Opening The Books: Zollie transcript

new opening the books episode is here today right now we are about to get into it and it's a different one than the other ones because this episode is focused on launching a new product Sarah Resnik is the founder CEO of a couple of Brands including one called Z that is launching a really cool new product with real possibility of making a very big impact on Sarah's business and so Sarah reached out to me and said hey I've seen your opening the books episodes what if we did one all around how to effectively launch new product I love that idea and so in this episode we talk all about what does it look like to do a great product launch for a product that you are really excited about and think could really make uh push the needle forward for your business so we talked all about how to launch the product to returning customers to new customers uh the role that it will play in the ad account we talk about email SMS strategy uh how do you build buzz and hype around it and uh you know all of the different elements of doing a great product launch if you are launching any products in your e-commerce business and I suspect you are you would like this episode a lot let's jump in so Sarah tell people a little bit about who you are what your businesses are give people the intro and the context that you already gave me over email great so I'm Sarah I started my company just yarn in 2017 we make yarn for Weavers uh if you don't know what weaving is you might have seen like a big old Loom somewhere um that that's weaving you put you put yarn on that Loom and you can make fabric um people can weave tapestries rugs all sorts of things so there's huge Market of people who do fiber crafts in the United States and around the world and weaving is a niche part of that so we have been W making high quality weaving yarn um for years we also sell digital products we make weaving patterns and um we have become well known in our community of Weavers for providing high quality yarn and patterns um I just feel so lucky to have this job to have been a you know to be able to work with the people that I do to make the products that we make um I have a wonderful small team that is creating um you know working with designers to create patterns and making our making our yarn it's fun it's hard every entrepreneur knows that these kinds of things are really hard too but uh it's really special and we launched um coming up on like five or six months ago at this point our new sister brand called zali so our idea with zali is to uh open up the world of fiber crafts and making to a wider audience um so we make beginner fiber crafts for knitting crochet crossstitch embroidery friendship bracelets we have new kits coming up and our products are all designed for people ages 8 plus we include uh video courses teaching people how to do things and it's really just um meant to bring the warmth and vibrancy and creativity of crafting into as many homes as possible that's what we do um happy to answer any and all questions yeah you said your business uh has been hard but really but you're lucky to have it so you didn't you didn't find the easy e-commerce business you're telling me ha yeah I mean the yeah I think our path with gist has actually been pretty different than most e-commerce companies in the sense that we did not build off of paid spend um so that might be interesting to your audience we um started I started organically with you know an in account where I was posting daily about traveling the world and searching for yarn that I was going to buy and start selling soon and built up a small following of people in a a small email list that way and kind of just like slowly Grew From there um I was able to harness in the days of like 10 cent clicks on Pinterest I was able to build a couple thousand people into an email list um that got us grow growing through um what's it called through like a lead magnet um and then uh you know have built organic traffic and SEO from there and now the main driver of our business is our email list um and people I talk to our customers all the time and people love our emails like I just hear all the time people advising other people to sign up for our email list and I think that's just like a testament of um when you really have product Market fit and you have what people are looking for that they want to open your emails and and see what you're doing next so that um that's how we've built with gist I tried Facebook ads for gist over the years and they never worked I kind of always assumed it was because we were too Niche maybe it was just because I didn't know how to do it um but we didn't have um acquisition that way with zali we have a much bigger Market that we are able to reach and we are you know trying meta and trying other other routes to to reach a wider audience so so I take it you yourself are a weaver or at least were a weaver maybe maybe more of a business owner I you know I've never know how how Hobbies like that happen but like that that's how it happened yeah you started weaving and then started making products for Weavers yes totally so I have been a fiber you know I learned how to knit when I was seven from a friend's grandmother and then I kind of got into crocheting so anyone who's a fiber artist has a similar story um I love weaving it was always a hobby I started my career as a community organizer um but I moved into small business being curious about domestic manufacturing and curious about um employers making local jobs I was working for a cut and SE Factory for a little bit and then I I decided to move into my own e-commerce business and partnering with textile mills to make products for Weavers so that's how I found my way I didn't have any marketing or Ecom background before I started I love my products and my community you know so well it yeah that story fits I mean there's now a sub set of Founders who I think are like marketers first they kind of figure out the tactics and then they go find a product that fits that they like enough they're interested in I've I've come across almost no snake oil salesman in e-commerce like in D to see um people who don't really care at all about the product and are just trying to make a book I think those people might exist in like the affiliate world I'm not really sure I'm not I haven't been around that world very much but DDC Ecom Founders like you know so even even people who come in from sort of a marketing it's like if I started a brand right like I'm not a product guy I'm just not I just I don't have the skill set I'm not creative in the right ways and and all that stuff but um so if I started a brand it would be very much like that kind of thing right where it's like I find a product that I like and something like that but most still most that I come across are more like you where they have like they aren't marketers first and they certainly aren't Finance people first they did not come in because they love they love thinking about like cash flow um they they come in because they have a product and a brand and something that they love and they have vision for how to take that to other people and I love that because it's just like it comes through and people's Brands so much and it's it's one of those places where there's so much like real value and being contributed and added to the world and these sorts of things because I think about a situation like yours and it's like you know for the community of people which you mentioned as Niche but like who are who are interested in weaving now like there's somebody supplying good quality products who cares a lot about it who does it themselves and who's thinking really hard about how to make it better for them talking to customers all the time creating emails that people love and love to pass along Etc and one thing I'll flag right away is that I've been thinking a lot about this actually that um you know for a long time I have I have believed that basically every business can and should run meta ads and there's a place for them um I'm just for Ecom business right I just am finding a couple of cases now where I'm starting to think that maybe there's some spaces where they at least are a very very small part of the strategy if they're not at all I mean they it's it's hard for me to imagine that they wouldn't be useful at all for Brands you know even for something as as niche as as weaving but the idea of you saying like I'm going to put my time and effort into other things that are probably more important in this space because I don't have background with meta ads and um and it's not the main driver of the business is perfectly rational to me it's it's not in in most cases um in most cases that wouldn't be true but in a niche community in in in a niche interest like yours I think I increasingly of Bel and I actually just recorded a podcast and and um and released it uh at the time this will go live it'll it's probably about a month old but basically like categorizing different people's businesses and saying here's how to think about your business if you're like this or if you're like this if you're like this if you're margin profiles this way if your LTV profiles this way if your Tam is this way Etc um and and one of the subgroups that I sort of labeled is like the niche group and it doesn't have to actually be that small like I just mean it's like a sub community of some kind an example I gave there was like when I when I was uh with uh Kao selling silicone wedding rings right uh that like we went really hard into CrossFit and Crossfit is a perfect example of this kind of thing it's it's a closed Community it's not that big it's it's big-ish but it's not that big and the people are really interested there's an influencer Community related to it and there's a charity Community related to it and there's events related to it and people are working out together and so it it makes sense and this is I think the way people interact with a lot of like Hobbies or interests whether it's Fitness related or weaving or craft or whatever you know so anyway all that to say I think with what you're explaining with gist like it really makes a lot of sense to me which is where I or it makes sense to me that you would say we're going to be a content driven thing I'm going to talk to my customers a lot Community is going to be important to us we're going to think really hard about how to show up in the places where those people are be really core there and that's actually the thing that's amazing about that from a pure p&l perspective is that creates margin expansion because now you've you've you're not spending like so many e-commerce Brands you know 30% of your money 50% of your money on uh ads and that's you know it's the Zuck tax that most brands are paying um and so yeah so I think there's a a real opportunity the business doesn't have to get that big be really profitable in that case and so it's really cool um so having said all that zali is a slight different uh thing from there right correct me if I'm wrong here but like with this product that you're that you're uh releasing Z is an attempt to take on maybe a larger market opportunity than weaving is that is that do I have that right yeah and it's attempt to take a larger market opportunity than weaving and to take people who are just curious about crafts so they don't want to commit to buying a boom this can be hundreds to thousands of dollars they you know they want to get a a box that's like 60 or 70 you know less than $100 that's going to teach them everything they need to know and get them started on a new craft so they can see if they like it so that's a much bigger um potential audience uh because yeah it's it's really anyone who thinks that they want um something different in their life we hear a lot from people they want to stop scrolling they want something that's going to calm their mind you know they want like moments to themselves um moments of creativity people who you know are mostly focused on their jobs and their kids you know want something to themselves and like crafting can be that moment so um that is the kind of Market we're trying to tap into there um and yeah cool what are the core products for zly right now so people can know the website is ZM makes.com right yes it is and we have a set of five uh beginner kits and courses so each kit comes with a complete course um online video course that you can take asy synchronously that will teach you that craft and then all the materials that you need to make uh make the product so this is um this is our homepage and um we're teaching yeah we're teaching these different skills so each of our kits we partner with different artists artists receive a royalty for every kit that we sell they do the designing of the product um so we're really you know an artist first company and we're a yarn company so we use really high quality natural fiber Yarns in all of our kits and we just recently launched a subscription which you can see there which is the zali fibercraft academy we're still um we're working on figuring out the right way to prospect new customers for this so I'm open to any feedback you have but the idea here is you sign up and for five months you get a new craft to your door that you get to learn that's really cool I think that's really really cool have you played with us as a gift uh much like or seen people respond with that way like this seems like a for $60 to get five months of of new crafts for somebody who's interested in this it feels like a really good gift opportunity that is what we are hoping for we literally launched this that last week so we're we're still figuring our way all so we'll find out cool yeah yeah yeah really cool really really cool um it's beautifully packaged too I like it a lot thank you yeah this is one of those funny situations where I get on with somebody and the brand is also like so far outside of my um knowledge base in terms of interests that uh which I I I don't want to say sound condescending like I I think it's really cool I love that this like I was saying a second ago like just like people who are interested in a thing taking that and extend extending that to others is really is great like I love that um but um but I'm afraid to ask stupid questions right now because I just don't no no no I think help you coach me I think the general thing that I have learned about The Crafting customer is that they just uh love it I don't know that it just brings so much meaning totally to people's lives and um there are a lot of wonderful craft kit companies in our space a lot of wonderful yarn companies and it's just a pretty non-competitive um business phas I would say um and yeah that's that's where we are yeah I mean I definitely have friends who every time they are ever in my house hanging out just doing whatever if we're sitting and talking they are crocheting something there like you know they're just there's always something in there it's it is it is as strong of an addiction as anything I've seen people do like with with I think crocheting in particular is this way where people just carry their stuff around all the time it's zo struck me as like you know and and of course you know that means by the end of the night they've knit a you know sweater for somebody or whatever you know it's just like it's wild they're just sort of constantly productive in these really cool ways um but but obviously uh productive isn't really the point per se but yeah it's really cool I've been telling you about more Staffing for the better part of a year now I've had a great partnership with my friends at more Staffing I staff my business the talent from the Philippines for more Staffing you should do the same thing the value proposition is really really clear you can get incredible talent in your business e-commerce business agency business whatever it is from the Philippines uh and not just at intro levels not just virtual assistant levels of the business I was talking just last night with LA gavar the CEO of more Staffing who's at my house for dinner from the Philippines in town it was great and she told me uh about recently about one client that I had uh that had started working with more Staffing off of my ads had hired a customer service rep and now was hiring a director of marketing that uh from the Philippines for their business that is exactly right by working with more Staffing you find not just virtual assistant intro level talent for your business but like higher level manager director even executive level Talent uh to staff your e-commerce business and to bring real expertise and another thing that really stuck out to me actually as I was talking with Lura last night and another member of their team who leads the supply chain side of their team was just like the level of expertise these people have in areas of e-commerce businesses that I really I mean they're just way smarter than most of the people that I've known around these certain areas of the business and it's because there is incredible talent in the Philippines and if you're thinking just about cheap you are thinking about it wrong there is uh it is about more than cheap and you should be going and looking to add incredible Talent if you are a remote team already across every element of your e-commerce business from the Philippines it will be cheaper than hiring that same talent in the US of course that is part of the value proposition here as well but it will also open up for you incredible Talent all the way around you can run a lean Opex in your business which is crucial to running a great DC business and at the same time staff with Incredible hardworking high quality ethically awesome great English-speaking Talent if you have not yet considered hiring from more Staffing and you are already a remote team I don't know what you're doing go and do it go to more now.co now.co link is in the show notes as always to get a conversation going with them they even have a one- year guarantee if your placement doesn't work out in your business for a year they'll replace them for free go to more now.co and start working with more Staffing now let's jump over to this product you're releasing um so maybe I'll pull up the picture because the picture that you sent me really helped me understand this is and I also have it here so I can share okay great you can show people good of course you do uh pull actually I will I will okay so start by just talking to people about what this is so here is here isn't the doc that you sent all laid out which is nice um so it's these cards with colors and shapes on them tell people what they're looking at here and and what and maybe if you want to show them as well that's fine too but yeah so this is a new product called pallet Scout it's a deck of cards and it is aiming to teach people to explore and be inspired by the World of Color so over the years running a yarn shop I've heard a lot from people that they don't feel confident in color they love color but they don't know what is going to look good together and there um is color theory that kind of underpins how all of us see and understand color whether we know that theory or not and the goal of this card game is to make it um really fun and easy to understand those Concepts and to be able to pick out colors that are going to go well together so um you can is is it actually I didn't understand sorry is it is it a game so this is a really good clarifying question and I would appreciate any advice you have on like how we position it it's not a game in the sense that two people sit around and like you you can't win um it's it's um it's a it is an open experience where you can be inspired by looking at like you know a whole bunch this is just a few of them but we have 180 colors so you can kind of be inspired by them and choosing your pallettes and then we have challenge cards which are more of the game aspect of it which um Pro tell you to try something new with color like put together a color palette that evokes a feeling of delight like is the color palette do your friend put together do they look the same or different so it's open-ended it's not a Winner's game do you think we should use the word game or be careful to steer away from it okay but I actually think I'm Pro so I'm going to tell you my opinion because I have an opinion about everything but uh the um you should probably that's probably where you where my advice is not expert necessarily I here's here's what here's my I'll just tell you my initial reaction from the stuff you sent me to this the idea that there are people who want to craft or do DIY something put together a you know yeah whether it's crafting or putting together a room or something like thinking about how color yeah right right here's what I relate to there deeply I mean I say this to my wife all the time I I will like be like I I I will just say like can I wear this shirt like I'm right now you're probably looking at my my royal blue Dodgers hat and my maroon t-shirt and thinking like oh you need these cards cuz I I I don't have a clue I can't see and I can tell just like anybody else can when something looks good but I couldn't pick it apart for you you know it's not like it's not like an account where I can look at it and I can tell you what's happening under the surface just by looking at it right like the colors are there but the other thing is I also am well aware that this is not magic in the sense that like it's there's a skill to be developed and learned and you and it's teachable um because I've been around people who have learned it and you know who people always have the sense about like Visual Arts in general which is like oh I'm bad at that or I'm good at that and I am bad at it but I'm certain that I could get better at it if somebody taught me I would still probably not be great at it I don't think I have any natural talent but and there is I think there is such a thing as talent but uh but I don't um but at the same time that's so I so the idea that that you know you could have these cards as a way to guide me through color theory which is without having to learn color theory which um again is like a thing I'm aware exists but I don't I don't know that's the case now I'm pretty far from your core customer I'm probably not going to be a buyer of these cards either way but the idea I could see my wife who's not super crafty but wants to make things look nice um I could see her being like this is super helpful to me so the idea that it's a guide to how to think well about color in a way that's is going to walk you through that it makes so much sense to me um and yeah I I think it's a really really smart idea I have no idea are there competitive products to this that you've seen we're pretty unique I mean there's there's lots of color wheels there's there's lots of things that go into the indepth of color theory and those are important for art students to understand and designers um but there's nothing that is playful in this sense that kind of what we use is we use shapes so um you know this is an example of this orange carrot and it would tell you okay I could combine with like these colors or these colors or these colors and then I can go in and and find my deck of cards and like look for those specific ones and then kind of pull them out you know if you were decorating your house now probably it's not the 70s you're not going to use these yellows but like you can kind of hold these up in you know to your wall or to your outfit and say oh yeah like that comes from this card I can see it's this kind of color palette maybe I'm interested that that's called analogous maybe I don't care but um this is fun like I can pick these colors my kid can do an art project with these colors things like that so yeah and we want to be able to like reach a wide Market of people that think color is fun and are nervous about it so yeah yeah no that yeah yeah I so so at a baseline I'll say I I I see I think what you see here which is that there's real potential reach with this product it could apply to a lot of people so um let's talk a little bit about now how you're thinking about rolling it out okay what's the price point for it $29.95 okay and it's how many cards 108 cards 108 cards and then how how much help how easy for me to learn how to use these easy so we have like an instruction booklet that shows you how to do it there's a QR code um that you can watch if you want um but you're really meant to be able to like pick up this card and be able to immediately start making color palettes that was my experience with what you just showed me was like oh I get it you know and the what what are the little sub things it says like complimentary or whatever like what do the words say yeah so these are types of color palettes complimentary um monochrome analogous split compliment and triadic you can you want to learn these and our booklet tells you what they mean or you can be like I don't care I just want to play with color so yeah you know it's funny though cuz I I do like even that like I kind of get it with each category right away without having like it's it's fairly intuitive I think the idea that there'd be these different ways these colors go together yeah I mean you're a marketer you know color is very important in marketing you know there's different kinds of colors that are used for different kinds of you know to draw attention in different ways so that might be why you draw to it yeah maybe I I'm bad at visual design like I I'm I'm you know I'm a word person first and uh and uh so yeah that's which I think is a separate skill set but um the um okay so $29.95 let's start by thinking a little bit about how I think new products work for Brands and then we can J Jump into like what you're thinking right now about how it goes and then from there so to frame this up I think that there is a basic um there's a basic kind of way that um new product releases work in terms of the way that they create value for a brand okay so this gets out how I'm trying to think about how products new products work in businesses and it's really simple but I think it's still helpful to frame up the way that a product creates value so when you launch new products this is this is broader this is also this also references sales and things like that but basically that every new product creates opportunity in two areas of your business and very simply it's with new customers and returning customers and the Baseline to good product release strategy is to think about both um and think carefully about how your product is Works in relation to each of these this little cycle that I'm showing here is um it doesn't really matter which order you put these in you release the new product and then they all reinforce each other and so let's actually start on the bottom right with the idea of retention because this is probably I think a lot of the way at first you at least think about the way a new product is going to go on launch day when you launch a new product most of the value that you create is going to be with your existing customer list right and so job number one is to make that as valuable as possible so in a second I want to talk about how we launch the product to your existing customers and how we think about grabbing their attention and making sure they know and see all the things that are good about it um and I would think about that probably across both of your Brands actually that that this is something you promote to both both groups so retention becomes this this key part of it and one of the important things to note is that like I've talked about this plenty and I think lots of people have which is that like retention tactics only get you so far they work really well to serve A Moment Like This where you're going to launch a new product with real value potential in a business um but they don't do that much on their own they what they do is they they fuel moments and then generally have some ongoing things where you know you're sending emails Etc obviously I think gist you've got a good example of where where retention like sending great emails is actually getting word of mouth and is really important and so it's really worth putting the time in that's maybe one of those places where being in a in a sub community of some kind changes that a little bit where there attention tactics maybe matter a little bit more but for a lot of like broader release Brands um the key here is to to um uh create value in a moment like this as you launch a new product so you launch a new product and the product becomes the way you generate a bunch more returning customer Revenue the product becomes the way you generate LTV it's not just send more emails about the stuff you already have um for a lot of Brands now if you're a supplement brand or something like that it's a little bit different but um but in this case that's the way it go so that's that's job number one and so that's one of the things I want to think about here is like how do we do a great job releasing the product so that we capture the attention of the audience you already have sell more product to them create a and that always sounds so mercenary but it's create value for them um in a way that creates value back for your business okay so um so that's the goal okay then job number two is to think about how um that ends up also producing additional reach and additional value because every new product especially some something like this that you know has or you have good reason to believe has potential ability to reach more broadly into new audiences I would say um the the question I'd be thinking about here is okay then how do I take that once I've already done a great job and release and at the same time get it out in front of new audiences um and produce additional value over more time in the communities that I care about so you uh generate additional value and grow the business as you launch products and each product I think uh functions kind of like as its own uh pipe or something and by adding more pipes you have more ways for people to get through to your business basically it's something like that kind of analogy um and that then creates the opportunity to acquire new customers with with high performing ads this slide references ads it doesn't have to be ads it could be organic content whatever um and then that cycle reinforces at some point as you acquire new customers you will think of new maybe there's an maybe there's a secondary uh product alongside the um pallet Scout game or I call it a game there but pallet Scout card card deck right um that is like pallet Scout extension pack or something you know and it becomes like part of how you know you go from there and um and so and so then of course what does that do that creates additional opportunities for retention or maybe it's even like a completely complimentary product that you know the c p Scout retention pack uh retention p uh excuse me expansion pack probably isn't um a way you really acquire new customers you can't probably go put that product in the ad account because it's complimentary to this one but maybe there's some other color related product that is a totally um it complement your current brand but at the same time also gives you opportunity to reach new customers entirely right so apparel businesses are the classic example of this where every new product is an opportunity to to not only sell to your past customers but to reach a new customer right every new shirt you release is a shirt that somebody new might be interested in when they weren't interested in any of your old shirts or whatever so um so that's how this works so that's the way I want to think about this problem in two stages stage one how do we do a great job on launch stage two how do we scale it basically from there and how do we create more opportunity so I'll pause there any any thoughts on that anything like that yeah I'm excited to dive into all of that we do have some companion products that are already in the work so I can talk about that if and when that would be relevant to this conversation yeah let's um let's let's let's put that on the back of the conversation um and and maybe we'll get to that as well perfect yeah um okay so let's talk about the launch strategy when um we're uh we're recording in April when are you planning on releasing this so we are going to do a pre-order for this for our existing gist yarn customers in May which is a couple weeks from when we're recording this and then we expect to launch to um like when it arrives into our warehouse all of the products in late June early July we expect to launch then um we've done pre-orders as a strategy for growing our business for gist since the beginning so like when we do new yarn lines um we can generally like fund our production orders through those pre-orders from our customers and we give them a discount and they get to be part of it and um yeah so that's what we're planning to do for this launch with those customers okay I love that so the um the pre-order I was going to ask you a little bit about because one of my first questions actually is like your ordering strategy here before we even get to a launch have you already placed your order with your manufacturer around how much of this stuff you're going to order yeah we ordered 2,000 units and they are expected to ship in two weeks okay great um how aggressive or conserv is a 2000 unit order for you Cashwise and audience sizewise so Cashwise it's not um you know it's a it's a lot less expensive of for manufacturing than yarn a new yarn line which is typically what we make um the the cache that really went into this was the product development I told you it took two years it's a lot of graphic design work um y uh audience sizewise it's it's aggressive I mean it's aggressive um but it's a new product for us so we actually don't really know how aggressive it is right when you sell yarn you sell it in 15 different colors and so one card deck um we'll see it's new for us yeah I mean it's it's it's a great product if it works especially because it will scale really well like you know it's deck of card so I assume high margin this is sort of like the um it's almost like Pharmaceuticals or something like that where like you said it's two years that goes into it so like the first deck of cards is pretty expensive to make but the second deck of cards is very cheap to make you know and that's that's the way like Pharmaceuticals work right the very first pill you make is very expensive but once you make the second pill it scales really really well uh because once you have this product then it's just a pill so uh so yeah the the the same uh the same thing is kind of true here so I assume you know at 30 bucks probably really high margin in the long run in that respect which is great um and so that means Cashwise you're probably in good shape on release I like the idea of ordering to really be ready to push hard for that reason um probably not going to get yourself in a big cash trouble at this point by having too many of them 2,000 is a lot but it's not crazy you probably sell those um and again at the kind of margin you're talking about that's great so okay I like that um and it's one skew So eventually long term if this goes great you should have an easy time managing it and if it becomes a you know $15 million product or something like that for the business it should be fairly easy to order so um all right uh so that's great so okay so the pre-order strategy let's talk about that a little bit how have you done that in the past how have you um how how much advanced notice how much of a discount and how are you sort of looping people into that you also said people get to be a part of it and I'm curious to hear you talk about that a little bit more too sure and I think this is a little different for yarn than for this product but so the first um yarn line that we ever made um had a $20,000 minimum order for me to order from the mill and I did not have that kind of money so I um uh you know we I made some samples took like two or three photographs of a few different colors of this yarn and described it to our email list and asked people if they wanted to pre-order it um and help us make this yarn knowing that like if not enough people ordered I would just refund their money we didn't use Kickstarter or anything it was just on our website and um pre-sold more than enough to fund that first purchase order and um kind of Get Off to the Races and so that was um that yarn took us seven months to make negative cash conversion cycle which is a beautiful thing I mean it's a real Testament to just how wonderful our customers are because there's so much great yarn that you can buy and get right away like why would you wait for seven months it's because people um love small businesses in our industry and they love yarn and they just want to they want to help um so and probably speaks to you having treated your customers well for a long time being authentic and core in the space it probably speaks to how wonderful you guys have been as a company so that's awesome yeah you've built trust that's that's brand Equity that's what that is yeah we have we have just has a lot of brand Equity zali is new so we're working on building it and there's some parallel Equity because of just but yeah so that's what we've done that took us seven months to deliver and what I mean by be a part of it is I sent a plain text email to all pre-orders every month saying like you know this month we we're dying the yarn and like these are the delays we're seeing this is the problem um and that meant that like very few people I actually don't think anybody said oh it's taking too long refund my money um so that's what we did for that and we've done that we've now launched six I think six yarn line six or seven yarn lines in that method um this C um deck is a little bit different because um it's not a yarn line like it's not it's not as complicated yarn takes many steps it's a lot of it's expensive there's a lot of stages of manufacturing to bring people along um we want to do a pre-order for this for our gist customers mostly because we think they're going to love it we want to give them the first chance to get it um and give them a little bit of a discount and an opportunity um you know to just be the first to get a product that we're really excited about so hopefully we will get reviewed right away from people who know and trust our brand and get it right away um and that that I think can help us with new customer acquisition so that's another reason for the pre-order from the marketing side the pre-order strategy yeah that's great so I think that's I think the negative cash conversion cycle thing is really helpful for something like this I think it's also you know a yarn line feels like it's not a very Buzzy thing even though people like it and are excited about it it's you know maybe that maybe that's wrong but um um people love yarnes Yeah in our world yes they love it okay yeah yeah okay awesome that's good to know I think there's always a thing that um entrepreneurs want in a in a situation like this where they've got a new product they're excited about which is which is this notion of building Buzz um and I think there are potential ways to do that sort of but it's sort of a little bit different than what I think of um ultimately as the goal like I think that in the for most product releases you you want short-term Buzz less and long term sustainability more that's where the actual value is going to be created um unless you're going to be unless you can really create a lot of buzz but I just think it's it's that's a really hard job and probably requires a bunch of dollars uh for most brands right because it normally requires getting like serious influencers in the space involved and and all that stuff and I would think more here um about how does this product become really really core and a reliable resource to a broad range of Crafters in the space so that it becomes like a like I said like like a resource is kind of the right word like a go-to resource that a lot of DIY and crafter types know exists have on hand use as they're putting things together and it just becomes sort of a co-pilot to them as they're as they're um working on different things and that's my sense of your vision for the product yeah exactly so that's GNA take that's a big Market there's a lot of crafters and and that's going to take time uh to penetrate in that way so I think what I would think about um Mo first is just like how do we make this experience great for my current audiences and so so um I think you've got some basic ideas right right away um and I'm going to tell you what I would do generally but I'm going to also asterisk this thought right away which is that you have this thing which is that you are core to a community and you don't want to do anything to risk your reputation with them um at all to make a bigger launch day right and so I'm going to suggest to you the way I would think about this you may need to tweak it for this particular audience I would be really careful about you know for most brands I'm like you can't email too much it's impossible for you I I think you probably can for you I think people are going to tell if you're getting like greedy you know um and in your case I would probably at least especially on the on the gist side um where you just really want to make sure that people know that you are um really attempting to create value for them and not just take value from them and so um so here's here's the way I would begin to think about some of these things so I love your pre-order strategy um you said you're going to release to full audience in June pre-order in May is that right uh probably July I mean whenever it arrives yeah right okay okay so um is there and you're going to do a discount for those people for pre-order yes and we also built an online course about color theory that we're going to sell but we're going to offer it for free to our gist yarn customers that pre-order okay I think that's great so here's here's the Baseline thing I would do for almost any product release um I would be thinking the in the short term about how you stay in front of people in the long term I'd also be thinking about how to build a better list for the next product release and what I mean by that is so do you is SMS a big part of your strategy at all we don't use SMS at all for gist we probably should though yeah um okay here's what I would tell most people let me let's think about this for just versus not what I would tell most people is your SMS list has its maximal value at moments um and at moments what I mean is product releases and sales basically um and so and holidays and things like that uh right so like if it's Black Friday um SMS is better at than any channel at cutting through noise and actually reaching your customer what it's really bad at is messaging uh it's expensive the moment that you get past 140 characters or whatever it is that gets you off of a single SMS text it gets really expensive really fast um and and so what but but but what it's great at is like deliverability people always cite these stats right you get like a 99% deliverability or something with SMS which is like of course quadruple what you get for email or something and so when you want to reach somebody at the exact time of release SMS is an unpair tool um because because you can you can hit people at a even even like even at a specific time you know you can make it so that you hit them the moment you have release if you're gonna have a limited edition product or something like that you can make sure people get the get thiss right away so what I think of is like there's a lot of ways to build an SMS list including with your email popup on site and you know have SMS is a second stage of that you know SMS at checkout and those things definitely help you can build a big list over time I know there's some tools that come out around that but my favorite tool for this is to use the moment to um build your SMS list for the moment and then also for future moments and so what I would typically do is I would take an audience and I would say via email we have a new product coming it's coming in two weeks and start two weeks out something like that it is going to be awesome we spent two years developing it we think it's going to be a huge help to you in a whole bunch of ways if you want to make absolutely sure you do not miss out then what the best thing to do is to sign up for SMS list we will make sure it gets in front of you that way that day and when you do that we will give you x uh for free um so one of the simple things to do here would be especially if the product is going to have any potential limited edition like if you think you might sell through all 2,000 of them um then that's something that you could say essentially like will'll get you earliest access to it we'll ship it to you first you'll you'll be the first ones to get it and it sounds like people are really invested in the business in a way that they might really value that um and say like you know we're going to order these you think there's some chance it'll sell out we're going to make sure you're first on the list and the way to do that is to be the first order the people who get the first opportunity to order are going to be our SMS customers are people who are on this list and that's the way we're going to do it don't worry we are not GNA send you an SMS three times a week you know and you really aren't right like it's just not gonna be good so um so um so then uh then that SMS list begins to get built for this moment and of course at the moment of release your SMS list is going to smash it's just going to um now you the only thing I'm the only hesitation I have on this is that your email list I bet already performs awesome um and so it may actually create cost for you that you don't need at least on the gist side I think for zly where you're really looking at being a little less Niche and a little bigger it's the place where I would invest in that even more um and what I might even tell people on the gist side is zali is going to keep moving forward essentially with a bunch of stuff if you would like to get on this list um for zly that's the place to do it and so essentially they know they're opting past just into z um and that way they um they they kind of are engaged over there as well uniquely uh they may miss your Z emails even if they get all of your just emails Etc and so you might be able to sort to engage them with this other brand in this in this other way and they probably are a powerful group of people to be thinking about with that um you can even probably sell them the vision a little bit here if they're Weavers they're deep they care a lot they they might be excited about the idea of like hey what we really want to do is take the joy of crafting and of all these things and um and get it out to a broader group of people this has been really important and meaningful in our lives this that's what this tool is for it's to help other people get engage get engaged with this and that's what this whole brand is for we've got these starter kits and these gift kits and these things like that so that people can get their start they may not be ready to weave on day one but they may be ready to um start with making these little you know baskets or whatever that you had that you know um that you that you had as sort of your starter kit thing so that's probably the first thing I would do is I would think about building you building a pre-order early first access SMS list and the way I would do that is like two weeks out out one week out and then like two days before launch be hitting them a few times and of course exclude everybody who's already signed up for the list each time you send right so hey just want to give you one more chance uh we're gonna have this release here you can get on the list you could do that so to me that's like Baseline and for anybody listening listening to watching this almost all products work well this way and that SMS list overdoing that a lot of times gets more and more powerful at every moment and crucially when you get to moments that are more competitive like let's say you are a father's Day or Mother's Day or Black Friday or Christmas product specifically and those moments are really big for you like that SMS list becomes incredibly valuable at those Peak moments where it's really competitive to get people's attention um because it's just cuts through noise so so well so it's sort of a short-term long-term thought and so are how are you doing that you're emailing your customers and trying to get them to opt in you're doing it on organic social both of us okay uh emails email is the the first thing so they it would be an email a pre-order email it's the other thing is like it'll even if they don't sign up for the list it warms them to the idea so so two weeks before because people do this sometimes where they are trying to build up Buzz for a product right and they say they send a teaser email and um that's fine as far as it goes but also um probably at the same time like you want to give people an action to take if they're excited about the product right so otherwise you say like this thing is coming talk to you soon you know like uh instead give him a CTA sign up for this list and make make sure you're notified honestly even if the the only CTA you give them is like opt into this email list so even if you don't go the full SMS route opt into our pre-order list they're already on your email list but it just might give them like a you know a subset just just another reason an action to take a micro conversion people will say right to just kind of get excited about it and makes them think about this idea that it's coming Etc I've seen people do things like you know create a calendar notification or something like that like that feels like a little bit of a to me I don't know you might be able to do it for for an audience like that I've never seen I've never like done that I've heard of it um but yeah it gives people a reason and then it also just tells them like you know hey this product is coming get excited about it Etc yeah email to ANS typically what you do is like make a CTA the CTA goes to a page where um you know it's in I mean incredibly simple page like a few lines of text with a SMS number box on it and you just say like put in your number here sign up boom and and that's it so um okay um any other questions about that no it's definitely something we'll consider I mean we are collecting smss for zali we're just like on a much smaller scale there so we we will use that and then yeah we have to think about the gist part it's hard to know I guess without testing like I feel like we can email them for free like then they will yeah but I I totally understand about cutting through the noise with SMS and also just having another way to reach people is valuable so it's a good idea to build that way and like I said it's it's partly the short-term bump like that SMS list will perform um at that moment the SMS list is partly for that short-term but it's it's also partly a long-term game it's like it builds a list that's pretty hard to build otherwise and it builds a list of people who I mean who are self- selecting into being your best customers right if they're the kind of person who wants an SMS for a product release uh does that so and then yeah and of course anything else you want to say in there like whether it's like you get it first or you get a special offer if you're on the SMS list something like that um yeah you're giving them some value back for it um my favorite thing to do there is you get it first and the reason for that is that um it works really SMS is really good at reaching people fast and so um so that that's useful on its own but it also doesn't doesn't have to give anything extra it's valuable to people already you know if you ever release like a limited edition product or something like that an SMS list is insanely valuable because uh because you know for people who then then people really do need to like the timing mechanism to be right you know so yeah and then are you asessing people and then sending the email like an hour later or like how do you typically start i' send it a little later than that probably but yeah something like that because then you're excluding people who are purchasers from that first from that first email right so um so that way they don't get like spammed by you or whatever um okay so that's the first thing I would do uh is like build that list the second thing I would do and again send a few of those it allows you to it's a it's a excuse to send teaser emails as well um and to get people really excited about it if you have video content that you are ready to put out before the product is actually released um that's another thing you can do is like send people um a teaser email with a link to that video content and then in the video content you can send people to sign up for the SMS list or something or um you know there's a few things you could do there um so just give people a next step to take every at every step of the way uh so they just have a way to keep opting in to to if they're excited about it to to making sure that they get it into staying engaged with the brand in that way okay and this is not to cold audiences this is only to people who already know us right okay yeah correct anybody on your email list I mean they don't have to have bought from you U this is also where I'd reach deeper into your email list you know if you are excluding unengaged people from your list right now put them back in there for this because it's a totally new product um you know you're not going to get dinged with your deliverability by sending one email to your whole list like so um so yeah so if you you can definitely go really far on something like this and that's another broad Point here at Major moments at least send some of your emails and some of your SMS to your full list um even if you're not normally doing that uh then then at least some of at some of those moments some people will re-engage on that stuff so yeah okay um that's probably step one um step two let's talk about the content for it um what are you what content are you currently creating to go along with this so um there's going to be a 90c product page video I think I included the script for that at the bottom of that document that I sent you that's going to show people how it's used um we're going to make a when you have the you mean what for people who haven't gotten the product yet right like for correct yeah really just like basically how are you telling people what it is and how it's useful because I think this product requires a little bit of explanation um you know it's like what what exactly is this and why is it good and so I would think carefully about that yeah so there's that video which that's for like when you're on the product page that's not an ad um but like really showing what it is we're we're going to have lots of Photography and then we need to design some really great ads yeah okay yeah great yeah so this this brings up ads brings up another thing which is um some people wonder about what about using ads for retention audiences and for reaching your past customers I think when you have a product that's new it is a good idea to put a little bit of spend behind putting that product in front of your past audiences some people just are not going to get your emails they're just not that's the reality of the world you live in and so just like anything like um you know exclude people who have purchased that particular product exclude people who have purchased in the last couple of days or something like that but but otherwise um put together something simple um video wise uh that I think an explainer is perfect for somebody who knows the brand already um and run it to your past audience at a very low spend and aim at a very high return so the goal here is not like the goal is just to stay in front of people for relatively cheap it's it's actually not too different than SMS in this respect like SMS you're going to get a whatever Roi on it a five or a seven or a 10 to one Roi depending on the cost right met ads can be about the same as that where to a retention audience is people who already know you you're just wanting to make sure that you don't miss out and I don't I don't have a problem spending a little bit of money to do that I would probably just wait a few days before you launch those just like that way anybody who buys over that time doesn't get hammered or whatever with those and you save a little bit of cost but even that I don't know I mean I don't mind you're not you're just it's just not going to be that expensive to do it um for a very small audience like that uh uh so that would be one way to do it and if the audience is so small that meta won't actually let you target um that group of people because it's just too small of an audience or something then just include website visitors or something like that so we can we've we can Target our email list we I should say when I say we don't do meta for gist we just don't do new prospecting we sometimes do retargeting so yeah and I think that's fine it's highly profitable I'm skeptical of like how much meta should get credit for it but it is profitable well that's that's exactly right if it's highly profitable that's the whole point right you keep you hold it to a very high standard and say like it's Pro I me know if it's if you're getting a five or a seven to one or something like that you're you're probably hold it to a click only um performance Target right because you know again view view conversions are going to be really messy here people are getting your emails and stuff already so Etc but look at a click only Target and say if you're getting some large number that you think is reasonable for your audience then that's fine I'm willing to pay yeah 10 bucks on a $100 order or whatever it is to make this happen or 20 bucks in my bet if you are listening to or watching the interfer podcast I hope you already know that you need to have upgraded pixel tracking uh uh pixel event match quality for your meta ads integration this is a well-known thing there are a couple of third- party products out there but the one that I use with my Brands and my products is Billy B billy. a uh and that's for a simple couple of reasons first of all if you're using the standard Shopify meta pixel installation you absolutely right now should stop listening to this episode and go to billy. a and change it so that you actually use 100% server side tracking with Billy instead of the the native integration that you see in jifi you will immediately get a better event match quality uh in your meta ads and that will help you see more accurate data in platform also feed meta better data to optimize against as well so that's just a no doubter I have also tested Billy against multiple other thirdparty 100% server side tracking setups uh pixel installations and it just beaten all of them uh in every measure that I can think of right and so I've actually gone and run split tests in my ad accounts where I I just send the traffic across to different pixels repeated this test a few different times and Billy has out formed all of the other ones that I've done there also cheaper than the other options like meaningfully cheaper than the other options out there for many of you who are listening to or watching this podcast right now you basically need to sell one more product per month and Billy will pay for itself maybe two uh it's it's really that affordable it's unbelievable how disruptive pricing has been um and so go check out right now billy. a b. to upgrade your tracking uh save some costs on your software and give meta the data it needs to optimize as best as possible at this point this is just a no doubt part of your techto for an e-commerce brand go to billy. to get started [Music] today okay so um that's a simpler thing um okay content is coming I would just make sure that the same thing like promote your best content to your list and I would probably think about that after the release so initial release happens maybe you've got your one if that content's on the PDP they're going to see that there but you know do an explainer show people explainer email here's what it is here's why we're excited about it it's live now go buy it they get to the um PDP and it's going to have that video content on it Etc and then what I would do is I would be willing to email at least a little more than usual um after launch so if you're three times a week normally for gist I might be willing to take it to five for one week or something like that just to like really signal to people we really think this will help you and make the content good here's a project I did with this and let me show you exactly so one of them is explainer here's what the product is ETC that maybe its own email after release so um so start with just like what the what the product is it's live now go get it email number two is something like um we put together a video showing you exactly what this is here it is and there's a like a play button on it but the play button just takes them straight to the PDP and they can see it there um and uh go watch it now and learn more about it email number three is here's me I like your outfit thing I think is actually kind of interesting like here's me doing three things with this here's me picking out an outfit with this here's me looking at DIY project with this or a something around the house with this and then here's me doing some weaving with this and picking out my Yarns or something like that I don't whatever um and you might actually create a specific piece of content like that for the just audience right a weaving related uh piece of content just to show them how it's useful to them specifically in a way that's unique to them um and again like just sort of get it in motion you know email number four is plain text if you didn't see it's going great we've sold a lot of these people love them um and uh we want to make sure you don't miss out you know the whole point is very vary the content keep it going and signal to your audience between email and organic social for sure um here we really are excited about this some of that organic social can be Stills some of it can be selfie videos like just like you don't have to go crazy in terms of expensive or like make the greatest content history of the world just signal to them we think this is really important and we want to make sure that you see it all over the place that you are engaging with us so that they know that you're excited about it essentially and that it allows you to do U or allows you to kind of communicate that as clearly as possible um that audience between SMS pre-order um those emails organic the stuff you'll do on your website and all that now you've basically tapped every channel you have where you have owned audiences and a little bit of paid um you you now are going to make sure that you get in front of them and that's basically what you want to do here so they're very excited about it U I don't know there's a great way within your existing customer group to build more Buzz than to do that and to just like expect that at every touch point we're gonna make sure we hit people yeah it sounds good any okay great all right cool guessing you were probably already thinking about that some yeah I mean it a lot of that except for the SMS mirrors how we think about pre-orders from yarn launches and we hadn't necessarily been thinking about hitting so many emails for this product launch but um I'm going to rethink that because I I like your idea of how you stacked those three you know those three suggestions so yeah yeah and yeah and people will people will feel that if you normally send three a week and you're sending more they'll go They're not going to be annoyed they like you going they in fact they like hearing from you this is this is why they send up for email list in the first place everybody's too afraid of annoying people as long as the content doesn't suck they're not going to be annoyed um you know so yeah um and you do actually have this opportunity to kind of create two moments with it because you've got your pre-order moment where you're going to do that and then you can basically rerun the playbook in a very similar way when it's actually live and just I mean I would literally you know maybe exclude people who have clicked on those emails or something like that so but like basically relaunch the same emails change the subject line um and you know and say hey it's here we're excited about it it came out even better than we thought all that kind of stuff you know um so yeah you you can basically do that in two different moments um great okay let me let's talk a little bit about one other thing though um which is I am curious how you're thinking about this product in relation to influencers in the spaces that your Brands exists um do you have any plan around that right now great question uh yes so we have put together a list of number of influencers that we're going to reach out to um people that we have relationships with and people that we hope to have relationships with um we're going to be reaching out to people and offering a free product like with no ask in exchange essentially so not like out of the gate trying to get paid gigs but just trying to see where like who's interested in this who actually seems excited about it and then I'm definitely open to like an affiliate or other sort of paid collab for you know for where it actually seems to have some traction when do you think you'll get the product or also when you release the product so we are air shipping one carton of it first so we're going to try to send this out to influencers I'm curious what you think of this timing but like two weeks before it launches because we don't really want people making content before it can be bought but we also want content at launch hopefully so this and this is where I would say I think at this part of the strategy um if you have I would make a distinction between influencers that you already have relationship with where you know if you reach out to them and say like they love you and they want to support you and you say like Hey we're so grateful this is a big deal to us um we'd love to send it to you for free would you um if you are able to or if you're willing to um you know you want to post and you can have a specific code I don't you could have an affiliate thing with them something like that so they have a little skin in the game and say like just don't post until this day but we want people to again see it all the places that they're already engaging with things um so that's but that's you're not going to be able to get that to happen with people who are not already engaged with you as influencers right um so yeah so I think that's probably like the like launch and retention part of the plan is to think about it like that and then what you're really hoping for with those people and what I would probably keep trying to nurture is like is you want them to actually use the product that's what matters the most here because in the long run the real value in this product is going to come in stage two the retention moment you're probably going to do a great job you're all things I told you are not rocket science stay in front of your list build an SMS list for the short and long term um you know all of those things will help you have a bigger moment but I'm guessing that that bigger moment is not going to be like life-changing business changing moment it's going to be a really good moment for a good brand which is great those are great I don't want to I mean again it's two years of work to get there there's a lot of Blood Sweat and Tears involved good moments are great and they're worth celebrating so I don't want to pooo that too much yeah but at the same time in longer term for what you're trying to build with Z I think you know from what I hear you saying I mean maybe we just pause there Z you think has upside to be a much bigger business is that right yeah I think so I think it has a potential Market that's a lot larger of people who want crafts that are a little more portable and uh easier to learn than weaving um so yeah there's a larger total addressable Market with Sally and these color pallette cards um Scout like really goes past um you know pass makers into diyers and into people like that so yes so let me let's talk about this a little bit what what is your what are your hopes for Z in terms of how big of a business it can be what are your what you whether you want to call it hopes or dreams or goals any of those kind of forecasts any what whichever language you want to put around it what are you thinking about it in terms of yeah we are in too early of a stage to forecast zly I would say um but I hope that it can um you know that together these Brands can become an figure brand right now we're a low seven figure brand with with gist and I think that um the synergies of these new companies of these two companies together and that you know this overall we're a yarn a yarn company um selling to to broader audiences can get us there that's my hope um and we're still figuring out how to get the traction for zali to make that happen Okay so we're in like stage one I would say of that cool yeah cuz you said you you launched this company what what did you say like six months ago or something like that seven months ago the end of September 2023 okay great yeah so really new still okay okay yeah um and we've tried some Facebook ad you know we're trying to get traction um but still haven't hit it yet yeah yeah um yeah you know what though I mean you showed me your Facebook account like we we don't have to go into it really but you're not too far away like you you're not getting com like I realized that you you know you weren't profitable you turned it off but like you've got some ads in there that are right around a one to one return in that early of a stage for somebody where that's not their core skills set I think you should feel pretty good about I think you're not you're not in an impossible spot here so would you keep running I know that's a side note but like you would keep going with unprofitable ads or no I wouldn't keep going with unprofitable ads and I would definitely run manual bids what I would do is though I would keep iterating on creative in a way that um that went after it you know you you you uh had a long form explainer in there which which I appreciate seeing somebody who listen somebody listen to my podcast and I look that and say like okay you gotta start creating variations for that um just like take that basic idea and start making variations to see what happens especially with this product so I mean that this gets actually outside of the influencer conversation though I think that's important in a second here um and I would say like Z has more of an opportunity for meta ads than gist to be a real impactful thing and I actually think this product in particular could be really Mass Market I think um and so that's where like an explain of saying and and it's high margin which is a massive advantage and if you've got like a like a digital piece of uh like a digital content with it you've talked about now you can bundle those drive up the aov a little bit from 30 bucks to maybe you can get it to what 50 something like that that's a hope yeah yeah great that's $50 is such a reasonable entry point for a customer to get real value from your brand with explainer type content um and and and uh and for you it's incredibly high margin and um because it's digital content and then a deck of cards basically and that would create the opportunity for you to really scale that and you could get some more so I I would be thinking about how I could build a plan on ads to go like okay let's build a Lander with a special offer gives people reason to take their wallet out right now um You can run that probably at a pretty low Rass and and make money on it still and have an entry point into the brand um and and run that alongside other stuff that you're doing I think I think that could be could be really really good so yeah that would be like a longer term thing here is like and that that gets into this next stage of how I would approach this I I just think that the the product really lends to the explainer concept if you're gonna already make an explainer video on your PDP anyway I mean just flip that thing into an ad put a manual bid on it at the point that you're going to be profitable like I you know stuff I talk about all the time I set it at a bid cap and see what happens see what happens it's so low risk to you is as long as as long as you're running manual bids it just won't spend if it if it's if it's not going to work and if it spends at your target great now you've got a profitable growth mechanism uh without having to do a whole lot more work so um yeah let me pause there because I just floated through a few Concepts but um but yeah any thoughts or questions about that I mean definitely I am turning our meta account back on um to work on to to do pallet Scout part of the reason I turned it off is I wanted to conserve some of our meta spend resources to be able to try for this new product I think we learned learned a lot about messaging over the past few months trying meta of like what was selling well and those got better it started to tank again related to I don't know I mean our cpm's just doubled I don't know why um and so we had to anyway that's why I stopped there but um it was a pause not a stop and I want to try with this new product I think an explainer video is really um solid I put bid cap ads up there the way you suggested and got just like Z like no spin I don't know it just wasn't it wouldn't spend at all but um I'm going to go back and listen what to do when that happens yeah we could look and see if we can figure it out yeah I mean I mean at the same time what I'll tell you is that your bidc cap ads like your your per your ad performance was you know probably well under what your bidc caps were set up profitability wise right like yeah right and so bid caps may have done exactly what you asked them to do which is don't spend you know so yeah right in that case um that's that's that's possible at least there potentially some settings issues and making sure attributions aligned with optimization and all that stuff but um but if your ads aren performing then the bid caps suppresses them but that's the beauty in this moment right as you go launch a bunch of new stuff and you're creating a bunch of content for this thing you then can eliminate the risk of blowing a bunch of money on Facebook ads which is how business go broke you know um by just like launching at a bidc cap and seeing and you could start the bidc cap a little bit more aggressive if you wanted like hey in the early stages we're going to aim it at a one to one just to see if we can get some spend get some feedback about what's going on we're probably not going to get totally SL on that even though we're losing a little bit of money on the cogs or whatever um and then you take it up and say okay now we're going to go for a 1.3 or 1.5 or whatever and and see how it goes and and again if you can get that then you've now without even doing any additional work really right you you're already making the content you're already building the PDP you're already buying the product you already made the product so now you can just sort of see in this risk-free way do you have this opportunity to really scale it um you know so maybe after you release it we'll have to do a followup episode to see if we can make that you so if our aov was going to be 50 you would just set that bid cap at 50 and load all the new creative prob launch yeah probably on launch I would do something like that it depends on how much risk you're willing to take financially and how where your cash is at and how much you want meta to be a part of the strategy but again I think this is more mass market for just I wouldn't do that for Z I think and for this product in particular you you have this Advantage Sarah right away which is that the product is high margin yeah um once again it's the second deck of cards right is high margin and so um and and so after you put all the time and effort in developing the product um now you've got this opportunity to potentially scale it really really well and get it in front of people and that's what meta is just magical for so um yeah I think that could be could be really good um okay let let's actually jump over to um well actually let me pause on that really fast high margin in meta ads is a cheat code and so you know there are all kinds of brands that are doing well that you don't realize that the reason they're doing well is not because they're any better at it than anybody else but because there's something about the product and its economics that are just better than uh make it or make it you know better quote unquote they just make it easier for using paid as a lever for growing the business really fast and um or something about the Tam or something like that in this case you've got maybe some of those things you've got um again I'll reference back to the episode that uh that you haven't heard yet but that uh people may may have now gotten to at the time that they're listening to or watching this which is just like you've got a higher margin product who knows what the LTV is going to be but there's decent tan that's a good case for meta to be something that can be a really valuable thing um for this for this so um okay influencer so here's here's actually what I think um I'm really curious about people people a lot of times think about influencer as a mechanism for cool basically like how to use be cool for people and that's probably valuable I think for you the really interesting question is can you get people um okay so this is not a part of the internet that I delve into much so I'm going to ask you to correct me if I'm wrong um but um uh there's not a lot of this on baseball Twitter you know so that's that's my corner of the hobby internet okay have our Corners yeah we we certainly do um so but um my sense is that you know you mentioned Pinterest earlier um I'm actually gonna talk with my cousin next week who is starting to build like a digital product business around like interior design inspiration that she's doing and so she feels like exactly I've thought of her a lot we've talked about this like um I'll send her a de for okay great she she'll definitely do yeah I will um so she so like for somebody like that what I would want to see is that people who are doing that and actually letting people into their process are making videos showing how they are using the deck in their process that feels to me like the place where this could work and what I would be doing is I would be especially because the product again is high margin at this point I would be thinking pretty aggressively if I was you about a seeding strategy where anybody's content that makes sense for this and again I actually mean you mentioned outfits like I think that's another really interesting idea here that like you would go to people anybody who's doing something where they're showing their design decisions in relation to color and I would say I think I can help you and I think I can make this better can I send you this and for free hands down you know uh we this is a concept that goes back a couple a couple layers um but the idea of giving Palms down right if you give somebody something Palms up you're asking for something in return we're saying you're giving Palms down I just G to send this to you and do that and then you want people to actually be using it and actually be showing it in their process that's my vision for how this would would have the largest potential impact um and then from there if they do that you can start creating Partnerships with them getting that content putting it in your ad account Etc but this is the way I think this becomes a really big thing and a really big business is that you you end up um getting people to use it get the content so they're posting about it organically you're getting the content you're doing that and then you're probably creating your own organic how-to content as well right so um so you're generating a YouTube channel or Tik Tok or whatever it is to do um to to create a bunch more um volume like that um so okay again I'll pause tell me what you think about that I love it I mean how many people would you suggest that we reach out to like in that launch phase to try to get the scale that we are looking for you know I will give away as many of these products as I can so it's not about the budget of the product um it's more about so what is the limiting factor then uh the staff time to like reach out to people which that doesn't or not even reaching out doesn't take that long but the research of who it is so I'm curious if you'd have a target of how many we should do and like how many per month or things like that yeah so I think what you've you've hit here is the operational challenge of influencer Outreach at scale um and it really is an operational challenge first and foremost and I I will tell you exactly what I think my answer is to this and that is an overseas employee who does this all the time um you can make this very cheap for you find somebody who is super excited about interested in your brand and whose whole job it is to take care of this because there's actually another couple of operational processes too which is like once the person's interested then you have to get their address and then you have to send it to them and then you have to follow up with them to see how they like it then you have to monitor the content it's like a bunch of work um and my own or you know this could be an interns job if somebody like loves your Brands and wants to do this but when I've seen this done effectively um what I've including when agencies do this for people what they are almost all doing is finding an overseas employee um and I'm not saying exploit them I pay them Fair wage but a fair wage is a lower wage than it would be to do the same amount of work here um and uh and so so you would you would um you would find that person and you would uh get them involved and begin to give them a profile of what they're looking for find somebody who is smart and motivated and excited about it and who can um and who can begin to handle that Outreach uh and and tell them like you know our hope is to give away X number of these per month that's your that's your target um is to do that with um qualified people and then to monitor the posts afterwards and as you monitor the posts afterwards we can then use those in a bunch of different places including our social and our out account account Etc um but you will get good stuff from people who who are doing that so that that's probably the way I would handle this is as that I think you could do that in a way that was like even if it's a part-time person overseas something like that you you could do that in a way that was like really budget friendly for you that did this at scale and could actually develop an organizational skill set around this that could really really matter um so yeah that's that's what I think of this how does that hit you um it's an interesting idea right so right now we have um the person Anna who's managing our social media and also does a lot of other things at our company she she's incredible she's doing influencer Outreach she's the person who I want to keep have doing that for now I think it also builds it's also about building relationships and um you know for the company and like she manages all of our ganic social strategy and so I think um there's a lot of value in that in that happening inhouse and like those relationships being really um native to our internal team so I like that's how I want to keep it for now and is doing influencer Outreach and does have time I just mean like you know that's not her full-time job um so yeah I hear you on that strategy but I'm curious um also I want to you know I don't want to add more opx expenses related to this right now so I want to use the the Staffing that we have and I'm curious within that like if you have a sense of for launch you want to have a hundred or a thousand or is that just like totally arbitrary as many as you can I mean yeah I think it's pretty arbitrary I think I think the question is how are you going to get value out of the content because I think the posts themselves are going to get a little bit of value there's like a longer term game of and this is why I would think about this as not just a launch strategy um but I do think influencers an important part of this again I think I think you want to have people using this stuff and showing how they're using it in their content and in the stuff they're creating um and I also think that like there's affiliate and some of those things could could really work um you might even Target a sub Community First or something like that to say like we really want to get in with the crocheters or I don't know whatever you know um uh whatever group it is first where you where you stay a little more targeted so you don't go quite so broad because then you'll you'll end up multiplying your sort of touch points with the same people which could could probably help um but this is why I think like I I think what I might do is have Anna manage that person at some point and maybe the way I would start is to have Anna start this process for you and if you see real traction with it I mean if you run into a brick wall and nobody's cares and nobody's interested then you to solve and you don't want to have to reduce Opex because the same thing I think what instead if you see real traction and scalability for this um this is where I would um uh that's where I would maybe bring in somebody that Anna manages and that person handles the Outreach and those kind of things but then as the relationship comes in first of all I would think of that person as part of your team actually I'm not you know and so that's that can be part of it um I understand your point though um and maybe at some point Anna takes over the relationship or or if that person is really fully part of your team they can they can manage it as well but the um uh yeah I think the question is how are you going to get value out of this though and my answer to that would be probably in the ad account over time is the way you um pour rocket fuel on the value for it and so this is where again like the the manual bid strategy combined with the margin combined with the content you're going to get is is really key so my friends at kinship uh the influencer marketing agency this is like how they build things for a lot of Brands is they they just get Mass amounts of influencer content by doing Mass Outreach and then they just shove all that stuff into the ad account with cost caps uh or bidc caps uh I think they're cost cap people sometimes they run bid caps I think I'm I'm more bidc cap guy but what I don't actually don't care that much like as long as you're running manual bids to scale it like you um you then allow the machine to promote the best content as and by best I mean the stuff that resonates the most generates sales for your business um from those influencers and it becomes a way to multiply that if you start doing that and it starts to work and you start to get to a 10 20 $50,000 spend on that that's where I would then take that next step and say okay Anna you need to actually multiply the Outreach here and keep that going and go really really big because again I this is partly just my vision for the product but I I think you could get this into a lot of people's hands and so I think with that kind of upside right means means that you you have to think about scalable process to really push this really really hard and if this becomes a 10 15 20 Dollar business you know if Z does um which I think is totally doable then then you have to start to think a little bit beyond the initial thing so I think you're right like keeping an an's hands at first get her to do to do that I don't I wouldn't and maybe you give her a number just because it can be helpful as a way to manage people to give them some kind of accountability to something um but I might give her like an Outreach number and say like these are the number of people we want these are the communities we really want to Target first and foremost and then from there that's where you um think about scalability over the longer term um so is uh so how about that as an adjustment to what I said yeah I mean I um if we get to the point where we are seeing so much sex success that we need to like multiply that um yeah that's that's an interesting strategy to think about and I really hope we get to that point where we're where we can like get that flywheel and get that meta um spend spending I I really believe in the potential of this product and of all the products we're making it Z and it just and I I want to be able to get them in into a wider audience in a way that I can afford so yeah yeah yeah and and again again the short-term long-term here I think this is where like meta is so powerful is that like if you have a high margin product and you can hit on this it's just like scalable fast um and so like again you could just imagine a like I said a $50,000 a month spend or something like that coming fairly quickly on this product because you've got Mass Market potential and you've got margin um so that's that's not crazy to me that you could you could that really really quickly and have a positive returning thing then that money that you make off of that begins to fuel the ability to scale it more and probably the next place I would go from there is to think more about you guys developing the organic content and maybe you have influencers doing it for you for your channels um but you are showing okay here is how I'm doing this with again crochet weaving here's how I'm doing it with my outfit here's how I'm doing it with DIY here's I'm doing it with home projects whatever and you now are are doing um your content strategy become okay come with me while I make X and in the process you're always showing okay I'm picking out my colors here's how I'm using the cards to pick out my colors um in this case I want to do uh complimentary colors and so uh there you go here I want to do triotic colors for this one Whatever so if you um and then then you're showing people how they do it and now for any product like this I think what people have to be able to do is see how it's going to fit into their process and into their life and so um you are going to show them over and over again how to do that and uh at the same time generate organic views in the process that's I think the way this becomes takes it to another level and maybe even integrates with other products you're making and all that kind of stuff um make really good content for people who are going to really like it and I think that's gonna be a no-brainer for you guys you you you know these people well you know yeah yeah Anna who I mentioned earlier has lots of organic social ideas um in that realm that she's working on building out content for and um yeah I I I really want to put that into meta too so is it really as simple as just putting it into the bidc cap ads and like I think it is going honest to God I think it is like this this is the thing that's this is like people I think sometimes people don't understand the magic of this and I I sometimes am astounded that they don't like the idea that anybody fights me on manual bids um and and not you Sarah like but because I think you're coming out of pressure but like it's just insane like if I tell you there's this machine that makes it so that you don't spend money that's unprofitable for you but you do spend money as quickly and aggressively as you want when it's making you money well I mean the theory of it is perfect you know that's like the the uh the Holy Grail what would you you looked at our met account a little bit um yeah for the existing products like would you just keep trying uh the current way we were we tried both uh I actually can't remember the terminology of the non- bidc cap but anyway the one where you can lose lot of money Auto bids um and we I like I like your better though um again you know like I am so passionate about and believe in our products I think we're just not kind of like hitting the right messaging to hit the right customer I don't think that this is a a product issue but we have um like our highest rowes has been a I think a 1.3 or 1.4 and then started to tank again would you just keep trying to make new kind of creative and put it into those bid capap campaigns that were spending zero and just see if like eventually it would spend on something or does Facebook kind of already think do you mind if I pull it up yeah please yeah okay great all right and this is relevant to this product because I'm I would like to just start with bid caps because I I did not have success this other way in terms of profitability Y um yeah so okay so a couple things I would do right away so um so I've just got all your ads all time you've spent 30 grand you've made 15 on click 16 with view conversions as well okay so you're at about a0 five R it's going to feel bad but it's not as bad as it looks and I'll tell you why in a second the the um the first thing uh the first thing I would say is um uh view conversions should probably go away you should just go 7-Day click only and you need to probably think about maybe you just Target like a one to one on 7-Day click I have already set up I think let's see yep the hfg dashboard here aov okay so you're running like a $76 aov on these products it changes all over the place when you set your caps they need to be set relative to aov um and so right so one: one on $76 is different than a 1 to one on $134 this is a very small sample set because it's purchased um there's only six purchases here so who knows what the sort of realistic one for each thing is but like maybe a simple way to do this for the new product would be to set it for a one: one on 7-Day click so if you again like let's say you think it's GNA be a $50 aov with your digital content as well you'll probably lose a little bit of money on that but over time from day seven to day 28 there' be delayed purchase value right does that concept make sense to you yes it does yes okay great cool so um so that uh there'll be some uh increase over more time let's see what that is so far for you this is in the weeds a little bit we'll look at click only here and you've got yeah you've got some uptick so from from day one to day seven you've got 178 to 189 purchases and then you've got another you know 11 purchases from there like another 5% lift basically something like that so yeah not a not a really big lift from day one to day 28 but um that's it's okay you've got you've got some there so yeah so you maybe maybe don't want to go quite a one to one maybe you do 1.2 or something on 7-Day click and if you want to be like if you want to do this the real spray and prey method which I think is not a bad idea at all you just start shoving all of this content into the account at like a number that you really believe is actually profitable and if it doesn't spend it doesn't spend that's fine um and you just you just accept that you just say like we're not going to try and get spend under Target we're just going to start spending um above Target and that's it if it doesn't spend it doesn't spend uh but do you keep spending money on creating creative if it's literally not spending like yeah um I would take no spend at all as a pretty strong signal that you're not close and so this is another distinction that I would make from some people some people really like the idea of getting spend because then they can iterate off of what the results are and I think um I always reference this but um well I think there are some people who probably have a skill set around doing that and they've got a real method for doing that in a way that that makes sense and that's reasonable to me I think most of us don't um most of us don't have a real way of evaluating that information effectively and turning it into iterations in a way that's really good if I see an ad not spending at all I just I'm not going to go try and rep I'm not GNA try and tweak my way into when I'm gonna try something completely different because I want uh if I want a range of outcome outputs I need a range of inputs um and so the the the farther the output is away from what I need then the then the bigger of a change to the input that I want right does that make sense um so it all makes sense in theory does Facebook think now though that I don't make profitable ads yeah I mean I know Facebook thinking but yeah yeah so this is another thing I think that Facebook is really good at reading engagement signals on ads I think I think it's better than most people think that basically within a few Scrolls of people looking over your ad I think it's getting some signal right away and I think within a hundred Impressions I think it has more signal Than People realize this this is a this is a a this represents a level of confidence in the machine learning that most people don't have that I have um and so that's that's that's why I would do that and and here's the bigger point though Sarah like what I would say is you actually have something why knit with Z this video you're actually not very far away at this point what what kind of R do you think you need to be profitable um at least a one and a half yeah okay so so you're not there but you're at like a 0.93 here with the most spend of anything you got and you know I think that's really interesting and meta has done a good job it looks like let's see in this ad set yeah I mean it's it's doing exactly what you want to do right it's promoting your best performing ads to the top maybe this one is the it's basically little smaller I think it was using the long form explainer as like a you know lower in the funnel and then yeah together those were converting I mean I had these on until we went from razes of like 1.3 down to like 6 or whatever and our cpms doubled for the same ads over the period of two weeks and I was was like I I put in a bunch of new ads and nothing changed and I was like okay I don't that's pretty frustrating yeah I and it could just be reaching different people uh it's hard to say quickly but yeah no I I think I think that's what I would do I think you have some signs of of like not of reasonable life here of being not that far away and I think you know I would I would begin to um begin to keep keep uh playing with us now again I'm thinking here more of the new product than the stuff that you have here where you probably yeah you could probably win on a pretty low row ass or at least get your money back and get and and keep playing the game right and so as far as like the money that goes into the creative what I would say is get your phone out um yeah reduce reduce the money um that goes into the creative like take an image a screenshot and put like an Instagram style caption over it and do that five different times so each caption is different and go get out your Post-it notes I mean you got creators create something cool that says something like learn color with the you know I don't know you know like um uh and and do it in a way that you know you guys you guys should have an easier time I think than others of like sort of grabbing attention with visually interesting stuff um and like I said you know the Post-it note is like a a stupid idea but it's like a very cheap simple way to just like get your phone out and try it and um and now this is where the influencer content comes in right what I would say is uh the same thing like launch your manual bids put in influencer content in there and um and see if if you can make it work because if it can then that can that can really scale even still what I would be thinking about longer term is how I also create an organic content engine on this now that I think is the thing that actually takes a bunch more time and money and that's that's um part of the challenge for for doing this like it tends to have higher fixed costs basically associated with producing it over time and so you need to clear a certain threshold and have a sort of a timeline to um generating a return on it that's a little different than Meta Meta typically you could sort of scale winners really really fast organic content requires time to build up your subscribers and requires time to build up your followers and requires time to you know unless you are like have the viral on command skill set you know um then then that's that's uh that's the reason why I would put it second but I do think your product lends very well to that and I think you can be native to sub communities in a way that would lend very well to that subcultures yeah yeah I hope so any thoughts I'm excited about this it's been helpful to hear your ideas and your different strategies and your your hope for our meta account um as well so yeah I mean I'm going to make a lot of new ads and just do the um bid caps from the start which is not how I launched with these kits from the start and um try try that way and um yeah also work on the retention part and get in front of a lot of influencers yeah yeah and again that's what I'm really thinking about here for some product releases for a larger brand with larger audience control I might think about this different I think for you I'm really thinking about creating audience with this product in a way that is you know or you know demand generation not just demand capture with your existing audience so I think you've got a good strategy to to create a really good moment with your existing audience I'll be really curious to see how they respond to it have you seated it like to them at all yet um not the actual product because it's still in manufacturing but we've been talking to people about it and they are excited um I think it's going to be a hit with our current audience for sure so yeah your team internally feels the same way people are excited about it yeah so to recap let's just let's just do a quick recap here and then I'll just give you space if there's any other questions you want to answer so use it to build your SMS list within um on launch be comfortable sending a good amount of email um give people some kind of early access benefit to doing that and then email a lot especially that first week of launch repeat the Playbook when you get to um when you get to the full launch do the same with Organic content run some ads at a very high margin uh uh with the gist people especially and obviously Z that list is going to be pretty small so far so um so you probably have to wait a little bit there but um but that's that's where you're starting uh for there as you also go uh Anna is going to take over continuing influencer Outreach we're going to probably give her I think um oh I want to ask you about this is there a subculture a sub community of some kind that uh you are going to start with specifically before you go super Mass audience um besides weav which you already yeah um we had been planning to kind of go a you know a bunch of places at once you think it's better to start with one place and then grow from there I don't know I um I think um it's more cost effective is is sometimes the deal like and it's you can multiply your you can multiply your value by hitting the same group of people and becoming native to one space before you try and go truly Mass Market um I always think back to my Kao example for this because when we when we did CrossFit with Kao which I mentioned earlier um the truth is there are lots of people for whom K ring made sense some of them for safety reasons if you're working with metal objects at work all the time or something like that you just didn't want to wear a metal ring like uh there's like all kinds of people who who have that kind of component you know Surfers are not going to wear a metal metal metal wedding ring but might want to wear a wedding ring around like you know like there's just like all kinds of uh things uh like that that you could think of but CrossFit made sense for us because it was a a relatively closed community with its own influencer set its own events like I said all these things that kind of made it so that people access the community in these ways where we could show up in all the places those people were I mean we were sending Banners To gyms like and just saying like here here's a cool Banner to put in your gym with a famous CrossFit athlete also it's CB Banner you know um and people loved it and they thought it was awesome and so um that's a capellic argument for yeah if there's something like that if you can be in all the places where somebody already is and that customer is really super core and Crossfit also worked because there was a real sort of need for it like you can't really do serious weightlifting with a metal wedding ring on um and yet I think a lot of people specifically in a gym setting want to make it known that they are married and so um and so like there is a a real kind of it fit really well with the lifestyle um in a lot of different ways so I would think about that for you I would think is there a way for you to and maybe for Anna's Outreach efforts you know for you to do these are there events that are events of a certain subculture that you can show up at and come with whatever your products are but especially with this color thing and walk around to everybody there and just hand out cards to people who are important at those like I just and and I don't know these spaces the way that you do but um if there is some community that looks like that then it's really good CrossFit also worked because the community itself lended to that like I said it had its own internal group of influencers its own internal group of events its own Charities its own all these things that made sense for us to do that and there may be something like that for you as well to be trying to give back in certain ways and um some some of these places even have their own retailers that you can set up relationships with at certain times and so um and so yeah that's probably the the one thing I think about when you have a smaller budget you can make a larger impact in a smaller space and then from there it can spread out um or or you just create a bunch of value there and then use the money to that to fund your next one or something like that so and that was I would say the mistake of K actually as we started to go out from there and try to get bigger um and we went into like four different places we tried to do sort of Pacific Northwest type outdoorsy uh folks you know like rock climber uh that kind of thing and at the same time think like Hunter uh outdoor those communities don't get along and so like so you know so then like trying to be native to both of those as a snake and we put some money into surfing and we did you know and it was like oh should have gone instead to one group and said we're going to go here next and this is going to be the next place we're going to be um and and repeat the Playbook a little bit more um so that would be one way you could do it if you're thinking longer timeline build you could do that at the same time put it into your ad account and see if it works right like just we were doing that to AA right uh and so yeah so I would say I've seen it work really well for people to do that you have this power a superpower of knowing these spaces and these customers really well and I would say if there's a way for you to think about like we know exactly how to be native to these people we are these people that's really valuable yeah um yeah I'm very lucky that everybody on our team is our people we are all makers and um yeah I mean I think part of what I'm excited about with our influencer Outreach is just genuinely to see who likes the product and uses it and I think that that might indicate like more where to go and who um finds it easy to make content about it that is relevant to their audiences right CU there's one thing of like you use it and there's other thing of oh this is interesting enough and easy enough for me to film that I want to show people so yeah yeah I think yeah I think that's right I think uh it has broad application but there may be some