Lessons From The #1 TikTok Shop Store In The US transcript

Paul howy Paul from BK Beauty co-founder of BK Beauty as we were prepping for this you sent me some DMS that indicate the following things have happened with your brand recently okay an 8 Hour live Tik Tock live selling with your wife Lisa your co-founder for8 hours at the Tik Tok studios in La so last Friday we did one and then had a day break and then Sunday didn't and I I say we did it I I had nothing to do with it it was my wife and my team who are out there but yeah Friday we did an 8 Hour Tik Tok live stream bless you and Sunday um yeah did another one uh pretty wild and actually Sun uh Friday we got word uh shortly thereafter that we had the number one gmv generating Tik Tok live for that day uh and on Sunday we followed up with the second highest for that specific day too it was it was pretty wild the team killed it that's that's unbelievable um so you did that okay at the same time you partnered with Maybelline to do a Tik Tok shop exclusive bundle and Maybelline reached out to you to do that okay um you also appeared on I think actually maybe right now or something your team is on The View on ABC and then also did something on Good Morning America okay and uh and so all of that was sent to me in preparation for this so that I get some my head around some of the things you guys are doing I'm sure that's only scratching the surface of the level of success you guys have experienced in my understanding and we haven't really talked about this but driven primarily by um sort of Tik Tock shops investment as a growth mechanism for your brand and you can correct me on that in a second I'm G give you some space to sort of fill in some color there so you're doing all of this I mean this is like gigantic major retailers um you know working with you huge organic present Tik Tok inviting you other Studios all of these things and I also found an old tweet years from 2020 that said that you guys that year did a million dollars okay so somehow we got from a million dollar in 2020 which is an amazing accomplishment to all the things I just listed off in 2024 and what I want to do with you right now is explain is like have you tell me what the heck happened so that other people can figure out how to do the same thing so so let me just like pause there first of all did I basically get the layout right of the things that you guys are doing right now like is that and did I also attribute it correctly to like Tik Tok shop as a as a if not the core driver of this yeah it's it's been it's been a busy week um yeah but yeah let's let's dive into it have Happ to kind of break it down and and before we do I just want to say I Andrew I've been listening to you for years uh on on this podcast and prior ones and uh just so awesome to be here with you I mean I appreciate everything you put out you you definitely bring kind of a heart of the teacher and from a itical and practical approach I learn a lot from you so I'm I'm hoping that I get to you know through this conversation share a little bit back and and maybe your audience can can have a couple takeaways but yeah the last that's extremely kind of you to say thank you so much and I'm really glad to have been in your help along the way like when somebody says they've given me that much of their time and attention it it like I do really love teaching and I um and so I it show yeah yeah I appreciate it it um yeah I'm super glad to have been some help that's it's it's cool and I know people building their businesses and I hope it's successful you know so anyway that obviously he seeing the outcome like yours and thinking like oh man you listen to me along the way that's that's encouraging so% so thanks for saying that that's that's very kind I'll uh I'll follow up with the check for that you got it um but yeah so so Tik Tok shop uh and BK Beauty it's it's really been our big story of the last year uh so we were very early to the platform um and so we got on last August uh before anyone really knew what was going on it really came out of nowhere and so we leaned in radically uh we we wanted to figure out uh the platform it really we identified early that it was King off of and what Tik Tok was building and putting into place it was just perfectly aligned with kind of our brand DNA and the internal muscles we had developed over the last five years you mentioned back in 2020 we were just crossing the $1 million Mark in terms of uh annual revenue we launched our brand in 2019 my wife and I my wife Lisa and to give you a little context before we get into uh Tik Tok talk shop I think it's important to bring that up because it plays such a critical role in terms of like the internal I mentioned these internal muscles that our brand has developed and why we play so well within the Creator ecosystem and this Clos Loop platform that Tik Tok shop has has come online with and now you're looking at platforms like YouTube and starting to roll out uh Affiliates and YouTube shopping I really believe we're at kind of the golden age of social commerce and it's been a time that I've been waiting for frankly for the last five years and so go back uh to to launch of DK Beauty back in 2019 um my wife and I we we launch it together my wife Lisa she's the one with the the expertise in the beauty space uh she was a professional makeup artist for many many years uh she worked at MAC Cosmetics as a regional trainer and she had always had a passion for for beauty um but in her role at MAC Cosmetics uh she was a regional trainer and so in that role she traveled around educated all the other Mac artists on product and Tech technique and so along that time with uh with mac and working in that position she started to really um grow a love for the educational component of that and teaching women about makeup and how to use it which ultimately led to her starting a YouTube channel 10 years ago with really no expectation of what it would lead to just an outlet for her passions and so uh the reason why that's important uh is uh 10 years ago coming from YouTube building that audience putting out video nights and weekends three days a week for 10 years straight I mean it's it just blows my mind that she kept up with it but it was really uh that passion was kind of in in in the heart of it um and then my background is business and marketing and so we came together and ultimately recognized after a while that we had an opportunity to develop our own brand and we had that opportunity on the table and so we really came together and combined her passion and purpose with uh business Ambitions and that's when the magic started it to to happen and click and so we launched in 2019 kind of uh started with the foundation of the audience she had built but quickly grew outside of that but over the course of uh two three four years of growing and building the business our Focus was really primarily working within the Creator space at that time with a big focus on YouTube and so because of that we really understand the mindset and motivation of the content creator our approach to uh you know influencer marketing and working within the Creator Space is really um it's it's not a transactional approach in that we're doing a lot of sponsored kind of paid uh campaigns with creators it's it's a lot more on the side of relationship building in where whereby we are sending a lot of product out getting into the hands of creators who then you know love the product and then ultimately support them through affiliate uh sales um we what what's interesting to note is and I think this is important as we lead up to Tik to talk shop and kind of the success we've seen over the last five years but even going down to the product category itself I I I guess it's important to to share that we're we're best known for our makeup brushes uh it's not color Cosmetics it's actually the tools and so what's unique about that and why it was a strategic starting point for us as we developed launched and started to grow the brand is because we knew our distribution path was through the hands of creators in their videos get ready with me's tutorials on online through YouTube and these various platforms and the one commonality between all of those videos over time is they're always using a brush or a tool whether they're talking about the next you know hot latest and greatest eyeshadow palette from Brand XY orz there's always a tool or a brush being used and so we knew if we could get our products in the hands of as many creators as possible the post frequency once we got the in the hand like they had the opportunity to share those um those products and affiliate links uh in perpetuity and so it was an evergreen thing and so so we just kept on you know pushing and pushing pushing getting our products out into the field into Creator hands and then ultimately when Tik Tok shop came around came out of nowhere end of last year we we saw that all of the building blocks we pulled off the shelf to run this Playbook of product seating supported by affiliate and then ultimately tapping into the Creator ecosystem Tik Tok was now building all those components into a closed loop system and everything was happening within the platform even the transaction as now we're all aware of the mechanics and how Tik Tock shop is working now I think everyone's pretty familiar with with their model and what happens when you integrate all of those components into this closed loop system is it just accelerates the entire Commerce flywheel it just stuff just starts going much much faster and so that's what we experienced over the last 12 years and because of that we just got a great deal of visibility um and attention that has we obviously the the platform of the channel itself has grown in terms of sales it's now about a quarter of our total sales is coming from Tik Tock shop um but the halo effect and the lift that it provides through other channels even you know you mentioned we're being featured on The View today um that just that just happened this morning that is a direct result from the visibility and just virality that's coming out and spilling out of Tik Tok and the activity we're doing there within the Creator ecosystem so I'll pause there but yeah Tik Tok is definitely a big part of uh what we've experienced over the last year it's been a radical Focus but it the benefits have have gone wide uh out out of the channel itself I want to tell you about my biggest win recently with firmat using format for one of my Brands if you think of font as Just landing page software you're really underselling the value of the product to yourself it's way more than that and way more awesome than that um and the biggest win recently has been with the enhanced PDP feature so when you send traffic to a Vermont Lander you can customize the PDP that it links out to as well really quickly and really easily so we've started with one of my clients building really like changing the product name to include benefits that we're talking about specifically in the product name of course you don't have to go change Shopify product names anything like that pulling specific reviews that pertain to the benefit that the landing page and the whole funnel is talking about um changing up the copy and so basically I've got custom pdps attached to the back of Landers that I'm working on so that my funnels are just like incredibly tight uh and it's making a huge difference like we saw a huge conversion rate increase when we tightened up the PDP including the images the carousel everything we just arranged the whole PDP around benefits we were talking about there which is great right because normally when you're sending traffic to a PDP that traffic by the PDP has to be really General has to be able to um pertain to a whole bunch of customers but the whole value of format is that you can very quickly and at scale and with the help your account manager which we certainly used in this case right um go build out endless variations of tight funnels that you can test rapidly I tested this whole thing in their AB testing software everything is built right there really easy to use really easy to stay on top of just really awesome I'm really hot on this feature particularly in the product um and we're starting to do it for more and more and more of our funnels because I think having really tight pdps relative to the messaging at the ad level is a major unlock for how to make it so that your creative resonates all the way through the the funnel more deeply with customers including opening up new customers that you previously weren't reaching there's all kinds of different things you can do here I love it use formont check it out if you're serious about building funnels in your ad account go to format commerce.com forat commerce.com the links in the show notes to look into how you can build better funnels at massive scale for your ad account and for all of your traffic today so I did something sneaky here that you don't know about which is that I just also interviewed Jordan West do you know Jordan yeah yeah God figure right so you know he's moving his whole agent towards the social commerce thing and I did that without without telling you that I was doing that which is that I wanted to do a couple episodes in a row maybe I told you that I don't know but I told a couple episodes in a row hitting this and just sort of see how people say this because I just don't know anything about Tik Tok shop like it's just like not an area that I've played in I'm really interested in how many things you just said are exactly exactly in line with what he said it sort of confirms to me sort of from the brand and the agency perspective The Playbook perspective of how to think about the platform there's a few things I hear in in what you said sort of fit that one of them is just like the social commerce moment is a real thing and it's probably going to keep accelerating based on you know the platforms being what they are and the way they're building things out you know we haven't even gotten to Instagram doing their version yet or whatever like it's obviously it's going to come you know the way you described your relationship with creators um is really fascinating to me I mean Jordan definitely described it in in more financial terms in terms of some of these things but but similarly just like so much of this comes down to you're not just throwing a bunch of money at people on saying sell my product it's like use this love it let me send you the product let's definitely create a great incentive for you once that's once those things are established have real relationship how can we really be supportive of you we're not just trying to leech off of your following and your ability to sell but actually have real partnership in it you know I hear that there and then this halo effect comment as well I think is really fascinating which is which is like I I actually you know just from the way your story has been told um I sort of would have thought Tik Tok shop would have represented a larger percentage of your total sales directly but 5% is interesting as an indication of like actually no what it's actually doing is like it's the I don't know how to say it um it's it's like the only example I can think of is like it's like almost like a fullback in football and some people are not going to get that analogy if they're not football people but just the idea that like sort of Paving the way to have a lot of other stuff come behind it basically um but it's a it's it's a crucial lead marketing mechanism awareness Builders probably too light of a term because you're selling a lot of stuff still on Tik Tok shop so anyway I I think that's that's all um extremely fascinating all the way around because I think one of the dangers when people hear about new channels like this is that they're going to think about it as the channel is what works you know it's almost like it's almost like the channel works and so go go get just go make the channel work for you and there's truth to that the channel does work in a certain way but what you're describing is actually something different than that which is that like excellent use of every part of it so that this flywheel effect that you described gets spinning can make the channel work for you but the mistake my and I'm I'm curious if you agree with this the mistake people will make is they will listen to an interview like this and they will go like gotta get on Tik Tok shop it works and then they'll just kind of start trying to find some creators and throw money at it and that's it um do do you think that's accurate that that that's sort of not going to work for people it's sort of not that simple yeah absolutely um yes is the answer to that and so when we first got on the Tik Tock shop and again back last August when it came out of nowhere our biggest constraint at the time uh was activating creators cuz creators didn't even know it it existed it literally came out of nowhere but for us when we started it was right time right place and the right people I mentioned these kind of internal muscles that we had been developing over the course of five years like we were we were the perfect candidate to be teed up to have success early within Tik Tok shops and we had already done the hard work and to your point um if you haven't laid in that foundation and that Foundation is getting your products in the hands of creators like that that that's a lot of lift right there that's a lot of to get the momentum going and we had been doing that for 18 months leading up to Tik Tock Shops coming online and so we had already done the hard work and now uh creators could start benefiting from that and so yeah um I I think it it it is potentially a trap to hear success stories to think that there wasn't a lot of ground work done before uh diving in and finding success within Tik Tok shops there certainly was for us um and it's a long game we we had been developing um kind of again those internal muscles and getting our products out in the field uh for years leading up to that and uh and so yeah there's there's a lot of work that comes into it for sure let's talk about a little bit more of those muscle of the muscle building um because if that's the if that's the alternative to what I just said which is the sort of the Trap of thinking about this is sort of like an Arbitrage channel that you just go and put up a video and you sell Bunch product or whatever if that's the Trap break down the muscle building a little bit more so you you've referenced this a couple times you guys already had some muscles around this you were already creating relationships with creators what what describe that sort of before Tik Tok shops and what you were doing with them why you were doing it and anything you can say also about how much it was costing you would be really interesting as well um and sort of where you saw the return on it like just sort of describe that system yeah so early days what it looked like is really just doing reach outs um I'm sure these are activities that most other brands are doing today on Tik Tok well so even prior to Tik Tok even even before Tik Tok the platform not even shops was was around right we got our start on YouTube working within creators um very similar approach it's really just living within the platform within that ecosystem you know knowing the content and then starting to reach out to creators and develop relationships um engaging with their content and sending out product and so it's a long game and so that stuff takes a lot of time to to build up week over week month over month to get your product out to the field start getting videos going and we we had been uh disciplined in in just doing that in an ongoing basis because because we knew it worked because we saw with my wife Lisa we really understood the mindset and motivation of the content creator and if if you think about it and I I know you and your audience coming a lot more from the performance side of the fence and if you think about kind of inventory right from kind of a performance and paid paid media standpoint like there's certain amount of inventory that you're all buying for right within s meta right these Impressions these these ad placements when it comes to content creators they also are working with a fixed set of inventory right I mentioned my wife Lisa for the last 10 years been putting out 10 videos on YouTube a week every single week that's a fixed set of inventory that she has to work with right there's also the dynamic and again I'm bringing all this up to to help share our understanding of the mindset and motivation of the content creator and how Brands can best work within that understanding and so if you think about it a content creator many of them once they reach a certain scale will start engaging with brand brand deals sponsorships and having kind of hashtag paid type content right but they can't be 100% that right so there is an allotment of inventory and time within their platform and and contents definitely within the beauty category which is a lot about product reviews tutorials get ready with me so they're talking about product all day long and so there there is opportunity for a lot of organic placements to get your products in there and assuming that everyone that's listening to this checks the box like hey product is Stellar high quality like you're checking all those boxes like that's that's table Stakes right but moving beyond that getting your products in the hands of creators giving them the opportunity to share it in kind of an ongoing way I mentioned that our specific product makeup brushes and tools has the properties to be able to be shared in an Evergreen Way and so every single video There's an opportunity for the creators continue to use it that's not the same for some Brands uh so again there's a lot of dynamics that come into play from the product category your approach with creators your post frequency your ability for those products to to have a life shelf life within the Creator's kind of long-term um uh publishing standpoint and so for us we we were just optimized on a lot of those fronts to be able to Leverage organic side of of those placements very very well and so that that's really been the area we played with and so from a tactical standpoint what that means is just a lot of reach outs early on a lot of hey we love your content we'd love to send you product no expectations we hope you love it kind of thing some of those will we'll hit we'll be able to send those out uh again these are things Brands already know right and we support it with affiliate uh sales behind that and so once once we get up to Tik Tok and we can we've we were continuing to run that playbook for for many years when Tik Tok comes around and now we're dealing with a closed loop system and these products have a certain lift of virality and now there's actually mechanisms and mechanics within the platform to do inbound product sampling requests and so instead of outbound a lot of overhead where on YouTube internally there's a lot of overhead and reach outs there there's a cap to our ability to do that in-house on Tik Tok now once we get the Flywheel spinning we have inbound request coming in that the volume is just surpassing anything that that we could have imagined and the overhead internally to field those and act on them is very very low and so relative to say YouTube which is still a Powerhouse for us um we're on YouTube we're dealing with maybe hundreds of creators Tik Tok it's thousands like looking looking within seller center right now there's I think last I checked 20,000 creators who have tagged uh or in their product showcase our product and so the volume that you're able to tap into on Tik Tok is it's a different beast and so instead of placing bets and doing you know quality reach outs to individuals and placing bets on specific horses within YouTube stable Tik Tok you're just opening up the stable and letting the entire herd run wild right you got to give up a little bit of control right from a Brand's perspective and so that's something to consider uh there's there's a comfort level there it's something we got over very quickly once we saw success but yeah letting go of control getting your product out in the field in a very big way of course your margins have to support your ability to to do that all day long fortunately for us like we can support that all day long and so again there's there's all these qualities within a brand and the product category from margin to profile of product that could be optimized for Tik Tok and this Playbook I'm talking about whereas some Brands may not be optimized so much on some of these categories and it may not be the best fit um and and there may be not as much of a Tailwind that they experience behind their back literally as Paul was talking in this interview I was thinking about how if I was building out the content uh generation influencer seaing machine that he is building out I would do it with help for my friends at more Staffing I would hire someone in the Philippines who had a vision for what I was doing put them in charge of this program and get them seeding products to all kinds of influencers in the space there is simply no better way to staff up your team internationally in the Philippines than with my friends at more Staffing uh more staffing.inc talent in the Philippines I know this because I've built up my own internal team with more Staffing I've been working them with them for over a year I love them I'm going to visit them soon in the Philippines and keep working together more deeply because they are touching every part of my business at this point and I immediately thought about how if I was building out the thing like I said that Paul did in with BK Beauty in this brand I would be building that machine in the Philippines with people who were not just um cheap like not just $5 an hour virtual assistant level Talent I'd be looking for somebody to really run this program take over the communication with influencers think strategically about how to build it up because more Staffing gets you access to not just cheap talent but incredibly good quality Talent by paying above market rate in the Philippines or the high end of market rate in the Philippines you attract great talent and it's still way less money than attracting that same talent in the US go to Mor staffing.com Mor staffing.com okay I love what you're saying about category um and margin it like you have this element of I I think about sort of makeup brushes as a core product I think of it as uh presumably very high margin uh and presumably very cheap to ship which which has a real advantage when you're sh shipping out um a lot of product from a cost perspective to a bunch of different creators you can correct me if I'm wrong there but I'm I'm fairly confident that's right it also as you said with category like there's just so much content on the internet of of women showing their beauty routines and tips and and there's a sort of social element of it of different creators who have these different you know whether whether they're trying to build a giant following or they're just I don't know uh just showing stuff for you know some group that they care about some Niche they care about that seems like an endless amount of potential content there as long as the um content is basically right like you said you give up some control there but uh but but anyway it's it's easy to see how there' be how the category and the margin fit are exactly like you're saying here in in for you and I think that's a a very good very good thing for for people to tag as well here which is like this probably tells you something about how good or not of a channel this is um I I actually want to clarify one thing then I have a follow-up question to that the quickly so 20 you said 20,000 people have tagged you on Tik Tok is that right yeah a video that has tagged our products talking about our products or it's in their uh product showcase yeah okay and then of those of those how many of those do you think you sent free product to that's a good question um I don't have the answer to that I don't even know if I'd be able to find that outside of just looking at how many product samples we have sent out oh gosh I mean I mean guess what what I'm trying to figure out is like the scale at which you have been sending out free product to people you know and yeah and sort good question so so what I can say I I'll break it down kind of thinking through it I don't have the exact number but I can get to kind of an estimate by kind of stepping through it so we'll step through it so when we first started on Tik Tock shop we weren't getting any inbound requests prior to Tik Tok shop coming online a little over a year ago we had already been sending out product we're maybe at most sending out to Tik Tok creators specifically maybe 10 10 let's call it 10 a week 10 products getting in in their hands so so not a lot so prior to Tik toks maybe 100 plus people give or take right um talking about us when Tik Tok shop started coming online um our products and certain SKS were really getting momentum and lift and a lot of visibility within Tik Tok that happened pretty quickly within the first month or two and then this time last year was kind of a breakout month as we were entering into Peak holiday on Tik Tock shop at the time Tik Tock shop was offering a lot of subsidies and pre- shipping and just conversion it was so easy to convert at the time and so uh there was a lot of sell through from specific skes we're continuing to send out products do reach outs activate creators and it wasn't until I got to say December January where the inbounds product request really started to turn on for us within the platform um it got to the point where maybe January February and it continued all the way through you know the first couple months of this year but it got to the point where we were getting anywhere from maybe 30 let's call it 30 inbound product sampling requests a day I think it's it's subsided since but uh back at that point if you kind of build that out on a monthly basis that's upwards of about a thousand per month right and so uh if you kind of map that out um it's definitely several thousand product samples that we've sent out uh over over the course of the year um like several so out of that 20 it's 20,000 that that have tagged our products within videos uh we've sent definitely less than half of those were were seated yeah so something like that let's call it 30 40% of those do you guys have do you just keep a giant budget line item somewhere for this of just like or so so my what what good look what winning looks like for me is if everybody the in the beauty category has their Tools in my in hands so like no there's it's it's unlimited uh like just send it out yeah yeah yeah I mean yeah I guess just like I'm assuming you're just forecasting like yeah it's interesting the way to think about that right is like you're building everything towards the goal you just St stated you know like I know you don't probably have like a budget of like we're only going to give out this many like it sounds like for you it's just like the mass awareness that you're talking about happens via getting it in everybody's hand and so yeah it it's just interesting thing to try to forecast like how many how many is are we G to give away even from a supply chain perspective of just sort of like how do you make sure you have enough inventory if you're giving away I guess it's probably still pales in comparison to the total volume moving but um yeah it's a fascinating thing the other question I was going to ask you was specifically about Tik Tok do you know you might not know I mean it's obviously a perfect platform for what you're doing do you know anything about the demographics of Tik Tok usage at this point yeah so what we've seen definitely early days Tik Tock shop when when we're able to see like who's purchasing our product and ultimately like who is using our product on Tik Tok and talking about it it definitely started to skew to a younger demographic um early days for us on you on YouTube when first four years of building our brand um our core buyer was the mature woman and so people in their you know sweet spot was you know late 30s 40s but also 50s and 60s and up was was a big chunk of of the the individual we were selling into when Tik Tok shop came online and even to the point where we had specific products that were designed for mature skin when Tik Tok shop came online a little over a year ago we now had the opportunity and we were seeing uh even even content creators we'd work with on YouTube they would reach out to us and tell us hey my daughter is running into my room stealing my Angie hot and flashy concealer brush and so um yeah it just it it basically helped us um tap into a young younger demographic and kind of span that that age uh Gap uh to sell into kind of the younger space but that's not to say that um a full spectrum of audience is available on YouTube I think it definitely does skew younger but in terms of the people who are actually paying for products and have kind of their wallet open still kind of the 30s and 40s and up is definitely a strong category for us in Tik Tok these days matab Bogle coming back on the show in just a couple weeks to talk all about how to scale up your business while keeping it really lean clean and profitable how to manage people well you're not going to want to miss that conversation subscribe wherever you're watching or listening so that you don't miss out yep that that makes sense U it's funny I mean you may dise this I remember seeing a um a panel at like a meta event where it was like here's what gen Z is concerned about trend-wise and they brought on these sort of like 20-year-old female gen Z influencer types and I remember thinking like why why why are we listening to them it is people 20 years older than them who have all the money who are buying all the stuff everywhere know I mean there's probably you know there's there's some value to that of course in all kinds of ways but uh what you're describing is is interesting to me let's talk about halo effect other channels some of those things as well um including with this Creator content I'm assuming at this point tell me if this is wrong that your meta spend for example first of all I have no idea how significant it is in your business how big of a part of your total business it is but I'm assuming that your metas spend is powered overwhelmingly by um content that you're getting from these creators and other channels yeah 100% so we're spending about 30 % of Topline revenue on a media uh most of that is still going to to meta um I mean that's wild that is wild to me because e even for a brand as Tik Tok shop forward as you guys that's still a big junk of Revenue going to meta um it's it's like even for you a because people are part of the reason people are so um that's actually that's really interesting part of the reason people are so excited about a channel like Tik Tok shop right is that it diversifies their mix right they're they're able to get out of being stuck on meta which is what I think everybody feels um and yet even for you it represents a probably a very large portion of your total revenue uh anyway I cut you off but uh go ahead and keep saying more about sort of how that channel plays in and and how creative and all those things yeah I mean we're we're we're we're kind of hitting Peak holiday right now yesterday we spent six figures on on meta like it's significant um and so yeah from a creative standpoint yeah you're right everything is coming from just organically produced Creator content uh and the Beautiful Thing I think you'll really appreciate this is um I guess it was maybe last week you your episode was with uh pretty and fig uh talking about just like hundreds of creatives a a month in terms of just iterating iterating iterating and just manufacturing and optimizing The Hook and the offer and just all this kind of stuff the beautiful thing of and so we're spending eight figures on on meta ads this year right I'm a pretty lazy like I run I run all the campaigns myself and I just drop in Creative like it's not sophisticated but we're able to scale it because we have this this halo effect of awareness that's coming out that's hitting people from multiple platforms um the content performs really well on meta and the Beautiful Thing is within Tik Tok Tik Tok is such an echo chamber like I mentioned all the all the creators that are talking about a specific skew of ours let's say like one of our hero SKS the beautiful thing is the Tik Tok algorithm it's always been known for taking things viral right whether it's like a trending dance something some cultural phenomena and now for the first time over the last year it's now keying off of transactional data and those transactions are now propelling SKS to be able to kind of surge up and go viral and get this visibility and what happens with that is the algorithm is so good at picking content that is has tag specific skes and that content is performing and transacting is just optimized right and so everything that feeds into that from the hook the messaging like everything that's in there is getting more visibility within the platform and those Creator videos are taking off and being seen by other creators on the platform that are just mimicking that and just tweaking it further and so I we don't have to manufacture and op you know like iterate and test internally on the hook or any sort of attributes on the creative to optimize it that's done for us because we've let go of control we've put our product down the field and now I have an army of 20,000 people who are doing the work for me and I'm able to measure the performance of that organic content and then pull the winners out and drop them in to you know paid channels on you know within Tik Tok itself to get more scalable predictable Revenue but then ultimately bring it into new platforms like like meta and meta has the ability to really scale spend because that's what they do best and so we're seeing a lot of great performance there we just started on uh Apple which every everybody's talking about we started that yesterday we're only 24 hours in but that same content is being dropped in there as well and so it's a short form content that it's been produced and optimized for us and it's working really well on meta do you generate any separate ad content like do you like go make ads or do you literally just use only Creator content uh pretty much have only been using Creator content I just started building out some Statics because I I I feel embarrassed that our our campaigns and AD structures are so simple and and they're publicly visible through you know the Facebook library and like I'm just like oh I got I got to test some new stuff just so I don't look like an idiot here but it it works well too um and so yeah we're starting mixing some other stuff in the mix and it's working well Paul I don't I don't think anybody's looking at your business thinking that you're an idiot anything about it I think they're looking at it and going like this is awesome I mean it's it's interesting there's a way of telling your story that goes like this you sent product to influ to influencers and then you helped scale the influencer content with the available digital tools when the influencers created content and that everything else that you're describing is wrapping around that core Playbook now I don't want to oversimplify it in the sense of oversimplifying what goes into that right developing the product making sure it's great your wife doing 10 videos a week on YouTube that stuff makes a difference totally for how you got to the thing you got to deeply knowing your customer Etc but I think there's I think there's something interesting there to think about I remember an old diagram that Taylor and I used to draw for people I think proba Taylor first drew it and it was like it it goes like this like the adoption Cur for any product is that the first the the the people all the money the the largest group of people who will actually generate profit for you in your business those people um are gated to some degree by a group of influencers on the front end and so all the money comes from the larger audience uh in terms of like the profit for your business but this this this group that Gates it on the front end or represents the real Pathway to those people gate might be too strong of a word but represents Pathway to those people are on the front end and those are the influencers who influence those communities in various niches and all those kinds of things and the thing is getting product into the hands of those influencers is never profitable it's expensive and um and now I mean it sounds like you have some unit economic value you benefits that make it so that it was not so expensive for you guys but that you you know I'm you're I'm also hearing you talk about like spending years before the real op before the floodgates open basically of doing this kind of work so you you go and find those influencers and and that group is a smaller group that influences the masses and the best way to reach that mass group where the profit is is through that smaller sort of gatekeeper group um again even that maybe it's too strong of a word but that that idea and that that group is not profitable to reach um basically it's it's it's actually a cost center to reach them and that that successful businesses essentially just figure out how to solve that problem um on the Mark at least on the marketing side you know of course plenty of other problems in the business to solve all the time right operations and everything else I think if you think of the framework and again I want you to correct anything that I just just said if you think if you think I haven't laid out the right framework here if you think of that framework then every tool becomes available to you in so far as it creates a profitable distribution channel for that for that kind of content right like if YouTube opens shops you know YouTube shops and you already have the influencers part done you've already solved the gatekeeper problem basically right you're going to be able to take advantage of that channel the way other people can't well other people will Rush straight to the channel and they will not instead think about this real like simple this kind of fits with some things I've heard Taylor talking about a lot recently which is just like actually building a brand that has deep resonance with the people who care about it the most first and and thinking about how do we make sure those people really love this brand identify with it getting product in their hands and that can be slow work and look like if you do a great job on meta ads you can grow your brand pretty fast it doesn't have to be a super long drawn like you you can be profitable from day one in a lot of businesses right but that in the in the big in the grand scheme the way to make this thing really big like that is is basically through that fr work and then again as channels open up now you can take advantage of meta at scale and you can do all the tactics that make that possible and you know whatever listen to me and listen to other people and say Here's here's how to go do it here's how to use the channel okay but like but actually the thing that you have to compare to what what you said about the Jack Ruben episode is totally right which is like this ability to generate Concepts at scale via creators because you have the influencers already so you have The Gatekeepers so you go there Tik Tok shop opens up you actually already had the muscles built like you said you know that was sort of your framing of it is like muscles built and now Tik Tok shop happens and you are primed to go take advantage of the channel because you've You've Got The Gatekeepers solved and so as I'm thinking about this for my brands that I'm working with and and I'm sort of processing what you're saying I think that's that's probably the thing that I think we like I would say to them to do a better job of now for some of them this actually is prohibitively expensive there's some products that cost a lot of money to seed and it's a slower work and all those things but if you know who that customer is and you're deep on who the residence is then to go attack that group and um and I have actually seen brains do this well sometimes even if it is more expensive just by niching down a little bit more first so like you know you're talking about a category in beauty that is so gigantic and there's so much money there and so many influencers there like all these things so um maybe there are niches within beauty that you guys particularly appeal to you need mention some age demographics and some of those things and and you could kind of give me those specifics but you know I know I've thought about this sometimes where the example I always think of is Kao we started with Crossfit right we was a new brand and Crossfit is actually a much more Niche Community it's sort of the perfect Community for this and we were just everywhere where crossfitters were I've used that example million times I've heard Taylor use that example a million times as well but that is one of the ways you could think about this problem is like if you're going like okay I want to see that a lot of product I want to do Paul's Playbook here but I can't go and give out a thousand things a month you know I don't have that kind of scale like you're talking I can't I can't see 1 th000 products a month or whatever it is that is I think a way you can do this is to go find some Niche group where you're like okay we want to hit this subgroup and then and then what we want to do is is figure out how once that one is successful then you add the next group maybe it's a slightly bigger one and whatever once you've got to the profitable part of the demand curve you know or whatever so what do you think of that framework uh the way that I just laid it out do you think do you think that's about right yeah totally and I I think a way to abstract didn't talk about it in very straightforward terms is it's all about the path to the consumer right and how you influence those consumers 20 years ago when my wife Lisa worked at Matt Cosmetics the consumers would in our category they would have to visit the retail counter to get their education to understand discover new products they would have it was understood they needed to go there to inform their their purchasing decisions well fast forward to today that same consumer goes straight to YouTube that is where that the path to the consumer is to influence them to inform their purchasing decisions and to educate them about the options out there so good in the market and because of that um like that that's where we start we understand our unfair Advantage is having a direct path to educate the consumer help them discover new products and some of those products are are ours right and so that's where we play that's where we radically focus and it's about um the path of the consumer it's about understanding your unfair advantage and where and precisely when to apply that unfair advantage and for us it's working within the Creator ecosystem it's radically focusing on that Playbook I talked about and then from there everything else works right at at the end of the day if I get my what winning looks like is if I get my product in the hands of all these people people who control the path to the customer to inform them to educate them if I get my product in their hands everything else takes takes care of itself right and so I don't have a budget for product seating like again the more I send out everything else takes care of itself Tik Tock shop has accelerated this playbook in a in a massive way now that it's a closed loop system and the algorithm is really leaning into this um even even to the point where uh we we got unboarded into Amazon earlier this year the only reason we went in there is because people were searching for us like no other our branded search volume on on Amazon Marketplace was just shooting through the roof now it's command capture exactly and so we we excel at creating demand Tik Tock shop is a place where we do it really really well because of the mechanics and the the the mechanics of the platform itself YouTube as well and so again it's wherever these Creator the Creator ecosystem where people are consuming content five years ago I strongly believe that the sale actually takes place while the consumer is consuming the content they just have to click the description box below to visit my website to give me their shipping address and credit card so we can facilitate a transaction but now the transaction is moving Upstream to the point of consumption of the content and so it's just accelerating everything and so um so yeah I mentioned we got on Amazon we flipped on the lights and product into FBA and because the demand we had generated was so high overnight we were the the fast you know the the the top selling new new release in our category we have some of the top products there because um again it it's just capturing that demand that that we're generating and so we're we're continuing to apply our focus and that um unfair advantage and just radically focusing on that and again everything else takes takes care of itself from there yeah that's so helpful okay uh could do this for a long time with you I think your clarity about sort of your system is is really helpful but I'm going to pause there um we'll have to do a followup sometime if you got time is there anything else that I didn't get to that I didn't ask about that you think is really crucial to your guys' story that would help people think through how to apply some of the things that you've learned into their businesses um it could be talk Tik Tok shop demand curve related it could be totally unrelated to that something else that that you do but just um anything else in there that I didn't get to that you think is really important I think one thing is um you know you mentioned some of the Tik Tok uh lives that we did recently it's a big focus of of of what we're doing right now within the platform I think early days it was really the The Playbook that we've been mostly talking about which is a lot of product seing supported by affiliate commissions and you know layer in kind of paid to support scalable predictable revenue from there but but now it's coming online in a big way for Tik Tok shop and it's been our Focus for the last uh maybe four months now is is live streaming uh long form live streaming we've done several super lives which is eight hours in duration um they're they're pretty crazy those those lives are generating you know six figures multiple six figures you know a single live it's high your just does your wife just sleep for days after doing something like that or does she just have the ability to just turn it on for that long and be fine she blows me away because she comes from YouTube world where it's edited you know it's her in a room by herself and she can hit Paws whenever um but yeah these lives she was very honestly she'll tell you she was very intimidated about going into to live streaming earlier this year you know she got more comfortable with it and now yeah like again I didn't I didn't go with the team out to LA to to kind of be present on stage for for these lives I was watching them back here in Austin like like everyone else and uh yeah she just blows me away like she just she she has it you know and and actually so much to the point where you know I think live selling is is an area that we're really going to lean into in a big way going forward I think Tik Tok shop um and our experience that we're developing and again it's it goes back to these muscles that you're developing I I feel as though our team and internally live selling is another muscle that we're starting to develop and become very strong in and so next year um my wife Lisa is going to be uh live on Good Morning America uh next march uh live selling and so that that just provides again it's it these in I think the message and the takeaway is know what your internal superpowers are these muscles you continue to develop and work on and then understand where you can apply them in the market what channel what place and where where they're going to work best and and for us that's a new thing that's coming online but I think the message is you really got to look internal and understand like what your superpowers are and until you you know what they are it's going to be I think you're going to be trying trying a bunch of different things um with kind of potentially being uninformed and and yeah so anyways I'll go ahead kind of leave you with that no that's that's that's a great super tactical thing to to grab on to at the end Paul thanks so much for your time and for the clarity to all these this was this was a very helpful conversation for me personally I think I'm it's it's making me think about how I frame up things with my own clients some of those things so um so I appreciate it so much the link to follow up with Paul um is in the show notes but he's a good great follow on x um and on LinkedIn as well um Paul Howe and so uh I will leave the spelling for that into the show notes so go go follow him though it's it's really awesome and then go get yourself to BK Beauty for uh for holiday time for you for your partner for whoever um and uh and get going so uh thanks Paul I appreciate it so much and um I'm hoping we'll talk again next time your wife comes out for uh to La for for a live selling Day come with her and then let's get some food sounds great loved it Andrew appreciate it take care thanks and I absolutely loved that interview sometimes I finish a conversation and I think I've got to send this right away to my clients and this is one of those conversations I'm going to do that I think there's so much here that's so helpful I hope it was helpful to you do follow up with Paul to get more of his content incredibly generous sharing what he's learning at BK Beauty uh with a lot of people so go do that now uh if You' like to follow up with me you can do that at AJF gr. comom to see everything I'm doing at any given time you can also email me at podcast AJF growth.com or reach out to me on X andrewj Ferris I'd love to hear from you any questions thoughts anything like that are always welcome including if you have ideas for something you want me to talk about or someone you want me to talk to uh please send that my way don't forget to follow up with my sponsors they are really great I I work hard to vet sponsors that I actually use and so I recommend them to you go work with firmat Commerce by going to formont commerce.com to build funnels the same way you build ads and go to Mor staffing.inc thanks so much for watching and for listening do subscribe wherever you're are doing those things I'll talk to you next time [Music]