425: This 1 Strategy Grew Her Water Bottle Brand To 10M+ With Alicia Reynoso

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You’re listening to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and dig deep into the strategies they use to grow their businesses. Today I have Alicia Rinozo on the show. And let me tell you why she’s special. Alicia has taken probably one of the most saturated e-commerce products that you could possibly sell online and turn it into an eight figure business with this one single strategy. Enjoy the interview. But before we begin, I want to thank CleoVive for sponsoring this episode.

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Always excited to talk about Klaviyo because they’re the email marketing platform that I use for my e-commerce store and it depends on them for over 30 % of my revenue. Now you’re probably wondering why Klaviyo and not another provider. Well Klaviyo is the only email platform out there that is specifically built for e-commerce stores and here’s why it’s so powerful. Klaviyo can track every single customer who is shopping in your store and exactly what they bought. So let’s say I want to send out an email to everyone who purchased a red handkerchief in the last week. Easy. Let’s say I want to set up a special autoresponder sequence to my customers depending on what they bought, piece of cake.

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and there’s full revenue tracking on every email sent. Klaviyo is the most powerful email platform that I’ve ever used. You can try them for free over at klaviyo.com slash my wife. That’s K-L-A-V-I-Y-O dot com slash my wife. I also want to thank Postscope for sponsoring this episode. If you run an e-commerce business of any kind, you know how important it is to own your own customer contact list. And this is why I focus a significant amount of my efforts on SMS marketing. SMS or text message marketing is already a top five revenue source in my e-commerce store.

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and I couldn’t have done it without Postscript, which is my text message provider. Now, why did I choose Postscript? It’s because they specialize in e-commerce, and e-commerce is their primary focus. Not only is it easy to use, but you can quickly segment your audience based on your exact sales data and implement automated flows like an abandoned cart at the push of a button. Not only that, but it’s price-well too, and SMS is the perfect way to engage with your audience. So head on over to postscript.io slash dv and try it for free. That’s P-O-S-T-S-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash dv.

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And then finally, I want to mention my other podcasts that are released with my partner, Tony. And unlike this podcast where I interview successful entrepreneurs in e-commerce, the Profitable Audience podcast covers all things related to content creation and building an audience. No topic is off the table and we tell it like how it is in a raw and entertaining way. So be sure to check out the Profitable Audience podcast on your favorite podcast app. Now on to the show.

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Welcome to the My Wife Could Her Drop podcast. Today I’m really happy to have Alicia Reynoso on the show. Now, Alicia is the founder of Live Iffinitely, which is a brand that sells water bottles and outdoor gear online, which she grew to eight figures before selling it. Now, selling water bottles is a tough business. It’s commodity. Tons of companies that sell them, but Alicia succeeded by building communities. And these communities gave her exposure and loyalty from her customer list, which allowed her to charge

02:54
premium pricing for her products. So in this episode, Alicia is gonna teach us exactly how she built up her eight figure water bottle business. And with that, welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. It’s so funny that you say that because my boyfriend was actually the one that was like, we should sell water bottles. And I was like, are you crazy? Like that just sounds so competitive. We had started off with like, like a cooling towel or something like that, but it didn’t work out. And then he’s like, let’s do water bottles. And I was like, you want to compete against Nalgene and Nike and

03:24
So it’s just funny you mentioned that because it was it’s it’s it’s a silly competitive market to enter for your first product for sure. There’s like four or five big brands just wrapped up my head. Yeah. Yeah. I’m very curious. mean, well, okay, let’s let’s start with that. Like, why did you choose water bottles? Are you a boyfriend? Yeah, so well, we got started back when it was just like Amazon FBA. That was like what year was 2014 15.

03:51
So 14 is when the cooling towel launched. was a failure. 15 is when we picked the water bottle. So really 15 was like the birth of it all. But we were like trying in 2014 too. But it was 2015. We did like the amazing course and everything like that. And we were just looking at the seller ranks. I knew from the very beginning, like LiveInfinity was my brand. I knew from the very beginning, I wanted to create a brand. I didn’t want to just like pick products and sell them.

04:20
I wanted my brand to stand for like live infinitely. The name means to live your life with infinite possibilities. Like you can do or achieve anything. So that was the message that I wanted to share through my brand. So I wanted it to be like something like fitness outdoors, like getting out there, like being healthy, living your best life type thing. And so he just like was going through, you know, the whole process back then, best seller rank and saw a fruit infuser water bottles and like water bottles are super broad and competitive, but like through water bottles.

04:50
was like a little bit like, like niching down into it. And that’s what we decided to go with as our first product. And because it was a little bit different, we were actually able to be successful out of the gate on Amazon because it wasn’t just like a normal water bottles. So let’s start there. you brand registered on Amazon for that first product? Yes, but it took a while. for the first few years, like we were just kind of, no, we weren’t. think honestly, didn’t get brand registered probably till 2016.

05:19
Actually, back in the day, was super, it was much easier on Amazon. Yeah, 2015. Okay. So you made some money off of that first initial water bottle. Yeah, did you have your own website at that time too? Or the first year? No, it was just all on Amazon. Amazon just like really got us out of the gate. And then that’s when we joined

05:41
blue ribbon with Ezra Firestone and we’re like we should get on Shopify, diversify revenue because we knew eventually that we wanted to sell the business too. And so that’s when like probably 2018 or so we built out the website to try to like diversify that but originally it’s just on Amazon. We were just trying to pick any products that kind of fit under that branding that we were going for but really made no sense. Like we had like hand-mixed backpacks.

06:08
water bottles like it was kind of all over the place. Originally on Amazon to get us out of, you know, just get us started. Was it profitable though? Yeah, was profitable and much easier. Okay, then our website, as soon as we like launch your website, so worth it. And I love it. And now that’s what I geek out over. My boyfriend eventually just took over Amazon, and like ran our pay per click and everything like that. And I just went full on into Shopify.

06:36
and I learned the email marketing and Facebook ads and everything like that that we needed to learn for that side of the business. But then it just also just required so much more work and learning all of those different things as well. Yeah. So basically you validated that these water bottles were a thing on Amazon. And then do you remember at what point you needed to decide to start your website? Was it because of the mastermind that you went there or was that always in the plan? It was kind of because

07:05
mastermind and just not being able to sleep at night, knowing that all your eggs were in one basket. You take out half a million dollar loans to fund Amazon and you’re like, if something happens, you’re like, if, because Amazon, just, they do it all the time. They pull your listing because all of a sudden it’s categorized for synthetic urine. And you’re like, how is this? that really happen? Yeah, that happened to one of our products once. And you’re like, how is this synthetic urine?

07:34
And so you’re just like, always at the mercy of Amazon. And so that was when like, was kind of the mastermind, also just because we wanted to sleep better knowing that like, if Amazon, if anything happened, we’d always have like our website and kind of control of our revenue as well. So when you start your own website, though, you have to drive your own traffic. So what was your strategy there? Yeah, at first, we didn’t know. like, we just had like Google set up and we had like kind of the halo effect, honestly, from Amazon of

08:04
people knew us at that point. We had been around for a few years and we had people searching for us and going to our website and stuff. then it was in 2019 that I took the time to learn Facebook ads myself. And that was when we were able to change our revenue from like 99 % Amazon to eventually 50-50 of our revenue was around that time, 2019, when I learned Facebook ads.

08:33
Can we talk about Facebook ads real quick for water bottles specifically? Like what were your ads, like what were your highest converting ads and what was the return on ad spend? Yeah, so honestly a lot of the challenge like when we go into a little bit more, that was like the biggest thing for me when it came to my creatives and my copy for my ads was because like,

08:54
We never ran ads, like ads initially when we first started was like, look at this cool water bottle. It’s BPA free. It’s 32 ounces. Like it’s so cool. And then like, nobody cares. And then eventually like when we had our community and like our differentiator of like what our brand stood for and what we were there to help you achieve in your life. Like all of our ads became that, you know, like our, our copy was like, one of them was like, this water bottle changed my life. And that was like the headline and it’s like a water bottle. And then people start reading.

09:24
And most of our creatives were women holding the water bottles or sharing their experiences and stuff like that. So 99 % of our ads besides our retargeting and bottom of the funnel campaigns were focused on the transformation that our business helped to achieve over the product. So the community came first before the successful Facebook ads? Actually, no, that’s a good question.

09:52
had some good success, mainly because honestly, as being in that mastermind, I learned a lot of just using native content. And so we already had some pretty good reviews and testimonials. And I used those initially advocate for, cause we didn’t launch our community and challenge until 2020. And so all of 2019, I just used like previous customers and their experiences and stuff like that as our ads. And it was testimonials and that sort of thing. Yeah.

10:21
Mainly, and then it was a combination of, we always laughed that we were a water bottle company that made money on straw lids because we sold water bottles, but then that’s where we lost money to acquire the customer, but we would make money because we could upsell them on products like a straw lid, a brush set, a carrying case, all these things that, that’s what turned us profitable from our ads. And so we always just laughed at.

10:47
We’re a water bottle company that makes money on straws. Wait, interesting. the straw lid is literally what it is. It’s a lid with a hole for a straw? Yeah, it looks just like this one. This is one of oldest water bottles. And we’d sell this thing to our plastic versions for whatever. And they were like 70 cents or a dollar and we’d sell them for $7. Interesting. margins are huge and that’s where we end up making money.

11:16
That sounds funny. So the water bottles were actually not not profitable, but then you would upsell them on a bunch of accessories that would make it profitable. Cool. So what was the return on ad spend then before the communities and that sort of thing? Was it just majorly profitable or? Yeah, it was profitable. And as we always said, like if you’re breakeven, you’re winning. And we were stoked because we were really profitable. For us, we needed like a one point

11:44
five to six return on ad spend to break even and we were usually like two to 2.5 return on ad spend. Okay. Just top of the funnel cold traffic was usually what we were. And then when the community came around and we started leveraging that as like a lead acquisition. I didn’t know this when I was writing my business because we were kind of getting close to selling and I was just so busy.

12:08
but like analyzing those campaigns a little bit more. We ran a few and those ones were like four to seven return announcements for that. Did the upselling happen in your email list after they purchased or did you do it during the purchase like as an upsell? On the listing, On the listing we had the upsell options and then also post purchase like right as a we used the zipify one click upsell. So post purchase and then also

12:38
my email flows. I set up my Klaviyo account. Eventually that was like 40 % of our revenue and a lot of it was after they purchased and we took them through a customer journey as well. Nice, nice. Okay, so let’s just jump right to the community part then. How does one build a community? Yeah, so that was the biggest thing. So I kind of explained a little bit earlier like how I was all over the place or we were all over the place with our products like hammocks, backpacks, like we just thought

13:05
We thought we knew our customer. was kind of making the products around me, you know, of like, I am this outdoor girl that like loves to be healthy. But then once we like really kind of started, started getting to know our customers, like that wasn’t who we were actually selling to at all. And I realized like, we kind of hit this pivotal point that we were like, okay, we want to sell our business. But we’re kind of plateauing. Like every year we were growing like really rapidly. And then like 2019, 18, we were like stalling around then.

13:35
And that’s when I like, listened to this one podcast that kind of talked a lot about the relationships of your customers and like, and that’s exactly what I wanted to do was like provide, you know, my brand was built from day one to like help people like remind them that they can do these things and achieve, know, become whatever they wanted to become. But I was like poorly conveying that poorly helping people. I thought I was doing a good job, but I wasn’t. So I spent a lot of time like near the end of 2019, like

14:02
just mapping out our customer and their customer journey of like, okay, this is our customer. This is their before, say after state and the objections that are standing in their way from achieving that. And then I was like, what can I do to help them get from the before state to the after state without them even having to pay us? You know, like just bring them into our world and just help them and get them there without even having to pay us.

14:26
That’s when I was like, okay, I could come up with eBooks, videos, like all these things, like healthy recipes, all these things that I love to do anyways. But I just like couldn’t cause I was like in charge of our marketing or like emails, Clavio, web design, all that kind of stuff. There’s no way I could do it all. I kind of thought of bundling into a challenge. So the whole concept of that was our customer wanted to be healthy, happy, loved, like they want to be seen, heard, appreciated.

14:55
And so I thought of like a 60 day hydration challenge where I could get them in. Of course, like, like drinking water and stuff is like the, the core concept of it. But I broke it down into like many weekly challenges to focus on all those other things as well that they wanted to achieve, like loving themselves, being, you know, healthy eating, moving their bodies, gratitude, all the things beyond just being healthy because in the longterm, like people would come to us.

15:24
for a water bottle, but that’s not exactly, that’s not really what they’re trying to achieve. They’re trying to achieve those deeper things like that. So that was kind of the concept of the challenge. so, as January- So let’s back up, before we get into the challenge, I wanna know that you were selling a bunch of products and you were targeting people like yourself. How did you even figure out that you were targeting the wrong audience? was mainly, we had these few customers that had been around

15:52
Like I feel like from the beginning of the days, even on Amazon, they emailed us and just said how grateful they were. And, and I just like looked at that and I was just like, I’m kind of, I kind of feel like I’ve been making this about me and where I’m like, these are our customers. I, and kind of that first year of running ads on Facebook in 2019, we started getting more customers that weren’t me, you know, like my email lists were growing or it was growing with like these older women. And that’s kind of like how I realized.

16:22
this whole time we were just scared. You know, we trying to know they were older. Did you hop on the phone with them? Were you sending out surveys? Any surveys and feedback? Yeah. Like we would do we would try to do a lot of fun things like on our Instagram or Facebook or try to get them involved and communicate as much as we could. It was very little like our our social media engagement stuff like that was was really little comparatively to like now. But that was kind of like the initial

16:52
feedback we would try to get. And then when we try to send out a hammock email, and also that’s exactly it. Our email marketing was the biggest indicator of what was working and what wasn’t. I’d send out an email about being outdoors and here’s a hammock and stuff. And those always had the poorest response to our audience. And then I’d send out an email about gratitude and stuff like that. those always had a lot more response. when we set up our blog, we finally set up a blog post for our website.

17:22
And those were the blogs that would get comments and people like engaging with and stuff like that. So we could see the interest in what people were doing. And that’s when we decided to delete half of our products and just get rid of them. Interesting. Which ones did you delete like that? The hammocks and that sort of thing? Yeah. Like all of our outdoor stuff, we just got rid of that and just kind of focused in on, you know, this woman that wants to be healthy and not like that. Okay. So it started out as like an outdoors brand and then you just kind of focused in, you found out

17:52
there were older women, and I don’t know what your definition of old is, because I’m old, but let’s just call it over the age of 50, 60 maybe, I don’t know. Well, you’re right, the older women, it’s more just like, I’m more mature, I suppose. And their kids are growing up, but we’d even still have 30 year olds and stuff like that, but are in that next phase of adulthood.

18:18
Okay, and it sounds like those other products probably weren’t selling that well regardless, so it wasn’t really hitting your top line by removing those products. No, no. They were profitable and we loved them and I had such emotional attachments to them. when it came down to it, if we could take that cash and invest it into the products that we’re selling faster, and that was just smart. We were all around to not have to spread ourselves.

18:46
So let’s jump to challenges now. In order to run a challenge, you need to have people to join it. So how do you get people on it in the first place? Yeah, so for us, we had at that time like an email list of like 70,000 people. yeah, because of 2019, legitimately our business had like two phases of like Amazon and then 2019 turned on Facebook ads. And that was when our email list went from like 10,000 to 70,000 in just one year.

19:16
But then in 2020, we used that list to launch the challenge and we had like four or 500 people sign up for that first round. And then it was just a snowball effect from there of just like getting people enrolled to the concept. It was a completely free challenge. So a lot of my clients that I help now are starting from zero with no email list. And we just like run Facebook ads to get them to join the free challenge. And the whole concept of it being free is

19:45
You want the right people, not as many people, but the right people in that group to know, like, and trust you and go through this experience with you as a brand. And then ultimately they become like loyal customers for life. But that was initially how we got ours off the ground. Okay. So to run Facebook ads to join a challenge sounds really expensive for a free challenge. Like I run my own and I know the niche really depends on what it is, but we’re talking like maybe four to $6 per lead, at least in my industry, which is

20:14
Right. It’s kind of like ecommerce. I’m kind of curious with your clients that are starting from zero, how much are they paying per lead? Right now we’re getting around $3. Then the average Yeah, I think that’s kind of the average three to $4 for for ecommerce products. But um, and then like my what I tell them is you want at least 100 numbers, because you have it’s like a game of percentages. I tell them sure, I’ve like you have the percentage of people that are lurkers.

20:43
the percentage of people that engage, the percentage of people that just like forget, you know, that they even join. So you like, at least a hundred gives you a good like base to test the concept and see if it’s really what your audience wants.

20:58
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21:28
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21:56
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22:08
So if you’re running these for an e-commerce product and then the challenge is related to the product that you sell, but it might not directly convert into products right away. So you’re kind of taking this leap of faith then, let’s say you’re paying, it sounds like 300 bucks to run this challenge, right? For a hundred people, let’s say. So the goal is to just build up your email list and your nurture list, right? And then…

22:36
Can you just walk me through maybe one of your challenges? Like what was one of your ads look like to get them to join the challenge? Yeah, so for ours initially, it was it was just a like a customer kind of sharing her experience with using our water bottles and our products. And you know that being a customer of Living Flee was much more than just you know, getting hydrated and kind of just sharing her whole spreading ads is like just sharing her story. They go from that ad to the landing page that we build.

23:05
And then opt in. And that was the biggest thing that I like to kind of kick myself in the butt for is, is I didn’t realize that these were profitable. It is a much longer customer journey. And so that’s why when I was running our business and doing these ads, I didn’t just throw a budget at it because we were like getting ready to sell and I just didn’t realize that. But my cold traffic campaigns,

23:31
would convert within seven days to a two return on ad spend. And so I knew it was profitable. I could scale it, but these ones, you put money at it and it takes like 30, 60, sometimes 90 days for that full return on ad spend to like come to fruition. But at that point for us, it was like between like four or five return on ad spend. know now, um, the new owners have even seen 7 % or seven return on ad spend with using the challenge as a lead acquisition. So it was much longer.

24:00
So it’s like, it’s kind of that risk of getting them, of putting your money towards that and getting people into your community. Yeah. All right. So, so walk me through it. So the ad is literally just a story where a water bottle changed their life. They click on that, takes them to a landing page. What’s on the landing page? Just the benefits of the challenge, essentially. Like, so a lot of, like we’re doing an outdoors workout outdoors challenge for one of my clients.

24:25
And you just go to the landing page and it’s just like, welcome. And you talk about the philosophy of the company, try to get people, try to get people that share your same values of like not just a fitness company or water bottle company, we’re a company that helps you live your life with infinite possibilities, or we’re a company that’s like all about being wild outside, know, like sharing the philosophy of who you are, that’s different from, you know, the water bottles or a fitness company type thing. And then like, here’s the challenge, like it’s free to join, you know, here’s

24:54
we make challenge packets. So when they register, they get this packet that has the pledge card Like a physical packet? Just a PDF. Or a downloadable PDF for them. Got it. Okay. Yeah. So they’ll get that that has their pledge card, calendar, all the information. So they register for free get that packet. Then we walk them through the steps of, know, step one, join a Facebook group. Step two, make your pledge, like introduce yourself to the community. Step three,

25:25
um, buyer products, you know, we usually, but, um, we usually at the end of those steps would, uh, try to get them to convert as well. And a lot of them would initially, but it’s just like step one, step two, step three, uh, this product would help you. It’s not mandatory. Like obviously our water bottles were helpful in a 60 day hydration challenge. And like for our workout outdoors challenge, we have products that help you work out outdoors.

25:52
And then like different challenges that we do, or like we have a pet company and we sell the pet products that help you have a better like bond and relationship with your pets. So a lot of times it’s not the highest conversion from like a top of the funnel, cold traffic campaign to product listing, but you can get some right then and then they go through the whole customer journey and that’s when it cleans up the rest. So let me just kind of break down what you just said. So landing page, you tell them the benefits of the challenge and then they sign up.

26:22
you you launch a Facebook group, private Facebook group, it sounds like you them introduce themselves. What’s this pledge like I promise to take part in this challenge and fulfill the whatnot? Okay. Essentially, my thought with that is just like an icebreaker. Like sometimes people join, they don’t know what to say. So it’s just like, here’s your first post written for you. Got it. Got it. Okay. And if they don’t do it, do you encourage them to do it later? Or? Yeah, yeah.

26:50
But it’s not like mandatory. You can still participate and win prizes and everything. But the whole idea behind it is that like some they join and it’s like, what do I say? You know, you’re just like, here’s what you say. Introduce yourself. right. Oh, I like that. I like that. OK. And then you say, you know, for this hydration challenge, using your example, you need a water bottle. Here’s ours. You don’t have to use it. But, you know, if you still need one, buy this one. Yeah.

27:19
And then after that, the challenge begins, presumably, Right. OK, walk me through running the challenge. Let’s use your hydration one since you’ve probably run it a million times. Yeah. So what’s day one like? So day one, we have like a whole kickoff party. Every week, so birds eye view real quick, we have weekly challenges with weekly live videos. And then on a day to day basis, that was the best part for me is I was just too busy to like post and do things every single day.

27:48
I was one of the super engaged Facebook group, but I was like, I just don’t have the time. So for me and my requirements was pretty, it was just to show up once a week for the live video. And it was like, and then like one post to like ask them like a roll call to like submit their calendars to show that they were participating. But, but day one we’d have a kickoff party and like,

28:11
we’d have is scheduled in a Facebook event. People would come, we’d introduce us, the brand. We were always transparent that we were a brand. know, you know, we are living from, this is what we stand for. This is me. This is why I started the company. This is like what our values, everything like that. This is why hydration is so important. This is what you can expect for the next 60 days. Meet with us once a week, all that kind of stuff. And then we like give out prizes. We make it super fun and like have timers that go off. And if you are the most recent comment, you win.

28:40
prizes. So there’s like always very fine, but always like the way to introduce yourself and your values and what you stand for and what products you have to offer and what they can expect. And then from there, we just announce like the weekly challenges. right. So what’s the first weekly challenge? So literally you’re just getting on Facebook live once a week, it sounds like, right? Work-wise. Yeah. All right. So can you just walk me through one of these challenges? the hydration, what is like the first challenge of that?

29:10
So I always tell people that your first weekly challenge should be something that helps your customers get set up for success for the whole challenge. like whether that be like we have a meditation challenge and it’s like make your space, you know, this week we challenge you to like create the space that you will like meditate in for 60 days or however long or ours was to find like fruit infused water recipes. So like changing from soda and juices and stuff to water can be boring and hard.

29:40
For some people, so this week we challenged you to find some like yummy, natural things you can add that will kind of make it more delicious. So that was always like the very first week every, I personally ran 10, 60 day challenges before we sold. And now I think they’re on a 12 or something now, but every single time was the same one for the first week to help them like get set up for the whole time. cool. And then, you go on live and then you mentioned something like roll call. Is that like just,

30:09
having people tell you what they’ve done or? Yeah, so I would go live every Sunday evening and every Sunday morning I’d do a post that says, roll call, like share. Because in that challenge packet we talked about earlier, I had a calendar for them so they could check off that they drink their water. And so on Sunday mornings, I said, you know, in the comments here, post a picture of your calendar to be eligible for prizes. So it like did two things that like helped me easily pick winners because

30:38
instead of going through all the posts and stuff and trying to figure out like who was who was doing it. They could tell me right there and then to give them that weekly accountability that they knew was coming. Cool. So they’re like, okay, this is going to come up. I should be drinking my water and stuff like that. And were the people just naturally communicating with each other on the Facebook group or? That was the thing that like blew my mind. And what I’ve seen in like all these challenge groups that I’ve helped create is

31:05
is that like, if you can get the people, if you can get people that are on like the similar or same journey in that group, going through a shared experience, the conversations just happen naturally, which is why I didn’t have to like do all these posts and like facilitate the conversations as much, because they would come in and say like, oh, I’m just trying to drink water because I want to lose weight. I want to give up soda, all the, whatever their reason was, they’d share those reasons. And then the other awesome thing that

31:34
was unintentional, but worked out so well, was that by changing up the weekly focus, 60 days, they have to their water every day for six days, but the weekly focuses would kind of change, or they would change. And that changed the conversation and kept things fresh. Because six days is a long time, and people might lose interest of just doing the same thing for 60 days. But every week, we’d be like,

31:58
gratitude or healthy eating and so like people be like, oh I love healthy eating, here’s all my recipes or I love gratitude and so the conversations just naturally always happened because the topics were being mixed up by just the weekly challenges. All so this goes way beyond water bottles obviously right? So essentially you get them in with the hydration challenge that they’re signing up for but really it’s more of like a lifestyle thing right? You talk about gratitude, you talk about healthy eating.

32:27
exercise maybe, and it just transforms into this, you how to live a better life challenge. Yeah, yeah, essentially. Exactly. And that’s what was that’s what was so fulfilling honestly was from day one on Amazon. That’s what I wanted the brand to stand for. And that’s what I wanted to help people do. But I just never could. I never like figured it out until I was able to do this challenge. And then that’s when like, honestly, it was kind of hard for me to sell it at some points because I was like,

32:55
This is so fulfilling. I feel like I’m changing people’s lives and helping them achieve these things. And the stories that would happen after 60 days, it was well beyond that they just drank water. was that their whole confidence has changed. Our whole life has changed. And I was able to actually make the impact that I wanted to with my business, which was really cool. All right. So, I guess a question that the listeners are going to have is I saw something super boring.

33:25
how do I develop a challenge around that?

33:29
I know, let’s say I sell office supplies or something. Help me come up with a challenge for that. Yeah, so it all starts with your business. Like every business needs to have a story of what you stand for. I think like that’s the brand. Otherwise, you’re just a product business and that’s just not going to go far. water bottle business could have had any story, you know, like any mission or purpose.

33:54
but mine specifically was to remind people that they could do anything and become anything. So I think starting there is the most important thing of what your brand is, if it’s an office business, and you wanna support aspiring entrepreneurs that are working in the office day to day or whatever, and you’re gonna help them with mindset or something like that. You become this mindset business that is all about motivating and encouraging, educating your customers.

34:24
So starting with your brand and what your brand stands for, your values and like what you actually want to achieve with it goes well beyond any product that you choose. If you got that right, you can do any product, you know, and then you just align that mission and those values with that product and you can create that challenge. And then of course, your products can fit into your challenge. Like if you’re doing an office supply and you’re selling paper or something like that.

34:52
organization. exactly. And you’re going to do a challenge that helps people be organized, get focused, get crystal clear on their goals as an entrepreneur, or even just a business professional on like what they want to achieve. Then that’s how you can take any boring product. But as long as you have like the brand and the story that you want to like align it with. Yeah, I like that. And then once people join your challenge, they’re

35:19
like your company name, like they might not be ready to buy like a hammock or something, right? But they’ll remember your brand. And so when you do send out emails or run ads, they’ll remember that challenge they took part in and they’ll want to shop from you, right? Like I’m not going to buy a water bottle from Nalgene anymore once I’ve gone through one of your challenges. Exactly. Exactly. Cause then you’ve, you’ve done more for them than any brand. Like that’s the biggest thing is that a lot of brands, a lot of just companies don’t.

35:47
That’s why I make sure it’s free. The whole challenge is free. I’d rather get them in and get them into my world and learn how much we care about their experience and then lock them into any product launch. Because at that point, like you said, we really could have launched anything. I want to keep it along their journey. And was also just a side note of the best thing ever was that we never knew what products to launch until we had this community.

36:16
And they were always like, we want this, this, this, this, and this color and this size. And so like everything was so much easier and just like, okay, we’ll launch that now. And then it wasn’t a flop because you know who your customer is and what they want now. Right. That’s cool. I like that. So do all these challenges have to be so long? You mentioned yours are like days. That’s a long time, but do they have to be longer on the longer end in general?

36:41
So there’s pros and cons for sure. And a newer brand just starting out, I just say do a shorter one, like 21 days is the shortest I’d say to like 30 days, just because you want to like test the concept, prove it, get some social proof and use that to like build. But in 60 days, it just take a while to like get all that built. But for me, the pros of a 60 day is one, the transformation is much deeper for the customer. So you get the testimonials and the stories.

37:10
And the loyalty that you build out of that is like next to nothing. It’s just really cool. And then two, as a business owner, it’s so much easier for it to manage because the hardest or the most time consuming part of running it is launching it. And that’s like, it’s really great because you can get some more leads and everything.

37:40
Honestly, I loved launching them, but then once I launched, I was like, okay, I got like nice to kind of just let it run and let it like nurture my customers. And I could show up once a week and I had other parties too, but like that was like check. And then I can move on to the next big project. So it was really, really nice for me as a business owner to not have to like redo it all the time. And then just the stories that would happen and transformations and it goes by so fast.

38:09
like so fast and you’d be surprised at how many people stay along for the whole 60 days. Like, um, Are you emailing them every day by the way? Just. Have I done them every day? No, no, no. Are you emailing them every day? Are you contacting them every day? No, just once week. Just once week. Okay. All right. Yeah. Yeah. So I, we’d have our live videos on Sundays and on Mondays I’d send a recap of like, here’s what happened. Here’s one. Here’s the new weekly focus. Um, all that kind of stuff. Okay. So correspondence wise, it’s actually prep prepping. doesn’t.

38:38
I mean, coming with the idea is the hardest part, but executing it, it’s once a week live and then it’s maybe a couple of emails in the beginning to get them set up, but after that it’s just one email a week? Yeah, exactly. I set up a flow that I would just duplicate. So I set up one time and that’s the whole part that I help my clients do is conceptualize the strategy, then build out their landing pages, the emails. And then once you have those backend emails when somebody registers, you can just keep duplicating it.

39:08
for future rounds. I like this. Okay, so it doesn’t even sound like that much work. No, mean, that’s the thing. Coming up with it is the hard part. what to do. with it and building it. So for me, I built out my assets over 10 challenges, so 600 days. So like the challenge packet, my landing pages, and made it look as professional as it is over that much time. But that’s how I tell people to get it set up is like that.

39:37
And that can take some time to have it look as professional. And I didn’t do that straight out of the gate. It was just done over time and revised and changed and optimized to what it became. But then after that, that was the best part because we were just a small team of three people. I just, couldn’t have something that took up a lot of my time, but then also just provided immense value to our customers and didn’t really take much time.

40:08
I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in starting your own online store, I put together a comprehensive six day mini course on how to get started in ecommerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be attained at mywifequitterjob.com slash free.

40:37
just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show.

40:48
So let’s enumerate what you need here. It sounds like there’s this challenge packet to get them started, right? And then for a 60-day challenge, that’s five emails and an autoresponder, essentially, right? Like a flow. Yeah, five to seven. Seven is usually the sweet spot. Five to seven, then you’re just going on live once a week and getting people on, you’re having conversations and whatnot, and maybe the next day you can do another post that just outlines the accomplishments that people had.

41:16
Like I’m sure there’s more to it, but that in a nutshell is the preparation that you need. And the landing pages. Sure. to get people on. And then occasionally not for all the challenges, but some challenges, I provide like weekly templates. So if it’s like a healthy eating, here’s a template for you to keep track. So then, but not all challenges. Some people like them and some people don’t use them. Like if you have a group of men, a lot of times they don’t like to use templates and stuff.

41:46
I don’t know. But like women love to color them and decorate them like creative and stuff like that. And so so there’s just like the small assets. But yeah, in a nutshell, that’s pretty much the gist of it. Cool. Okay, I can see this working really well builds community and then you can actually probably use these stories and future Facebook ads too. Right? I mean, people are telling their stories. Okay. That’s the other huge thing was that I was in charge of our marketing.

42:15
And I was like, what should I write? What blog article about this? Should I do this? And as soon as I had this community, was like all of my content was made for me. And that was like the best part. was like, they became my emails. They became my organic social posts. They became all my ads. Like all of marketing just became easy for me because they made my content. And before this group, we just like, we begged people for user generated content.

42:43
like, you please send a video or a picture? And we’ll send you something and after this, like, we had like, we didn’t even tap into like a 10th of the content that was in there before we sold. Yeah, no, that’s amazing. I guess this can be kind of intimidating for someone starting from ground zero, right? Because I guess you’re putting down three to 500 bucks for something that you might not see paid dividends for potentially a month or so or 60 days, however long the challenges, right?

43:11
Right, right. And that’s why I say like for new brands start off as a shorter challenge, not like seven to 10, like more like 21 to 30, because you still want to like go through a whole experience with them, excuse me, and like the weekly challenges, if you only have like one or two, like people don’t get the rhythm of what you’re trying to establish. So like within like a month’s time period, people are like, oh, there’s like, this is the cadence, this is like, they go live weekly, they do all these things. So like,

43:39
a newer brand starting off shorter, but still enough time to kind of show them what you’re trying to achieve. I know for me, when I first started doing these lives, I’d always be like, okay, what if no one shows up? What if no one shows up? What if no one shows up? And I remember my first lives that I did, I think I got like five people to show up or maybe less than that. And I was like, oh, there’s only five people watching me. How did you get over that part of it?

44:06
Yeah, that’s a great question. So my boyfriend made fun of me because I would try to go live when nobody was going to be on. At first, I nervous. I was so nervous to go live. And then he’s like, no, you need to tell them and set a schedule so people come. So the first few times, was kind of happier if it was a little bit less people to kind of warm up. But then once I set my schedule, like 7 PM Eastern Sunday, that’s how it was like a year and a half, two years or whatever.

44:37
And originally at first we only had like 10 people or so on the live videos. like, to be honest, you just treat those 10 people like they’re like the best thing ever. Like you didn’t say them by name, like, oh my gosh, hey, Kim, thanks for so much for showing up. How are you? And that was the biggest thing is that like, I took a lot of time because like, I really did care about these women a lot of just like getting to know their names, their families, their stories and stuff like that. And so

45:05
Once they feel like, like I said, our community wanted to feel seen and heard, that was a big part of it. They felt like they were part of a conversation building our brand with us, learning from us and like being a part of it. That just started growing exponentially. But at first, like it was totally okay. There was just 10 of them because they were, they just became like your 10 best friends, you know? then eventually people catch wind of that and like see how much you actually really care. And like they want to come in and like talk to a brand and

45:33
be a part of something too and be part of the conversation. So then it just grows from there. But just treating those first five to 10 people like they are your best friends and really caring. It’s it fun. Then get to conversation with them. They’ll stay online with you and it’s a good time. Let’s set some expectations here. So if you’re doing a live and let’s say you get 100 people signed up, like how long does it, I imagine this is like a snowball thing, right? After a while, people share the challenge because they love it so much. What

46:01
what timeframe would you start seeing? What time is the inflection point? Like, what was it for you when things started really taking off? Yeah, I always say hundreds, like a really good base level just to see, like it was like, cause we, but we started off with, and that’s just what I’m seeing from like other groups. Cause we started off with like three to 500 for something in that range. And even at that point we had just a few people showing up live, but I feel like as soon as that first,

46:30
few weeks of just three to 500 people and they started getting the cadence of like what was going on. That’s when it like snowballed. Like, so I always tell people three to 500 people is such a sweet spot of just like, that’s really like all you need to like have this like mass power behind this group that you can like take all of those benefits that we talked about from.

46:53
because that was like my very first challenge. like the first few weeks, people are like, what’s going on? Like what are these five videos? And then by the end of the 60 days with just three to 500 people, like it was this full community showing up, offering feedback and everything like that. So it really doesn’t take a lot of people at all. I just think getting started at least a hundred, at minimum. And you use the same group each time, Facebook group each time. So it just gets bigger over time, right? That’s the best thing is a lot of, a of people have asked me like, do I need a group for like,

47:23
my brand, and then I grew for the challenge. And it’s like, no, you just need one group because it is your brand. You know, this like this is what you’re bringing. This is the value you’re bringing to your customers. And so everything that I wanted to everything that people try to achieve from a branded community, like customer feedback or testimonials are our product feedback and stuff like that, always achieved there. And, and so you just keep that same group and builds. And then the people that had

47:51
um done the challenges before they know exactly what’s going on and they help indoctrinate the next round of people and they’re like this is what’s going on you know Alicia goes live once a week they have these challenges and so that’s what it became easier because I had my emails to help guide them but I also had this army of people that were just like this is what’s happening welcome yeah I love it welcome and Alicia where can people find more about these I know you help people do these challenges

48:20
I imagine you have a, do you have a challenge that helps you create a challenge? I thought about that. Um, but no, no, we haven’t done that yet. Um, but it’s a challenge makers.com is, um, and so I have like a course outlines kind of stuff, like all the steps of building it, uh, with the templates of like the emails when people like sign up, what usually what we had said, what converted for us, um, and what’s working for their clients as well as like landing page.

48:50
templates, everything like that, the challenge packet templates. it’s all there. Well, thanks a lot for coming on. I think this is a fantastic idea. And I know a lot of people listening, at least to my show, they have like Amazon brands. They were much like you. They’re just selling kind of products that are kind of on the same umbrella, so to speak. But they’re in reality just to spare products. And they’re trying to create a brand around that. And I think this is a great way to jumpstart that for sure. So thank you. I appreciate it.

49:18
Thank you so much for coming on the show and then I will share your contact information on your website in the show notes. Awesome. Sounds good. Thank you.

49:28
Hope you enjoyed that episode. Now, running a challenge for my eCommerce store is definitely on my list of to-dos, and I’m actually a firm believer in this strategy, and I’ll report on the results when I’m done. More information about this episode, go to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 425. And once again, I want to thank Postscript, which is my SMS marketing platform of choice for eCommerce. With a few clicks of a button, you can easily segment and send targeted text messages to your client base. SMS is next big own marketing platform, and you can sign up for free over at postscript.io slash div.

49:58
That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash dv. I also want to thank Klaviyo, which is my email marketing platform of choice for ecommerce merchants. You can easily put together automated flows like an abandoned cart sequence, a post purchase flow, a win back campaign. Basically all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot. So head on over to mywifequitterjob.com slash K-L-A-V-I-Y-O. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash K-L-A-V-I-Y-O. Now I talk about how I use these tools on my blog. And if you are interested in starting your own ecommerce store,

50:28
Head on over to MyWifeQuarterJob.com and sign up for my free 6-day mini course. Just type in your email and they’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.