, we were just doing regular, you know, just regular content. And then you were able to tag a product, get a sale, nice and clean. TikTok actually took us in under their wing and said, hey, look, we're going to spend 15 grand on a agency in LA that's going to help get creators help build your affiliate program, and just help you get more comfortable on the platform, which was amazing. But these were like the early days when they were just getting sellers on there.

So they hired an agency in LA, and one of the stipulations was I had to go live. Now I start I'm 55 now. I started when I was 52 doing this. I was like, I got a hard line that I am not going live on TikTok to sell deodorant. Like that's just the comfort zone was already broken down when that first video came out. I'm not sitting here going live, so part of the deal was I had to go live or I wouldn't get the the help.

So I went live back then, didn't love it, but we saw a bump in sales. And then as time went on, you know that viral videos, everything I posted was viral for about a year, but then that starts to slow. And then that's where all the push was get out and start doing lives. So I tried one, and we tripled our GMV and one just immediately it was overnight. It was ridiculous. Like, sales just kept coming in, coming in, coming in. It was about an hour long. And then I was like, okay, now I get it is not that hard. It's not that difficult.

So I immersed myself in everything I could learn about the platform, everything I could learn about live selling, getting comfortable on camera, how to pitch, how often you should pitch. In fact, TikTok even helped us out with that to send somebody out from the West Coast to sit in on one of our lives and then had an agency on the West Coast as well, in real time, giving us metrics on what we could do better. So we were really in an in an incubator state early on where we were being almost, we were being helped, but I think we were also being used for data points where they were learning from us, we were learning from them. And those tools were invaluable to actually learn the value of live commerce and how you can sell.

And, the way it really works is you get on there, you start going live, you have a live stream, and then you tag product. So you're sitting there, you're talking about your products, you're tagging the products, you're speaking about. The way I compare it and how it's different is it's a real time conversation. The people in the chat, they can type, I'm going to be talking. They're seeing me on camera. I'm not seeing them. If they have questions, they put them in the chat. We have conversations back, back and forth.

I can deal with objections in real time. So if you come in and you're like, why does this work? Why is this different than XYZ brand? I can tell you right away the differentiating factor. I can bring out the coffee oil and and show you the ingredient in the product and why it's effective. This is where that science side we talked about earlier really, really comes on is super cool to be able to do that. But then you can overcome any objection. You can say, look, I understand what you're saying. Why do you think that I make the product? You're not a third party seller. So we can talk all about it.

And that just has continued to be a cornerstone of our, our, our, our entire brand, where that live shopping is also where we get, you know, within a two hour time, we'll see anywhere from 4 to 8000 people come through. I mean, you can't really touch that any place else to have free organic reach like that. And all I have to do is talk about products and show the products, and that's everything from how does it work? Why is it different? Who is it for? What are the sense?

And then that is actually the live selling has pushed us to do other product development and as expanded our brand into other areas that always result of that live selling. So, it's I can go on and on about it, but I don't want to just data dump on you. So if you have questions, just hit me up.

Oh, I only have like 47 of them. So let's assume for a second that I've got to beat. And I'm 59 years old, and the only time I've ever been on TikTok is to do research for my clients. Right.

Sure.

How do people in this ecosystem find out about this opportunity to go to your live shopping session? Are you advertising that promoting it? Is there a place they go to to find out everybody that's doing it? Do you schedule ahead of time?

Yes, yes to most of your questions. So like I have a live scheduled every day so you can go on. You can see what time I'm going live. And then I create warm up videos through. So throughout the day I'm saying, okay, I'm going live today at four 3430 eastern time. Make sure you come hang out. I'm going to XYZ going on in live. We're going to have a great time, be live for about two hours. I'll see you then.

So I'm doing warm up videos and then the algorithm is pushing those out to everybody that scrolls. Then when you're on TikTok, you get regular static, you get regular videos, but then you also get lives are going to be incorporated in everybody's. Everybody's FYP is going to have all three. So sometimes you're scrolling, there's somebody's going live. They're like, oh, what's this?

The way it works is it's kind of gamified. The algorithm loves when you get sales. So the more sales you get when you're live, the more traffic it pushes to you. The longer your live, as long as it's quality live, you can tend to get more traffic that way as well. If you make it past an hour, you kind of hit this level. They tend to give you more traffic. So there's a lot of ways that the algorithm will naturally and organically feed you people to get in.

If you're not getting any sales is going to be a little harder. In the beginning, you'll see less traffic. But as you start getting sales, as you start getting followers, I mean, we have like 75,000 followers on TikTok, so we have a strong community that's been built up that when we go live, everybody that follows us gets a notification we're live. But then the algorithm is also going to push us out to people who have never heard of us before because they're selling going on now.

Why? Why do they do that? Because obviously TikTok gets a percentage, so they want to push us out. If we're making money, they're making money. So it's a very give and take relationship. So that's how that happens. I don't spend money on advertising my live. A lot of people do. We don't we don't need to.

I love the humble brag. Yeah. We got 75,000 followers.

As wasn't a flex. It was more just perspective it.

But it's nice to know that, you know, because a lot of times, you know, I tell my clients where, you know, followers and stuff like that is a vanity metric. And if you're if you're going your social team on, you know, likes and follows, you're that's all you're going to get is likes and followers. But you have a way with tick tock shop and live shopping to turn those followers into sales in a direct way instead of, you know, a lot of, you know, people on Instagram, they're trying to figure out how do they, like, have a raffle or something to get people to come to their website, sign up with, you know, with an email for the raffle so they can at least email marketing later. But you've got that direct connection there.

And that's a lot of steps, right? Like what you just said. And I mean, every step we know as marketers we're going to lose. Lose how many? Just by making them do again and again and again. Which is why the power of like being live. You press that button and then you pay. So nobody's going to a website. Nobody's going anywhere. They they buy right there. They have the conversation there. If they're not comfortable, then they can go somewhere else and buy. But is really it takes that second step out and it really speeds up that kind of buyer's loop.

And I mean, we literally Scott will get people that have been to every single life I've been to like they have. I mean, I just did an event TikTok brought us down to, down to DC over the summer, and we were at the, at the fair on in the National Mall, and they had a whole booth set up and they had product, our products there, and we had people come and travel just to meet us there that come to every live that they just wanted to meet us face to face. I can't duplicate that on any other platform. It's not possible. Like it's just there's a connection there.

That and a lot of people look like you and I are in similar age groups, so I don't know about you, but like I've always started TikTok prior to this is like cat videos and teenagers dancing. Well, the majority of my customers are in late 30s, 40s and up. We have 60% women, you know, 40% are men. I have I have teens and everything. But that's not where that's not where we're really at. So there's a demographic there.

In fact, I just saw a stat the other day that, the primary buying demographic on TikTok shop right now is 40% of Gen X. So there's a market there, and that market is not getting touched by a lot of people because they don't fully understand it. Once you understand it, it's it's a lane where you can really develop your business in a way that I feel like people aren't really taking advantage of.

And, I mean, that's not even getting into what TikTok does. They have campaigns where if I sign up for a campaign through TikTok and I say it's, let's say it's the summertime, whatever sale, I have to mark down a couple of my products to be part of the sale, whatever I want, and then they will push me out more. They'll give me more traffic if I'm live. They're going to push more people to me, and they clearly state that. So they really try and stack it where they want sellers to win on the platform. And for us, it's been like it's the easiest way for us to get sales. If I had a day and I'm like, sales are slow, I go live. I know they're not going to be slow anymore.

Yep, yep. Now this is, you know, similar to the the grant conversation, right? You were an early adopter and you got special love back in those days. But you were open to that. Right. And you partnered with them. Like I actually had a conversation with a client of mine this morning, and we're trying out some new stuff in our agency, and they're our first client. They're are guinea pig. Right. And I basically said, I consider this a joint venture. And, you know, it's costing me money and it's costing you money, but together we're going to make this win for both of us kind of thing. Right.

And that's the way you were with TikTok in the early days. But you you were wise enough to say, I'll take that chance. I'll take that risk, you know? Let me give it a try. Let's throw the spaghetti against that wall and see what happens to us.

That's exactly right. And it was kind of like this was all moving so fast, and I was so outside of my my comfort zone, but I left side of my depth. I had no idea what I was doing. So if somebody threw a lifeline to me and they're like, do this, I was like, okay, I'll go do that now. You know, it's like, I got nothing to lose. My vanity was gone on that first video when I said, have you ever been in a car with three teenage boys in the windows rolled up like that was gone? So I mean, everything after that, I was like, yep. Like, unless I got to be in a clown suit juggling, like if it's anywhere within my realm, I'm going to try and find a way to make it work for me.

And what I would say to people I are trying like live social commerce, which if you look at, like other countries live, social commerce is massive. It is a huge, huge way. I mean, in China is the primary way people buy online. Is social commerce, live social commerce first. They prefer it because they have that in real time exchange with the seller, where they can figure out if this is a good product for them.

So when I saw this coming about and I saw the power of it, I said, I have to find a way to be comfortable with this, you know, is it? You know, I'm I'm not going to make a fool of myself. I'm not doing dances. I'm not doing any of that nonsense. But I really take that educational piece where I talk about why the product is different. I talk about my passion for the product. I talk about people's problems.

And then in that live, which is the coolest thing, you have people coming in every day saying, no product worked for me until I tried yours. My daughter has eczema and she has had to stop deodorant till we started using yours. So if you're seeing that in a live and you're considering buying, there is no longer a buyer objection. Like right now you've knocked that down because I didn't have to say it. I had this amazing community just backing me up saying, no, no, these products work. And, couple that with the crazy reviews that we, we proudly have on that platform. It's like it makes that consumer confidence so strong that any kind of buyer objection is knocked down quickly. And, we can convert them pretty fast.

Yeah. It reminds me of what do they call that Monte? The three card Monte thing where, you know, the guy's doing it and they got the guy behind him. Goal! It's this one. It's this one. They're getting that excitement going, you know, kind of think.

It's totally that. And that excitement. You can't buy that excitement I can't. And like I see like legacy brands on there trying to create that excitement. It's just a different vibe. This is not that vibe. This is a very like it's like you and I talking right now. This is a personal conversation, but it would be in text where we can, you know, I can tell you so many things about these people.

You know, I could tell you about their kids or this or that, because they come to every live and they're building that relationship with us and we're building it with them, and we're thankful for it, and we're honored by it, that they're trying our products and that respect translates into consumer confidence that goes into re buying and re buying in a re buying rate is phenomenal on that platform.

Yeah. It's the human connection right. It is. You know I think I tell my clients it's all the time right. It you know when I have the clients are like oh I want to be in front of a camera. I say, great, then your business will not be successful. And I mean, I agree, right? You will not be successful if you will not be the face of your business. And you need to do that every day, right? You need to be able to get on a call, on a video record, whatever, in seconds. Right? It's not like, oh, let's do a photo shoot. Let's plan it for three weeks out. And I love that scenery of it. Right kind of thing is like, no, turn your camera on now.

Like, like I think we emailed yesterday or two days ago, right? Yep. And we both got on and we started recording. Right. We chatted for a couple minutes. But we know how to do this because this is what you have to do to be successful in today's e-commerce world. Like, I'm the least good looking person. You're a studly 55 year old.

No, no no no.

I'm the least good looking person on camera this year. But I got to do it and people don't get on because, oh, Scott, such a good looking guy. They get on like, this guy is telling the truth. I like what he says. I'm going to learn from him. At least I hope that's what they're saying, right?

But I couldn't agree more. And if I had a dollar for every time somebody told me, I'm not ready to be on camera, I have to do this. It's just be just get on the camera. Just talk. Just be yourself. Like like you are right now. Like I we're just having a conversation when if you're not here and I'm doing a live like that's picture, that's what the live is. So I'm just talking I mean I'm there's nobody there. You know, there's a bunch of words and these are people, but it's it's more intimidating until you start putting in the reps.

So as the gym owner I can tell you put in the reps and you get stronger. Well, put in the reps here. Get on camera. No. And like I love this. One thing I heard early on is don't worry about how are on camera the first couple times, because nobody's going to see you anyway, right? So when you see something out there, nobody's going to see you. Like we all think like tens of thousands of people are going to see us. Nobody's going to see your first few videos. Who cares? Put them out there and then do it repetitively. Force yourself to do it daily if you can, even for a 15 second clip. And then watch how good you get in a week, two weeks, three weeks, a year, and then live does not become as big of a deal.

Because when it comes down to it, we like to buy from people. Psychologically. We are tired of buying from businesses. We want to buy from people. So when I buy, I want to know who made that. Oh, okay, I know that guy. You know, there's a trust there. There's a communication. And that is more powerful than what any multibillion dollar legacy brand can ever do.

I totally agree, totally agree it that the example I always give, if you look at Janet Jackson's first video, which I think it was Nasty Boys or whatever, she's awkward. She is stiff. You can see her doing the choreographed moves and but there's no personality in it, all right. And five years later, her videos, she just exudes love in two.

Different people, right?

Unreal how different those people are. And all it is, is put in the reps.

Right? Yeah. I mean, look, look at me. My I have my three kids all do lives with me like they've been doing them since they were in high school. So since they were 17, they learned how to pitch while they were in high school. I'm like, you guys have a skill set you can take anywhere in life now. Like if you can talk on a camera, if you can talk about your product in a confident way and informed without data dumping or confusing people, then you have a skill set where you can use it for anything and is really now watching them in college, like taking that same skill set that they learned on camera and just succeeding in every way, just through being comfortable. Because in real life, it's a lot easier in real life after you nail the camera aspect. Real life is not actually that hard.

Yeah, yeah. And the other part of that, that that you mentioned that I love, right, is you learn from your customers because you actually communicating with them. Right? Because one of the things I always tell my clients is, you know, go to a farmers market and sell your product, you want to sell your product. But to hear what customers have to say about your product, because you never get to talk to them, right.

As an ecommerce store owner, you hear from two types of customers the 1% who love you and think you're the best thing ever, and the 1% that hate you and think you're the worst thing ever right here in the middle. Who's 98% of your audience? You have no idea what they think, right? So the only way you could be more true is like your your social experiences that you're doing. You hear what they say. You hear they're like like you're saying you hear their objections and all that kind of stuff.

You know, I had a client, he did farmer's markets for the longest time before he went online with his product, and he had a video from at the farmers market. He just gave his spiel. It was beautiful because he had done it 10,000 times at the farmers market. He put in, knows how to use, comfortable telling it, and you get better and better at it. And then he gets where things don't throw you off.

And I also say, if I can't, I want to be at a point when I go live that if I can't answer everything about this product and I'm actually manufacturing, and I formulated it and I hold the patent for it, then I probably have no right selling it, because I should know enough about this product where I can easily talk to you about it.

Everybody talks about an elevator pitch. That's all going live is, is just having that elevator pitch. What's the differentiating factor? What makes you different? Why should I care? And then just a little bit of history of how you got here. That's it. Like that. If you can take that and give it to a person and then just get them comfortable in front of a camera, they're going to get sales. It's almost impossible not to get sales.

It's when people try too hard. I laughed so hard when you said has to be the right setup is I have a friend, he has a new product and he's not getting sales and he I said every piece of content. Did you hire somebody? He's like, oh yeah, I hired a photographer for this. And I said, man, it stop. I'm like, stop like, show your footage being a little raw, like, show it being a little shaky. Like, watch how that performs. If nothing else, just do me a favor and test both and tell me what's better, because I can tell you from experience, some of the worst footage I've ever shot has been my top performers.

So it's really just like it's easier than people make it out to be. And I think we put these barriers up as excuses to why we can't succeed, when really just got to rip those down and just say, I'm going to try pretty camera for the camera against the wall. I didn't even have a tripod for my first camera and then just start talking. No mic, no nothing. It's like you don't need all the expensive equipment. You need to get in front of a camera and talk.

Totally agree. And you know, I've been tearing people down and when I complain about things. So let me let me give a justifiable excuse that people have and then tell them stop using that excuse. Right. And that is that the quality bar of what is acceptable is the least in video.

Yeah.

In copy, any grammar or spelling mistake, you're screwed was on purpose, right? In photography it must be flawless or pretty close to flawless, right? In video, because we have audio, we have, you know, the sound and we also have any music going on or whatever. You got the pictures and then the moving pictures. There's so many pieces of information coming to the customer. You can make mistakes and they still get the point, right?

Yes.

If you make mistakes in the other formats, they lose focus and they lose the point, right. But video is very forgiving and it allows you to be in perfect with the other media that don't allow you to do that. And that's what people are like. They're like, it's got to be like my photography. It's gotta be like my my copy. Like, no, it doesn't, not at all.

No, it's actually freeing when you understand that those go right. When you actually let go of all of that, you can actually speak better because you're not worried about every little component. You're just being your real self and just talking. And when you start getting into that, it gets easier. Like you just got to put in those raps, you got to calm down, you got to relax. If you look like this when you're talking, well, people are going to read. That is you're really nervous.

So I like to say, you know, a garyvee. I put a video out years and years ago. He's like posting ghosted in the beginning. Just post it and don't look at it. Look in the matrix if you want, but don't sit here checking every two minutes to see who viewed it. Start worrying about what's the next piece of content you're going to put, and then you just get into that rhythm where you're no longer attached. You're just you're doing it as these are the reps I'm putting in.

And like so many people in ecom right now, when they want to talk about it, as they want to talk about how much they have to spend, the organic lane is clear if you put in the effort. And that is really where we can start with very little risk, other than maybe you being embarrassed or a little scared, right? But there's very little risk. If you just bring out that camera, start talking. There's free exposure in everybody's pocket right now, and then if something blows up, well, then you throw some money behind it.

Yeah. And I just want to add one other thing in there. Totally agree what you're saying right. With people being embarrassed. Right. The only person that's embarrassed in that is the person.

Yes.

He's looking at that video and going, what an idiot, right?

Like it's nice showing all their friends.

Yeah. What if you're the fat guy like me and you go to the beach, you take your shirt off, no one's embarrassed for you. They're like, there's just a fat guy. Whatever. They don't care.

Nobody cares less.

Only I do, right. It's the same thing with video. Only. You are judging yourself that harshly.

Yes, yes. And I laugh all the time because the video of the video that made this business. I went home that day and I told my wife I posted a video and she's like, how was that horrible? I didn't have a mic. The lighting was horrible. The camera was shaking and I look like hell. And then that was the video that blew up.

Now, I had posted a bunch of videos prior, not about deodorant, but just about some different things. And like they did nothing but the one video that I was going to take down because I was so unconfident that I was like, this is horrible video. I look like crap. That's the one. So it's you never know what's going to connect or what's going to get people to engage or find you. So you put it out there, you take that embarrassment, you take that scary side, you put it in your back pocket, and the way you get over it is by doing it more often.

Put in the reps, put on the reps. Maybe it's all it is. One last question on this live shopping thing.

Sure.

Because I still don't understand it. Is there a place where I can, like, see a video of a past one and see what one of these sessions looks like?

Oh yeah, sure. I mean, I put them up on social media all the time, so I'm on TikTok. Like every time I go live, it actually automatically takes an excerpt from my my live and it actually puts it up so you can see the live shopping. So, and, and I sometimes carry those over to Instagram, but they're typically on TikTok.

But basically if you looked at like me, framed out, there's going to be a product tagged at the bottom, and then there'll be people giving me likes and you'll see hearts. And then sometimes people throw a gift that you were the to put a virtual cowboy hat on me or something, where they pay you to do that, and then TikTok pays me for that. So it's a very engaging environment. So whether you're buying or not buying, there's a lot of engagement going on.

And we do things to increase angry engagement. So we'll do giveaways throughout the live. So if you hang out with me every 15 minutes I'll give something away. It's a small product, maybe a lip balm, maybe something small. But it's going because TikTok sees people coming in commenting they want to win that giveaway. Now they're like, oh, things are going on. We're going to give you more traffic. So there's lots of ways where you can kind of gamify it to get more people in. You can make it more fun. You make it where people want to hang out, whether they're buying or not. And sometimes they come in, they don't even realize they want to buy. And then 20 minutes later, they're purchasing.

So you really have to create an environment that's welcoming, you know, we keep it very positive always. We very seldom get trolls knock on wood. And when we do, we get rid of them right away. So it's it's a very unique thing. And social commerce. I mean, you have buyer, you have sellers right now that are doing million dollar lives. And that's not like a fictitious site. They're number. And that was two years ago. The first person in the states did 800,000 when I was actually TikTok headquarters in one live. And then I was quickly beat by a million and about another month.

So the amount of money that is available to people is crazy. But, you know, it's all about you have to put yourself out there and it's like you said, you have to have a good product, but then you also have to be able to get on camera.

Yep, yep. And I see on your TikTok profile it says live event today at 130. I click on that. I see there's a whole page I'll link to that in the show notes. For those people who don't understand this as much as I don't even go look at it and see what this is all about. But it sounds interesting.

So like what? Not the another platform that does live selling is why not? Right? So what not we'll do auctions live selling. There are a lot of like collectibles and things like that. TikTok is trying to dominate all platforms. They're pushing to try and be on Amazon's heels. They are taking the live shopping from whatnot. They are trying to take everything from every ecommerce platform and put it in TikTok shop. So like they've just implement it now, live auctions two recently, which are popping off like crazy. So they're really super bullish on this live selling and just selling in general on commerce.

And when you think about it, I mean meta had it for a while. They got rid of it. Because they couldn't really make it work. Nobody's really doing this like they they've got the corner on it. And if you want this, these kind of tools and you want this kind of support as a seller, I don't know of another platform that gives it to you. It's just not there. It's non-existent right now.

Yeah. I seen your homepage. You have the live shopping which takes you to whatnot. When you're on TikTok, live shopping, are you also on whatnot at the same time? Were these separate experiences?

No, they're very separate. You can't do it. You can't overlap them. You can tie them. They won't let you. So it has to be two separate experiences and we don't go on what. Not as much. We do it periodically just to warm an audience over there. But it's, the majority of our time is on TikTok shop. That's where we see the most, you know, success.

Have you thought about promoting that on your website or. You don't need to?

We do periodically, but a lot of people that come to the website are people that wouldn't go to TikTok. So they're very different demographics, just like my buyers on Amazon will never go on TikTok. So it's it's like I'm really trying to find you where you are to market there, as opposed to trying to push you here or there. What I will do is periodically I'll put up some, you know, clips from our lives on there, you know, at the bottom of the screen or something. But it's it's not as much success is keeping those audiences separate it.

Excellent, excellent. So love all this information. This has been a fantastic, eye opening for me on the live shopping side of things for sure. And the other topics were awesome too. Is there any final wisdom you'd want to give to the Shopify store owners out there who are struggling, like we all struggle in the Shopify ecosystem? You know, what's the thing that keeps you going?

For me, it's really not stopping. I mean, we talked about at the beginning is technology is moving so quick right now. There's so many tools. I mean, I've been a small business owner since I was 24 is the last time I worked for somebody. So to see a business like this in E-Comm business where you have AI coming in and then you have these different technologies and then you have different opportunities like TikTok shop. There are so many lanes for sellers right now, other than just sitting on your hands and saying, I made a really good website and I can get people to come to it.

You have to be aggressive, you have to be as bullish. I've using these tools, learning these tools. Don't just look at them. Don't be intimidated by them. I mean, I'm a 55 year old guy who goes on TikTok to sell deodorant. This doesn't make sense. None of this makes sense, right? I'm not the guy you're thinking of. If I can do it, you can do it.

It is not about how you look. It is not about any of that. It's about you have to have a passion for what you're selling. You have to know about your product more than anybody else. Then you have to recruit every possible tool to try and get that in front of as many people as possible. And if you really want it to work and you really want to succeed, you'll put your embarrassment in the back seat and you'll hit the gas and you'll go.

I agree with everything you just said, except for one thing. And it's the key, right? Is if you can do it, anybody can do it. Totally, 100%. Not true. Everybody has the opportunity to do it, but it's only the people that are willing to put in the hard work that can do it. Too many people look for that silver bullet, and the silver bullet is hard work.

It is. I couldn't agree with you more. If you're not willing to work. I don't know how you make any business succeed. I mean, I came from, you know, you come from a person, a personal care industry to being a service industry. It's like everything has always been about hustle and how hard you're willing to work to make those things succeed.

I see some people, you know, I love being online is saying, I just opened my shop. It's immediately successful. I don't know how any of that works. Like, I could never even imagine that. Like, you have to be willing to grind and put in the sweat equity to make anything work. Especially in this economy. You really have to be ready to say, okay, you know, keep it positive. If something's not working, try something else. But if you want it bad enough, you got to go grind for it.

Absolutely agree. Thanks for your time today.

Oh thank you Scott. That's a lot of fun.