 This is Startup Storefront and we have a special episode for you guys. We're living in the attention economy. Every day we're bombarded with non-stop notifications, advertisements, and emails. Since every company is competing for their customer's attention, big brands dump large amounts of money into paid ads to hack the system. And between you and me, I'm going to let you in on a little bit of a secret. Sponsored posts on social media do not hit the same way that they did a couple years ago. Apps like TikTok have leveled the playing field. So we've had TikToks organically reach over a million views within 24 hours and when clients wake up in the morning they see tons of orders coming in that they have to pack as a result of these videos. And so I think a common misconception that a lot of people have is that small brands have to pay a lot of money for ads in order to get tons of orders when in reality the playing field has already been leveled. So this begs the question. What do you post on Instagram and TikTok to see the same success? In this episode we're doing a look back on past episodes to dissect what works and what doesn't. So you can cash in on this attention economy. So first you'll hear from author motivational speaker and swimming legend Diana Nayad. Diana together with Bonnie Stoll founded Ever Walk which is a walking community that inspires people to walk a mile a day in order to build a better life. They have this awesome mission and cause but they're struggling to get corporate sponsors. So what's the missing piece? Listen into our conversation with Diana to find out. You've achieved it all. How do you kind of view the next thing that you want to do, the momentum you want to move into. Maybe this is where we talk about your new foundation, the Ever Walk program and the team you decide to bring in to kind of achieve this next step for you. Yeah you know I'm going to reach out to both of you right now because you know here I come in here sort of to be lauded and say wow look what you've done and look what you mean to a lot of people and that you know that that means something to me it's not shallow. And on the other hand I will admit to you and because you guys coach entrepreneurs and because entrepreneurs are listening to your podcast I will admit that I'm just used to catching lightning in a bottle. I every business I've started I have no business plan. I have no idea where the capital is going to come from. I just march into CEO's offices and talk my fire brand and I leave with a check for $300,000. But Ever Walk is this initiative. It's a national walking initiative. We've got a cool app. We've got a great website. We've got you know pretty cool little programs within it. But except for private funding it's kept us afloat. You know it's we keep open the doors open with our private funding. We haven't landed one corporate sponsor. No capital raised you know in the corporate world. And here we're in this world of walking and I'm pretty good spokesperson and Bonnie's right on my coattails with that. She's better sort of with the public like we're at a park. She's got them all doing yoga and starting walking whereas I'm giving the philosophical speech about you know walk the curvature of the earth the way I swam the curvature of the earth and people like yeah I want to walk the curvature of the freaking earth. So why has no company we have three different brand managers. All of them have a terrific track record companies who took us on a year at a time. We paid them from pretty good money out of what we had and not one of them landed a corporate sponsor. You know we're just talking about a lousy maybe a 200 grand you know for for the year to keep our doors open. So what am I doing wrong and you just sort of reminded me of Christopher Reeve saying to me well you said all those years ago you were going to live every day so you can't live in a fingernail bed is that what you're doing. And I was backed up against the wall and I said I right away no that's not what I'm doing. So you just said you're going after something. Do you recognize that you're not waking up with the fire in the belly that you're kind of letting it slide believing maybe some white knights going to ride through town and save you give you some money put you on the map or are you working at it because you're so excited and I have to admit since maybe about January this year. So that's we're going to be half the year I've been sort of stalling hemming and hawing not figuring out what to do about it upset and not sleeping well because I want ever walk to make it. I believe that we should make it but maybe I'm just tired maybe I maybe I needed to refresh the batteries and I've let it go for a minute but I have to pay attention. Do I really want it? Do I want this to make it and what what are the next steps because whatever I've been doing has been wrong. I'm not catching lightning at a bottle on this one. It's got to be more of a grassroots you know and build it up and get you know 700 people here walking with us and then another thousand there and build it because you know I want millions of people walking with an ever walk brand on them and participating virtually and real with our walks but we've done a lot I'm proud of what we're done but we have to say we're not making it and I need to figure out the next step. Do you have a dream sponsor like someone you would really like to have on board? You know there are so many but honestly number one is Adidas because under our umbrella we also have an organization called Oceans Commit to walk and raise money in the name of reducing plastics in the ocean and Adidas now with their Parley brand you know makes most of their sneakers out of plastic bottles so they're they're big in the end because it's they make a walking shoe you know you use a running shoe it just makes so much sense and they have sponsored us to a degree they've made t-shirts for our events things but we haven't landed a big financial contract with them but they're number one. It seems like a marketing no-brainer at least from my perspective right I know me too water I mean you could think of so many different things. Has there been friction from their side that they've at least told you like as to like have you had the negotiation where they've been like well we're happy with the t-shirts but we are just not ready to do like move to this next step have you gotten any kind of feedback? There has and that is that you know I'm not some huge celebrity and unfortunately or fortunately I just haven't spent my time with social media. I have a social media manager I have about 80,000 people who follow me on particularly Facebook it's more my generation than Instagram and all that so you could say well that's not shabby but it's certainly not Kardashian numbers and whatnot but but ever walk for some reason my fans haven't followed me over to ever walk as much as I talk about our events we've done these wonderful epic walks we walk from Boston to Maine and we walk from Philly to DC and from Canada down to Seattle and from here to San Diego we've done these epic walks but they've only affected 200 people who've come with us they haven't been a big news event it's not like some incredible thing no one's ever walked from Boston to Maine so we haven't developed a huge following for ever walk we literally only have about 20,000 people you know who are constantly on the website and part of it so Adidas will say build up your numbers you know get up there get a couple hundred thousand people who are following you and then we come in and we say you come in and help us build those numbers up I don't know anywhere to turn to anymore in terms of come on out and walk with us on Saturday you know we have our group and that's who we we market to I appreciate you being vulnerable with us I mean that's another part of this podcast like you're literally in the midst of starting a business and you're wondering how to figure this out and you have this chicken and egg problem which is what everyone who ever started a company deals with to me personally like that excites me that problem only because I know how hard it is but it means everything right it's like so let's pretend like you do get a celebrity on to endorse walking maybe like someone like Kevin Hart or somebody like that like somebody who really valued athleticism but with a big name then now it becomes a no-brainer for someone like Adidas now all of a sudden you're setting terms yeah and so that seems to be that's a that's a good idea the product yeah yeah and I know I mean there's plenty of people that exist and your mission is so like the beautiful thing around like how I view what you're doing you have you and that's it like you have you see that's when I say I don't understand why we're not bigger right I mean you look at there's so many walking you know groups programs initiatives but none of them have a sort of a tried and true known inspiring personality by them they just say hey come walk with us every Saturday morning virtually we do two miles over there and uh and some of them actually frankly not most of the big walking movements don't have big numbers either but they're not looking you know for like our board says to us all the time it's you guys are doing a great job your website looks great the app looks great you're offering all these different things we have a a naturalist and she's a you know phd a naturalist and if you're on your walk and you take a picture of a a rodent or a flower or a tree and send it into our app she will quickly come back to you and say oh no that is a cooper's hawk and the female gets about a third bigger than the male it's the only hawk where the females bear so you know we've got fun stuff you know while you're walking to lead lead into but you know it's so far because our numbers are low and your idea it's it's always this chicken and egg chicken and egg and I want it to be just solved I want to walk into someone's office and them saying we love it we're going to put ever walk on the map you and Bonnie are going to be the coaches for united health care and we're going to have our 240,000 employees walk in the ever walk mile downloading their calendar so I made all those proposals and I haven't gotten a signature on the dotted line yet yeah we went to the attention economy that's what it's all about now it's all about the attention economy attention economy where it's all around social media numbers and the pull you can bring in from that that's the thing that these companies need the most that's what they need and so I keep saying you build it with us and we'll get there you know you you do you have incentives you can offer them united health care has deals with apple watch all kinds of things so if they were we were going to be the coaches of all their employees for this walk they say whoever gets 30 or 31 days every day they're going to get an apple watch and they'll give it to them I don't know what the statistic is now but pre-covid is an American if you if you're starting a small business the chances are you'll be out of business in five years you know very few make it and you know are in the black or is it the red are in the profit after five years and if you want to start a movement so it's it's not even income oriented in any way now you're you're really marching uphill but then what I love about your story and you know this so well and this is something that I tell myself every day it's like you create your own data I throw that away when people tell me like oh you're going to like five years you might be alive I throw it away I go great that's that's why you're not doing anything right good for you for looking at that data it does nothing for me I'm going to go create my own data and if I fail four times well then the fifth it's going to be pretty exciting because you've created your own data you know and I think your story captivates all of it it's the it is failing that's part of it but the end of it is so much sweeter right it's and that's what I like about it I like this this is this is good it's it's it's it's sparking me well and these are the things right these are the things what I need to do then is find partners who aren't thirsty and bound to social media numbers right that's not there because so far that's the only road we've been traveling while Diane and I had struggles to get a following on social media stowed home actually got their start on instagram they were posting beautiful photos onto a highly curated instagram feed it was driving people over to their website and that's how they're selling their furniture now the algorithm has changed and instagram favors short-form videos over photos so now stowed has to completely change their social media strategy I mean we were just talking about social media because it really was a big part of how we started and got the word out and we were really grateful for it being a venue and a channel to really connect us to a lot of the designers that we know today it was mostly instagram right yeah specifically instagram all instagram okay and it was it was a friend to us we eventually used paid ads and we dabbled it in a couple different ways but we had a pretty great organic following we had a lot of receptivity and we met a lot of really great business partners through it as time went on we know about the ios and privacy rules and the changes that were made with with an apple it happened pretty much overnight where it got pretty bad we tried to really work against the grain for a while and we tried you know every single which way you can imagine we talked to specialists we talked to people years all different suggestions by saying use hashtags which okay to like grow your following to really engagement awareness yeah yeah yeah and to to actually just go back to where we were before yeah and you know it was like a steady flow of just new people and exposure to who we are and I think people really appreciated it and the ios was like the beginning and we were really upset and really like swimming against the current for a while but we were okay and then I I have to say like about a week to two weeks ago it really took a really big nose dive from even there and so much so that we don't even really recognize it anymore our brand is very visual it's based on imagery we enjoy seeing our trade partners on instagram and seeing their visual I can't see it anymore I can see it from one of my accounts but not our business account so it's very frustrating to use it as a tool and a visual tool especially within the interior design world I think it probably works for a particular generation that wants to see a lot of movement and action and loud noises and it really stimulates your senses when you look at it but for us it's not a really great channel we've been talking about this a lot with different founders even even like founders fundraising or founders that are really strapping in for like the impending recession and the whole question we're getting is where do I put my my dollars right and so what happens in a recession more often than not is people spend less and so because they're spending less the customer acquisition cost to get that person to buy with you has gone up and so then you have two markets you have the big brands to your point earlier that can like afford to pay for ads and get in front of all of these people then you have the other side of it where TikTok came out and everyone's making these cool interesting videos Instagram is losing eyeballs because of TikTok all of a sudden Instagram has to compete they do that by creating reels and if you're someone like me or someone who had like I think it was over 10,000 followers they pay me today Instagram pays me to create reels and I get paid on views and I'm just I'm what I would call like a little piece of you know a little grain of salt in their massive ocean and there's a lot of us and so all these creators are now getting paid to create reels and when Instagram first made the shift to giving people an ability to create reels and giving them incentive it was interesting because you could post whatever you didn't have to get that creative it just is something that like you could get eyeballs and then and then the algorithm changed a little bit where reels were really only meant to give you a new audience and so your current followers wouldn't necessarily see the reels and your post which is just like your photos that you're posting those are meant today to be shared with just the people following you and so the rules changed and so if you're a big brand with big dollars they're kind of dumb the money saves them the money saves them from being creative if you're a smaller brand with not too much dollars the reels give you an ability to get in front of a ridiculous amount of customers for free right and so let's shift the mindset a little bit and so that's like okay interesting but how do I play in that game and like still make my product look really good that's the hard part the way I think about the hack is this if a song you like is trending that song will get you eyeballs whether you're posting a tennis ball or whether you're posting a piece of furniture for no other reason than that song is trending and so what ends up happening is if you're on instagram reels and you're just going through it and instagram is noticing that oh you like this song they might show you a product that you'd never look up ever in your life just because this is clearly your your attention probably is with the song and so that's how people get like discovered that's where the virality is coming from so I would argue like that's almost easier so it's more about it's easier being on top of the trends and playing the game when I think about social media I just wish everyone hired a good social media team I think the number one thing to keep you relevant is always going to be a great social media team and and it doesn't matter what product it really doesn't it doesn't matter if your product's a million dollars it doesn't matter if you're an artist like James peter henry who you know charges five figures for pieces of art it really doesn't matter it's just a function of like the game has changed and I think like you have to put yourself in a position to be seen people will still go to your stills no matter what wherever they discover you they're gonna go to your stills wherever they discover that you're real they're gonna go on to your website and see like what it is because the buying process is that for your for your particular product so Diego said it best social media has leveled the playing field and if you're a small brand you can get the same amount of eyeballs without dumping tons and tons of money into paid ads now when it comes to younger talent and actors having a social media following is really important for getting cast into big roles but as Justina Machado explains in our next clip this could be really daunting if you don't know how to go about it I don't even like you don't follow it I just have to have it because of what I do you know what I mean right I'm not very good at it because you should really post a lot to have people always I think my last post was like a month ago you know and so no I don't really follow that I don't ever feel the obligation then to to be your own like cheerleader publicist no because I'm from a different era you know like where it wasn't it didn't matter how many followers you had that's never affected me like I know it affects the younger actors that's what I've heard like the really really young actors but that's not my world you know so I don't even let it creep into my mind because it's like that'll drive you crazy like I heard my daughter on one day at a time she'd be like oh my god this you know this curl has a million followers and it's like have you ever seen Black Mirror did you see that episode of The Followers you know oh my god you got to see that show it's so great it's a great show I just I don't care man there's too much to care about I'll drive myself crazy and the studios from your perspective they don't they don't care either based on you because you have the talent right I already know you but they would I think for the younger generation yeah I think it's important for the younger generation I mean look at all the people that do the movies but then I don't think the movies do that well I gotta be honest you know the influencer I mean they do good on like things like dancing with the stars from your view in the world of Hollywood what do you think like Latinos need to either be successful maybe get to get like how do how do we change the thing like the thing that's a problem today we just keep talking about it we just keep getting people in positions that are are more powerful you know we have I mean my old boss she's one of the best Gloria Calderon Kelly I mean she's just doing everything to move us forward Eva Longoria America Ferrera I can go on these women are really doing stuff you know so we just keep doing that and that's all I could really say I don't it's it's a constant fight it's a constant fight and I and I think what I like about the younger generation that's here now is that they're not scared you know like when I was working when I started out you really couldn't say anything because then you'd be fear of never working again you know of somebody blackballing you black listing you and now because of social media because of so many movements that doesn't really happen so I do like that everybody is really talking about it you and that's the way it changes you know but we also have to support like I have so many friends right I feel like this is where it drops off because they'll say like oh I saw that show was stupid and I said let me ask you something like what show Latinos I'm not gonna say because my friends have been I mean all my friends are on all the shows you know the Latino shows and I but the thing is is that why can't we okay maybe it's not the greatest but why can white people have every stupid show around why does ours have to be so incredible let's you know let's make it basic let's start somewhere and let's support it let's support it and then there'll be another and then there'll be another and then you know like one day at a time that was brilliant I mean it was not just because I was on it it was like a brilliant show you know I look at Goldita Chronicles that got rave reviews and it got canceled HBO decided that they weren't going to do family programming anymore so Goldita Chronicles just got canceled Baker and the Beauty was one season got canceled we need people to tune in though like we need the Latinos to vote with their eyeballs yeah and you know that's the thing that's that that's not the only that's not the only thing but but it is how they viewed it yeah but it is a big thing they're right but it's not the only thing you know because they also have to give shows an opportunity another thing that happens is that the studios don't put any money into marketing yeah they put no money they'll do all the rest of it yeah so then they're like oh it failed well of course it failed you know like back in the day they would put you you know on a talk show or if it was an ABC show then you'd be on whatever late night show was that show they're not even doing that right so so then does it become prescient to use your social media platform uh yes that no but it's true but let's see but me it's not that's not gonna happen because I'm not gonna do it you know what I mean even though you know like you are is it because like you just don't want to touch it because I'm not good at it hire somebody just hire someone to do it that's true but then I'm a control freak you know yeah and I'll be like I'll be a micro you know micro managing stuff while stowed home was resistant to the ever-changing social media landscape Sunday's furniture hopped on board and now they're seeing success with their social media strategy we're gonna talk with Noah and Barbara the co-founders of Sunday's furniture about their social media strategy I wanted to ask you guys so right now there's this like huge shift moving in the social media world to like video right and so Instagram is becoming TikTok and for some reason a lot of designers design brands people with furniture like yours they're just so mad because at the end of the day their pieces are pieces that look really beautiful in a photo and Instagram says we don't care about you anymore your photos are worthless and it forces you guys to like completely shift right and so when you think of design you think of this beautiful restoration hardware magazine or you know and that's gone Instagram is saying we don't like that we need you to make videos and so how has this impacted you know and give me the realities of it like I'm sure you hated it at the beginning and now how has it impacted your business and what do you guys see as the way forward I mean in some ways like yes it does give you a little bit of freedom takes away some of that pressure for perfection right I think as people in the design spacing want that beautiful that perfect image but we found that some of our best performing content is like Noah our other team members talking through a product in the showroom and like it's like on an iPhone in one take we're certainly getting more into the TikTok and Reels space and so when I was at the pop-up event like I'm not a TikTok or Reels taker but like I was trying to take as much content as possible raw content for our team to be able to splice together so we're learning and it's new for us it's definitely a departure from like that perfect shot and you know I mean we need both right we need those e-com images and lifestyle images for our website and for our pvp pages but we recognize that what performs well even on paid ads is some of that more raw content and are you guys hiring like like who's running it for you guys do you have you outsourced it to a social media team do you have someone in house that does this who's the person that's learning on you know it's crazy like changes every day right now which is insanity yeah we've got an in-house an awesome team member and who leads our social side and you know what just earlier this week I kind of had this little epiphany like is it time to bring someone on board to just do Reels and TikTok and I and I think that's on a lot of people's minds so we haven't pressed that button the answer is yes but it's definitely on our mind yeah yeah no the answer is definitely yeah I think this is the one and the reason I bring it up is because we have this conversation more and more and more and it's almost like the pendulum has swung and people just need to do it and I tell everyone it's like you know 10 years ago you'd hire a bookkeeper your accountant your lawyer and those are standard issue and that's what you need to get started today it's that plus your social media person if you don't have it it's a rough road ahead I think it's becoming really clear to us yeah I would strongly suggest it yeah no no I would strongly suggest it and there's and the problem with it too is like obviously with lawyers it's like usually they went to law school and so there's a sense of they know something about the law but you know maybe they're not the sharpest but whatever at least they know the law the social media landscape is literally people who don't know anything and so it becomes very difficult it's like sourcing a piece of furniture it because you have to be meticulous you have to be you have to know what you're looking for and I think is why so many people struggle with it because it's one it's already an unknown territory it feels younger we devalue that for some weird reason in today's society and then it's like and then we have to hire them and trust them that they're going to do well which is usually yeah and I think they have to trust themselves too right because it's about like testing ideas and seeing what stick and then there's Haven's kitchen so according to their founder Alison Kane they don't use content to sell their product the content is the product their goal is to empower home cooks and there's no better way to go about that than showing delicious recipes in the videos they create we have a lot of educating to do we need to show people how this is going to make their lives better and how to use it on a daily weekly right basis and the best way to do that is to show them not tell them so the qr code is there to just be a very easy I can make this the sort of secondary benefit is from a sales perspective we are not only showing recipes but we have textable shopping lists I think we're the only people that are doing that so you click into a recipe like a gingerly miso roasted salmon you're like that looks good you can click text me the shopping list and while you're in store you get the shopping list which if you are the buyer in right at the store you're like oh basket building very convenient mentality keeps them in the store you know those scallions are a little bit of a ring right so again like I said at the very beginning we don't use content to sell our product the content is part of the product because by necessity we need to be educating consumers and we need to be a resource for them right shopping lists prep lists cleanup tips how to store my herbs so they don't you know dry out and wither the day I get them home all of that is part of what we see ourselves as and the qr codes help a lot it's like the social media platforms moving to video made it easier to some way for you because now it's like oh who doesn't like food we know food statistically does really well yeah i'm tick tock and instagram actually it's and it's endless content yeah endless right and it's really fun to offer content that you don't have to pay for right so in what capacity does that mean people are are making it and sending it in or no in the in the sense that you know there's a paywall for new york times recipes there's a you know a spawn con for you know bone app right all of the traditional like places where you would go for food content have been a little sullied from my perspective and so they have to figure out a way to monetize that that's true ours is just you're giving it to free we're giving it free we're also like by the way you know if you look at our at our pinterest they're we're never like buy sauce you know even our tick tock like we have 50 000 tick tock followers i don't think we've had one product forward now the product's got to be in there to some extent right but like i guess what i'm saying is that it's not that hard to make content when you are you're just trying to show people how to make dinner right and then you can kind of slice it a certain way for the pinterest audience you can slice it a different way for the seven second tick tock and then you know there's youtube long form there's youtube shorts we have 12 minute videos we have you know 30 whatever second shorts or whatever it is and and it's all sort of the same pie we're just slicing it up differently and some people like we crossed we know on tick tock i think like 50 of the users will eventually make a purchase which is actually way higher than instagram yeah have you seen that like have you seen a translation of literal customers engagement all of a sudden in they purchase can you track that or is it we really don't send people to buy from us directly so that trackability is as you know a little bit convoluted right if we're we have seen our velocities increase like 30 percent year over year at a time where people are cooking a little less than they were a year ago and through a price raise so our hunch is that there is some awareness connectivity to purchasing but we can't say for sure yeah so also tick tock is very gen z and so is that is that your customer also also wow okay it's interesting because you know i remember very early on and some marketing class like you can't say everyone you know sure your target everyone everyone will love this but i don't think that ours is as like demographics based as it is psychographics based right i think you can be 19 and living in a in an apartment with three friends and love to make something good and just like sauce and it's worth it to you or you can be you know in your fifties and you're feeding a big group of people and you want to put chimichurri on your steak yeah they have a lot more in common like the venn diagram is not generational yeah i think it's who's hungry essentially or who who cares about you know flavor who cares about ingredient panel and who doesn't have time to cook which is a lot of people yeah what haven's kitchen is doing with content is not unique but they are big believers in creating their fans and loyalists into chefs which is pretty amazing when you think about it because it creates a lot of youtube tick tocks and a lot of viral moments that are possible through food now when it turns to authors in brit frank before she wrote a book the publisher asked her a question and that is does she have a platform here we hear from brit frank on what that meant and how she had to build a platform first before she had to write a book let's switch gears here for a second so when you write the book now you got to sell the book yeah what are you doing for anyone who's listening in ever which is everyone i think trying to consider maybe writing a book one day maybe about their life maybe about something specific but how did you go about either figuring out how to market it or you know your husband mentioned you had a really good story around around a publicist or a pr company so i have lots of stories around publicity in pr but really people who want to write books don't realize that you are not just a book writer but you are also your own business of book selling because you're and i'm published by penguin random house and they're wonderful and they're huge but if i want to sell books i need to sell books and so like anything it's learning what goes into selling books what goes into building a platform if you're listening and you want to write a book go build a platform because unless you want to self-publish no one will publish you if you don't have an audience onto which to launch your product right was that clear to you from the jump well from the beginning i was like i want to write a book i don't know how to do it so i went to conferences and i went to workshops and i read books and every single one of those hammered platform platform platform you have to build a platform don't even worry about writing a sentence down put all of your efforts into building the platform get known in in the building of the platform half the material from the book emerged because i got my message honed and i got my voice figured out and as i was writing every day to build the platform i'm like oh this is actually what i want to say and i could test ideas i'm like i don't really like talking about that i really like talking about that and so i could sort of clarify my own message and then by the time i had a platform then it's okay now i need to like put a book proposal together and get an agent and pitch and do all that okay how did you go about building a platform what did you do i used instagram i mean social media pick your platform i don't know all of them i used that one and i just slugged it out i researched and i spent hours and hours and hours every day i wrote original content every day i talked to people who were doing it and asked them how they did it you know most people unless they really suck are happy to share that's true those are monsters we'll tell you how they did what they did yeah okay so then you build your platform you have this book and then do you set a specific date in terms of selling it and then try to like do a bunch of awareness prior or like obviously you had a PR firm at the beginning of this yeah like how does the book publishing process work so you get your book deal and then your publisher says turn it in on this date and then wait a year and a half or to come out so oh wow so during that year and a half that's when you hone your marketing strategy and you talk to different publicists and figure out what works and what doesn't work and how you want you know what feels good to you a lot of the things i was told to do don't feel really good to me and so i don't want to do tiktok and i don't want to be making videos on linkedin nothing wrong with it i just didn't want to do it so figure out what you're comfortable with because if you hate you know you can be uncomfortable but if you hate what you're doing every day it's going to show in your work yeah and people aren't going to want it why not tiktok i'm just curious it's i'm like dating myself here it's so overwhelming to me i spent all my time learning instagram and now that i have a handle on how instagram works tiktok is like i don't know how it works i don't get it it's interesting i'll just say this much too just from a data perspective it's mostly gen z and so i don't know if that's your audience i'd rather have no idea but um instagram is certainly more millennial and so it seems more fitting i'm like i i'm not an elder millennial i'm like a geriatric millennial and then why not linkedin i don't like it i don't i just don't like it there's no rhyme or reason and my husband who's very business oriented is like you know you could do this and this and he's right but i have found if i am actually enjoying what i'm doing and how i'm doing it i haven't had a problem coming up with a book idea selling it and getting it published using one platform so yay virality on social media can also turn your side hustle into a real job next we hear from shira who went ahead and created a tiktok that tiktok led her to get 40 000 dollars in sales she leveraged that to go on shark tank and boom now she has a real job it's called nightcap look it up and here we hear her story what i was saying before is i made a tiktok like a month before he went on shark tank and it made us 40 000 dollars you said that was 2019 so that was must have been 2020 okay i want people to really understand us because we there's a lot happening right now with as we go into this recession entrepreneurs like yourself are always asking like what do i do how do i hedge all this stuff and everyone gets sort of tight around like dollars in marketing and i just keep telling people like tiktok can change your business and there's some people who believe me and there's some people who think i look crazy when i say that and you know lexie and our team has worked with countless companies that she sees it happening in real time yeah and so we have enough data right so we're using logic to say this platform that we just happened to call tiktok in today's society whatever it ever is like just don't don't shy away from it but embrace it and so tell us tell us your story so you're on tiktok so we started on tiktok right before shark tank because of covid we weren't doing anything we're just like oh might as well play with this so we had 28 000 dollars before we started posting on tiktok in sales okay after like about a year of having the company and we had a one go viral i think we had made like five videos and we had one go viral we made 40 000 dollars off one tiktok how many views did it have i think it had six million okay for the listeners what was the premise of the video it was like the beginning of tiktok i'm sure everyone knows the sound like i'm obsessed with it or something like that it was like i'm addicted to this yeah that one and it was just like a i'm addicted to this something like that it was like i'm obsessed with it um i don't know but it was just really quick putting it on the cup and just showing the packaging and people just were like wow this is it connected with them and resonated yeah and i didn't realize we could do that so we got to go on the show and say hey we made 40 000 dollars in the last six weeks off a tiktok yeah off of well so trump was actually going to ban tiktok so we said social media oh smart move yeah smart move but um but yeah we did that and and now our whole entire company is based off of tiktok the good news about tiktok is like half of the people that pay attention to videos on tiktok will eventually buy which is way higher than instagram and so you have a real like the demo at least is not only are they willing to watch but they're willing to spend yeah that's how i differentiate the two recently i kind of realized that i mean influencers cost a lot of money now and you're you're spending so much money on an influencer when you're not getting the return that you want so i kind of chose like oh maybe i should just be our influencer so like a you have yeah i'm able to like post anything i want for free and b i can put my face to the brand so you kind of have like instead of just seeing the scrunchie you have now like someone who's like oh doesn't that girl own it or you know kind of like a relatability factor which is really like really nice to have on tiktok and i honestly recommend that to like every brand to to create a fate like have a face it could be the CEO it could be it could be lexie could be anyone it could you could hire someone to be the face of your brand or you could do it yourself but i chose to do it myself we just came back from a shark tank reunion in vegas which i had never encountered before i didn't even know they did that what do you guys do is it like uh do you guys hang out do you have breakout sessions is it what is it yeah it's just a big party no it's like a bunch of breakout sessions i actually spoke at the tiktok panel oh nice and it was really cool but tell us about the tiktok panel what what what other brands are so it's funny because i didn't prepare and i barely knew i was i didn't even know i was speaking at it until like a couple days before and i kind of just like was sitting there before and i was like i was worried about what to talk about and then i realized everyone over complicates the platform tiktok so it's not like you have to be talking about getting verified and all this stuff when like everyone's just like what do i post so i just kind of like narrowed it down to like the basics and i tried to explain it in the most simple way like i just tried to give them examples of what i do and i said hey like you guys are on this room right now you've all been on shark tank you can leverage that like you can just put a photo behind yourself and say this is me and people love storytelling so it's not like you have to be doing these crazy things on tiktok like just tell them what happened so what do you tell like let's say there's a brand who's listening right now who's struggling to get on tiktok what do you say like your post should include these three things don't overthink it what are the things that you tell them i mean i would say three things i would say what is your product who are you and why is this product better than better than others i just think it's like so simple and people over complicate it and and i mean not to not to call anyone old but older people think that tiktok is like a gen z thing and that like we're just so genius about tiktok but it's like it's it's supposed to be simple and that's what i tried to explain because once you start to overthink the platform that's when you're doing it wrong and everything that all the videos that i constantly think about they they flop and the ones that i make in three seconds they go viral so it's just all about like transparency and like relatability and building a connection with the person watching and just talking to your phone as if it's your friend so in that clip shira talks about the importance of storytelling let's look at xcj as an example so we had jen the co-founder on our podcast and after that she became a client of the creator code which is my social media agency two of the videos we did with them reached over one million views and this brought in thousands and thousands of followers tons of orders and one exciting article in forms the big takeaway here is that both of these videos revolved around storytelling one tells the story of mistakes that you can make while steaming dumplings while the other was a founder story that we actually just took from our podcast people really love transformations especially for brands and so it's often over complicated so just tell your story and be authentic about it a few of my fair ideas include why did you start your business show a recipe with your product and what struggles did you face along the way and just remember don't overthink it whether you're getting one view or a million views the idea is that you're creating a brand identity people who can understand you the mission and the goal of your product and at the end of the day persist persist persist if you made it this far i bet you loved the episode so you should join our youtube channel membership for only two ninety and a month this gets you access to one the whole unabridged conversation two you get the episodes on monday one day earlier three you get two additional entries to our 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