But before we begin, I want to thank Klaviyo for sponsoring this episode, whether you’re just getting your business off the ground or looking for new ways to scale, Klaviyo offers fast, simple, and repeatable ways to grow. And with Klaviyo you can personalize your marketing, build your customer relationships, and automate your online sales. And it is now easier than ever to create amazing email and advertising experiences. Now I want to talk about Klaviyo’s new entrepreneur growth guide, packed with must read blog post, case studies, and getting started content. This guide will help you prioritize what to do next for maximum revenue growth. Now moving to a new marketing platform can be intimidating, but Klaviyo helps you get up and growing fast with proven technology and countless support resources. Now I encourage you to check out this free content now over at klaviyo.com/mywife. Once again that is K-L-A-V-I-Y-O.com/my wife.

I also want to give a shout-out to Privy who is also a sponsor of the show. Privy is a tool that I use to build my email list for both my blog and my online store. Now, what is Privy do, well Privy is an email list growth platform and they manage all my email capture forms. And I use Privy hand in hand with my email marketing provider. Now, there are a bunch of companies out there that will manage your email capture forms, but I like Privy because they specialize in e-commerce. And right now, I’m using privy to display a cool Wheel of Fortune pop-up. Basically, user gives your email for a chance to win valuable prizes in our store and customers love the gamification aspect of this and when I implemented this form, email signups increased by a hundred thirty one percent. I’m also using their new cart saver pop-up feature as well to recover abandoned carts. So bottom line, privy allows me to turn visitors into email subscribers, which I then feed to my email provider to close the sale. So, head on over to preview.com/steve and try it for free. And if you decide you need some of the more advanced features, use coupon code MWQHJ for 15% off. Once again, that’s P-R-I-V-Y.com/steve. Now on to the show.

Intro: Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suits your lifestyle so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here’s your host Steve Chou!

Steve: Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. Today, I’m thrilled to have Kevin Rutherford on the show Now Kevin is the CEO of Nuun life a company that sells hydration tablets that turn water into a Gatorade like drink with very few carbs, and I’m actually addicted to these tablets actually take them twice per day and I can’t really describe the feeling that I get but after drinking Nuun for some reason that I instantly feel better and perhaps it’s because I am dehydrated for most of the day and I don’t even realize it but the stuff works amazing. I always take it before I start my day. Now in any case Kevin has grown noon into a behemoth of a company and I’m excited to hear his story and how he’s grown it and with that welcome to show Kevin. How you doing today?

Kevin: it’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Steve: So Kevin. I’d like to start with kind of the origin story. I know you kind of took over the company after it was established, but I was wondering how Nuun got started to begin with and how did the name happen to be like Nuun as a pretty unique name.

Kevin: Yeah, well, there’s a few parts that question. Let me break it down and tell you a little bit how it started and then I’ll finally get back to the brand names here point. So Nuun was started roughly 15 years ago and it was formed by a couple of triathletes that were in training and they were they were really looking for a better solution. So if you go back 15 years just think about this for a moment there were really not very many Alternatives when it came to hydration and sports drinks really the most known still to this day of course is Gatorade. And so what they did is they were there trying to find an optimal solution oddly enough. They’re also going to school like it was Dartmouth if I’m not mistaken. I apologize if I’m off on that data point,

Steve: It’s okay.

Kevin: but I’m it’s a certain and it was actually a business case meets personal need and they came up with this idea of creating this noon tablet. It was based on some research that suggested the optimal way to hydrate and fuel yourself for training long Distance races is you need to separate your hydration from their fuel. And so if you think about that for just a moment the way that you if you’re taking in a sports drink a traditional sports drink like a Gatorade, It’s a combination. There’s a lot of carbs and sugars in there which is meant to be fuel to go with your hydration. So let me let me just kind of give the give the audience a little more detail on this time in its then you go will hold on so that seems to make sense because that’s easier to take in it is easier to take in but it’s harder for your body to work with it.

This is what the research suggested and so if you think about if you actually go back to I think it’s 1964 when you actually Gatorade was invented at the University of Florida in Gainesville, from what I understand back then the product was actually closer and composition to what Nuun is terms of electrolytes and carbohydrates than what the traditional Gatorade product is today. And so yeah, so it’s evolved over time and I think it’s evolved over time both for taste palate because it’s much sweeter with the sugars. There is a book written on it also suggests that there was an artificial sweetener in it back in the time to keep the calorie count down and then when that was banned by the FDA, then I think that’s when they put in different heights, you know, basically some high sugar content.

Steve: So basically, it’s very high fructose corn syrup

Kevin: Right. Yeah, exactly. So that’s the challenge now so enter in Founders at the time and when they were looking at this and they’re going okay. Well, there’s got to be a better way in the science says, oh by the way, I didn’t finish on the physiology. I meant to do that. So in the physiology of your body when you’re consuming liquid some over simplifying this but when you’re consuming liquids, it goes eventually down to your stomach like to your small intestine and that’s what it wants to go and in Balance of 95 percent water. So if you take concentrated sugars and put that there over time that’s going to cause intestinal distress plus when you think about when you’re working out you’re putting stress on your intestine and just like just bodily functions. And so you would want to use a different pathway for fuel. That’s what you want when you want to use food potentially poles and other methods that people use for when they’re working out and hydration is all about electrolytes.

You do need a little bit of sugar to help you absorb the electrolytes but not a lot and when again when you combine the two it wreaks Havoc so long story short these guys basically said this is a better way. Let’s just develop this on our own obviously did very well in the business case to the way. They said let’s just launched. Once this product the name Nuun. So, the truth be told it’s defined as nutrition uncompromised. It’s a made-up word N U U N will tell you I have talked with the founder of the past on this and I think he actually likes to leave it up to mystery. And so what’s funny is there’s stories that have shown up on this one woman on our team that to me Kevin, do you know what Nuun means in Nepal and I’m like what? Yeah, then the Polly’s translation for it. She goes it means salt and I go and so sure enough I’m Diggin I’m Diggin. I find it even Wikipedia you can you do have to kind of dig to find it, but I found it and it’s actually spelled Nun but pronounced noon and it is the translation for salt in Nepal

Steve: I can’t be a coincidence.

Kevin: I wonder if exactly right because the most essential electrolyte that you need to replenish is salt. So I found that quite humorous. I don’t know if that’s how it started. So I’m love to be transparent and honest about it. Okay, I will tell you that we think of it as nutrition and compromise but you know, there’s all kinds of stories out there about what the brand means. I also think that the founder just really love the symmetry of the N the U of U and the N all lower case. I think he just kind of like symmetry. But again, I don’t know for certain. I wish I had a better answer for you guys and I want..

Steve: A couple more questions about the founding story and then we’ll move on but I was just kind of curious if these guys know they the product at all before they just start making and selling it in bulk.

Kevin: Oh well, the validation absolutely validation was really among the fund themselves because they were triathletes but also among their peers and friends. So small-scale testing, yes. And then actually to that point they did consult with a physician and a sports scientist who was living in Australia. I don’t know where that connection came from, but I do know that because it’s oddly enough this position. I introduced with some introduced himself to me at a bike show. He’s like Hey Kevin, you know, I forgot his name. It’s so bad. He was super nice and he goes I’m so and so one night. I was actually part of the science in terms of understanding the composition of the product and worked with him in the folks that started the company. So there was some validation there and there was also real world testing in terms of training for adventure races and training for for Iron Man and a long distance Triathlon races.

So that was the validation then it was hey we’ve got something here and like what you said at the opening you really can feel the difference when you try this product, that’s the cool part and our whole Mantra when it comes to Innovation and how we improve our products is hydration that you can feel we kind of work at the science. And then we validate it just like the US and still to this day.

Steve: You know, I notice I don’t feel that way when I drink Gatorade is it because of the sugar component?

Kevin: Well, I think there might be two reasons. I don’t you know, obviously everyone’s body is different.

Steve: Sure

Kevin: The sugar you would actually would think you would feel a difference pretty quickly because we just think about the injection of a sugar high. However, that being said the electrolyte level in noon is higher.

Steve: Okay.

Kevin: Than a Gatorade and that could be why and I think the reason why when you’re doing this at rest while you’re feeling the difference of Nuun right away is realize that but we’re just not putting enough liquid in our body and so Nuun will replenish that much quicker and the composition of the electrolytes is designed for basically what your body needs and where you’re going to be most efficient. So I think that’s why, so it’s a bit of the composition the electrolyte levels higher and Nuun the sugar may or may not be a reason out of the gates why you don’t Difference because I think over time that you would notice the sugar drop rate falling off the cliff.

Steve: Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin: But I would think it’s actually I would think would actually help you feel better.

Steve: Okay, I’m just kind of curious. What does it take to make one of these tablets? Like if someone out there were to just make a product along the same lines. Does it require any sort of FDA approval or anything like that certifications in order to sell some of these things?

Kevin: My hesitation on that one is you know in today’s world. I guess if you were to sell products online, I think you can you wouldn’t really need an FDA approval. You could probably get around that system. But I guess long story short, We do go through FDA approval. We also work with different retailers and get approval for them in terms of agreement as to what ingredients we use. So I you could do it you could do it in probably skirt around a lot of Regulation pretty easily.

Steve: because I do know that people who make those protein powders. I don’t think there’s any regulation on those it seems.

Kevin: yeah. I know I think you’re right. I think that’s the chat one of the challenges with the you know, supplements in general. So one of the things that we did to counteract that one and actually it’s great that you’re aware of that. I wish more people were aware of that. So one of the things that we’ve done is we said don’t just trust us, right? take these validations. So we actually go through the effort to make sure that you know that it’s non-GMO project certified we go through the effort to make sure it’s gluten-free certified. It’s vegan certified its kosher and certification and last we have another certification that’s around safer sport which basically means we have every single batch has tested so that you know that there is no contamination that could have a banned substance in it.

Steve: Okay.

Kevin: But again, the certifications are to give you confidence to say and which cost a lot of money and time but sure that way you look at and go what they say is what they’re doing.

Steve: Okay so they’re not required but you guys do it as an extra confidence level for consumers.

Kevin: That’s true. Now when you start to go internationally, right, so maybe that’s every Canadian like some people know their Canadians except me but as we as we ship our product across the border to Canada Health Canada is much more strict. And so we do ship there. We do ship to the UK and Australia New Zealand and all of those countries do require much more regulation to be passed which obviously we do.

Steve: Okay and then once you have the manufacturing down or at least of the founders, like how did they generate the first sales? Like, what does the overall marketing strategy to get a product like this? Because there’s just tons of these maybe not tablets per se but there’s a ton of hydration products out there.

Kevin: When you think of a tablet, they didn’t really exist roughly 15 years ago when the company started. So in this case the like consumers like what the heck is this? Right? And how does it work? And is it safe? So there’s a lot of Education when you think of when you first start how you have to do this?

Steve: Yeah.

Kevin: So I think that the recommendation that I would say on this one and how to approach it and it’s probably pretty consistent, you know feedback that you’ve had in this is exactly what the founding team did is they started small I think of who is this product relevant for who are we targeting and it was the athlete so it’s the adventure Racers of the triathletes. I believe the first store that ever carried Nuun is called First Ascent in the on the north side of Seattle and which is where I’m located in Seattle right now. You go to that store and you convinced basically kind of persuade them to give it a shot likely you give it to them Free and just kind of prove it out and then get in store in Sample and I think starting store by solar one by one you start expanding and you start to get momentum. You also hear the consumer feedback over time and in the store feed back and then that’s where you start building from.

I think truthfully I think the big mistake that people have is they want to go big so fast and I think that you really want to start small and focus and learn and adapt and accordingly and this case you’re not really probably going to die that much on the product that you’re going to adapt on how you communicate it.

Steve: You know, it’s interesting you said so they went to the retail channels first, I guess online wasn’t really huge back then would you have done the same strategy today?

Kevin: I would have done a combo. What I would do is I would I would try to find curated distribution meaning Nuun today. If I were to start I would go and work with some of the hot trendy like in the sport for run for Triathlon for bike. I would work with them. I would probably work with you know, the local natural stores as well because we use all clean ingredients and then I would also take the same strategy targeting that same consumer online. The reality is a lot of businesses are being built through online first, but I think you can do both one of the things that will happen is discovery in the store then kind of relay over to conversion fairly quickly and then that can build your online sales. I think I can go both ways. I think a lot of us think of online is the the way but I think a combination of the two is actually more more powerful most consumers today still treat most of their shopping in store.

Steve: Yeah

Kevin: And I’m not seeing the trend isn’t changing. I agree it is but the data would say, hey most people still The store.

Steve: I think I would agree with you. Like if I just saw some random supplement in a Facebook ad for example, even if it was a free sample, I’d be reluctantly to try it unless that kind of happened to glance over and see it in a retail shop. So I think they do work together for sure.

Kevin: Yeah, absolutely.

Steve: So, okay. So back in the being they start out in small retail shops and then Target a small community presumably the triathlete community.

Kevin: Yeah, absolutely that in adventure racing was a bit of a component / for the brand as well adventure racing. If you’re not familiar with that is because you’re basically doing a race that has orienteering involved in it to get two different touch points and you’re racing somewhere like could be 24 48 72 hours over some pretty rough terrain. So the torture test is if this thing works for that or an Ironman athlete then guess what this has got to work for me and that’s kind of the approach they took go for the torture test. Yeah. That was that was actually the approach.

Steve: It kind of spread via word of mouth and write these athletes were using them and then they were recommending them and then soon other athletes were using the product as well.

Kevin: Yeah, exactly. And here’s the other interesting thing is there’s two there’s two components. There’s word other the word of mouth is the overarching which I agree with you. That’s that’s absolutely what happened to spread word amount. There’s through the athletes. Then there’s the influencers at the time that it wasn’t influencers. Like we think of Instagram today that didn’t exist. But it’s the same concept in this case. It was the influencers were the store managers or the store owners of these kind of leading independent stores that lead in Triathlon or cycling or run. And if they’re recommending this Nuun hydration, it’s got to be good. Right? It’s that kind of concept and so that’s what that word about what happened and then of course, they’re sampling and sore and being a races in sampling. They’re introducing its people.

Steve: So by the time you took over the company, we were there getting most of their sales from and what was the marketing strategy at the point where you took over?

Kevin: Yeah, absolutely. So I took over, you know, it’ll be coming up to six years and the primary source of where we were selling the product was at least the predominant Channel. I was starting to expand from there. But the predominant channel was really the sport specialty side of things is what we call it or sports stores. So think about again as I mentioned the trap on shops on child’s bike shops, but also really good customer for us. It’s been around to this day phenomenal customer for us is REI.

Steve: Okay.

Kevin: Which is an outdoor retailer and they’ve been a really good partner. Which not only is it a good partner for Revenue but these retail stores are in many ways distribution is marketing and so they’ve really helped really help give us credibility because of who they are and through Association we did have some distribution in grocery as well. But was growing the time obviously it’s much more significant today than what it was. So I would say that and then even the online sales were starting to build through Amazon at the as well we were real early adopter again. Those were obviously much much smaller at the time but the predominant volume first coming from the sport side of things and then the grocery was starting to build the digital was starting to build and gain momentum, but that was kind of where the volume was.

Steve: How do you get into REI? What does it take to get into REI?

Kevin: I don’t know how we got in originally truthfully. I actually don’t know how that happened. I do get that question a lot by the way, REI in particular. And I think to get an REI today, what you want to do is you’re going to want to prove your brand and other places first because REI is not going to likely take the risk on a start-up not likely but they will take it on a small new and emerging brand. So Noon would still call it an emerging brand. It’s not the billions of dollars that Gatorade is today. So I think today REI probably a lot more sophisticated on their choices of nutrition than what they were, you know, 10 years ago is actually when I think we wanted to REI so it’s pretty long time and like I said still like a critical customer to this very day and the future for our plans. So I think you gotta prove it out likely in some of these sports stores.

I would even I don’t know if you can do this, but the one of the ways to get into some of these chains, you have to be really Scrappy about it, but can you build relationships at a store level and it’s kind of going around the rules so hopefully REI doesn’t get mad at me for saying it. I don’t know if we did this REI, if you’re listening. I say this because I think of at Whole Foods and how the team kind of works that is at store level and starting to get some proof points and you’re basically talking almost like a an independent store owner in this case. It’s a store manager and can you get that relationship to just get a shot to see if this thing works does it sell and I think you could do that REI which then could filter back up to the headquarters where you can have a shot to get in there.

I think it’s REI is no different than any other retailers long story short, is kind of find your proof points start small and then yeah then how do you how do you if you can’t even if you can sneak it into a store and show that actually moved their store that I think that kind of bodes well.

Steve: So what you just said is in line with a lot of the other people who are in retail you start at the small boutique shops, you demonstrate sales and you take that data and try to get into a couple of tests stores and like Whole Foods or whatnot and then hopefully the sales are good and that’s how you get in. I was just kind of curious what your perspective was. But yeah, it sounds like it’s in line.

Kevin: Yeah, well and again it comes back to you actually want to curate the distribution anyway, because you’re finding these Boutique shops as you called it and so, you know use it on one of the brands that have recently got acquired as I’m a big fan of this brand is Sun balm, which is think it is like sunscreen suntan lotion rights on care and these this group built this brand their Boutique equivalent was surf shop and how do they build it there? And then it kind of went to hospitality but they get those proof points, right and they build the brands together with this so they it’s a win-win that helps the boutique shops. If you will the surf shops and helps the brand and then you build it together and then you go. Okay. It’s time for us to expand the picture. We’re more available in the proof points are critical for those bigger stores.

The data is what ultimately is the proof point. You can only go so much on gut. So if the consumers picking it up and that’s why you want that data point then there were more likely to lean in the further removed you are from a business. The more you need data is kind of My Philosophy with the team.

Steve: Okay.

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Interesting. So does that imply then that starting a company like this purely online is would be extremely challenging.

Kevin: Well, I think I think nothing is easy. I don’t think there’s any shortcuts. I think that’s a misnomer so I don’t think it’s easy at all. But I do think it can be done and there are a lot of examples of brands that are building through digital and building from the ground up so it can be done but it’s also very you know, and it’s very accessible because anyone can do it sure but that also means the barrier for entry is very low. So the Clutter is really high.

Steve: The competition is high. Yeah

Kevin: Yeah. So so I think it can be done long story short, you know, it’s Interesting as well that you know, I grew up in a more traditional CPG, you know consumer packaged Goods environment SC Johnson and I worked at Miller Brewing. It was a cauchy which is owned by Kellogg. And and what’s interesting about that is when you look at marketing skill set of what you needed then is is very different with the emergence of happening of the digital world. And so when you think about Talent those that work in it could be multi-level marketing to direct consumer marketing brands in the past where you go that’s not and I’m paraphrasing and kind of making this up but it’s almost like I was aren’t real marketers, but it turns out it turns out that that’s probably a better skill set than a traditional CPG today when it comes to the digital side of things sure. It’s just interesting how it’s changed a lot and pretty quickly in the last like even just like takes five years.

Steve: It’s changed a lot. Oh, yeah for sure. And actually that was kind of a Lead into my next question. So you got this company you take over it’s already got sales in a bunch of different channels. What was your strategy to grow it as much as you did in the past five or six years?

Kevin: The key Point here is I didn’t grow it. We did and I say that truthfully here’s the deal. There was a lot working for news. So something changed, but I will tell you that the foundation of what the product is what the philosophy was behind. It was really great team that was in place was also a really interesting because I thought it was really strong. So my Approach was this when I came in I actually first started not to try to change anything. I really just wanted to get in here and understand what was going on. And first what’s working. Where can we put a megaphone on it? How do we amplify that and then secondly then what do we need to stop doing? And then what do we need to start doing? Like what do we need to do differently?

Steve: Okay

Kevin: So that that’s kind of creepy. So when it comes to what’s working, I’ll tell you why I’m saying this is not going to be rocket science for the listeners out there, but I’m such a big believer that Biggest Difference Maker in every business, it comes back to the people. It just comes back to the team. And so I think what I helped bring to the table was a belief in what we were doing as a company to the team because they worked the team would like the business was growing when I came in but it was the growth rate was slowing if that makes sense

Steve: sure

Kevin: And admitting not declining but it wasn’t growing nearly as fast and yet the business is still not that big so it shouldn’t have been slowing and growth which is part of the reason for a change. And so I think the number one thing that I hope I helped get a different lens for the team was to believe in what were we trying to accomplish as like kind of a mission for the company but secondly to believe in each other and ourselves and I think that’s where the self-doubt might start to happen. And that’s a vicious cycle which is why I think culture is the ultimate competitive Advantage not very exciting when people are looking for what’s the business strategy it truly is like that that’s Ultimately will sustain winning or not winning.

Steve: Interesting. Okay.

Kevin: Absolute conviction on it from my perspective. So that was that was one too. So then it was saying well, what do we need to put a megaphone on? What do we need to do? And so we were doing some really great things on the support side of things and what happens with a lot of businesses is some teams start to think about well, where can we take this where we go next and they think broad versus depth, right our breath forces death and I really wanted them to make sure that we were keeping focused. Like let’s all keep focus and not lose what we’re really good at. Let’s amplify that so let’s amplify the relationship with REI. Let’s amplify the relationship that we have with bleep feeds or any see in Canada. Like what can we do more with that? Not necessarily. Where do we need to go next? I’m not saying we don’t go other places, but that you start first with where your strengths are.

Steve: Can you give me an example of like amplification with REI? For example, like what does that mean? Exactly?

Kevin: Yeah, you know, so what we did on the REI friend is we came back to them and talk about doing unique items. We started to plan with them and give them a preview as to the future of what we were doing with Innovation. And how can we partner together? We weren’t doing that with that system before right? Once we launch with them. We were doing really good things, but we weren’t thinking of them as a strategic partner may be in part because we didn’t think maybe we didn’t believe that we had the right to do that because we were little tiny noon instead we came in and saying no, we’re like a leader in hydration growing clearly the number one tablet at the time and still up by far the number one tablet now and Cohen with a leadership position say Hey, how do we grow together?

And so then we started to develop plans together and then we started doing things with rei.com that we were never doing before terms of sampling. We increase the number of demos we did in store. So again to drive more velocity

Steve: I see.

Kevin: So we just did a lot deeper on Partnerships. We were doing some of it. We just went deeper and double down and put more Investment there.

Steve: Okay, that makes sense. And then the volume is naturally grew and the partnership’s grew deeper and presumably they would Market your products more too, okay.

Kevin: Absolutely, you know, one of the things we’re really proud of the teams just done such a phenomenal job you if we use REI as the example. Last year, we were we were runner-up for vendor of the year at REI, which is pretty wild knowing there’s a lot of different brands in our category and our category by the way was bigger than just nutrition. It’s like think of it as like water bottles and that whole kind of segment over there in the store and we were put up for vendor of the Year. And that was basically it came back to how we work with them how we treat them how we interact with them how we invest time energy and resources with them. So yeah, we went deeper and works for and I think for both of us.

Steve: Cool. What were some of the other aspects of the business that you Amplified?

Kevin: Yeah. So like I said that the idea of believing in ourselves really drives even better and faster. Execution in store. So it’s really the quality of execution. So that’s why I started with culture for you. One of the other things though that we did is that was to get momentum back. There isn’t massive change their here’s where the change really have and where the magnifying effect happen for the team is like, okay, We got her groove back. We got our stride back. I’m a big believer that momentum builds momentum is a Mojo builds Mojo. And so we got this momentum going great. While that was happening, We re-trenched ourselves and said what’s our nutritional philosophy in and basically the mission that we have is we Inspire everyone to move more our nutritional philosophy is to basically give you what you need and nothing that you don’t which is hydrant. You can feel this wasn’t formalized before and so what I did with the team was we step back into what does that look like?

That led us to having this whole live clean clean product claims Planet Clean Sport, and so we realized then I go. Okay. What ingredients Again in the current Nuun tablet that we launched with 15 years ago. Now what is in here that is inconsistent that we need to do better with our product because no one ever wanted to change the product. This was an interesting one, a lot of resistance to change a lot because people loved what we had and the reality was is we had when it launched originally an artificial sweetener, which because that kept the calorie count down in that capacity to keep the calorie count down that made it’s consistent with the science. We had a preservative in there for longer shelf life. We just had some ingredients in there that made sense of why it was developed but then we need to develop a nutritional philosophy and if it’s all about clean ingredients, I’m like, okay, we can’t have this anymore.

Truthfully, nothing’s easy as I told you before when we went to go develop this and we had our Kuroko manufacturer. They basically said you can’t develop a tablet with the philosophy that you’re doing. Are you I kid you not I believe the words were it is impossible and I’m like no we’ve got to do it. Otherwise, we’re gonna have to go find somewhere else to do this. We’ve got to figure it out and we did it,the team did it. With them. We did we completely broke down the Paradigm and said well, how would we do it and worked out it worked at it? And the reason I bring that up is you when you start with the strategy of the philosophy the mission and you go. Okay, what is consistent and what is inconsistent? Because good strategies not only what you will do, but it should be what you want do and so when we took those ingredients out change that we had a whole new platform meaning now, we’ve got a product fit has the performance and you’re not compromising on any ingredients, sweet. So then we go at that opened up a whole new market for us.

Steve: I see.

Kevin: From a business sense and the way I would position this when I’m talking to our board in our investors. Is this going to open a whole new market what really drove it honestly is what’s the right thing to do? What do we want to do? And if we make this for ourselves, this is how we do it. This is our mission that actually, what drove it. When you communicate your audience’s you need to make sure you talk in a language that’s relevant and matters to them. So when I talk for investors here’s the market that is going to open up to which was true. And that’s what happened. And so then after we went to an all natural all cleaning product, we ended up taking that momentum that we had proof points at the REI in the sport especially and went to all Whole Foods Across the Nation all Sports stores, and it was a whole new market for us.

And now we’ve completely changed the game. That was that was probably the game changer right there where it went to a whole different level and then and then we just keep on putting the gas down even harder because we’ve got to think we’re so confident in who we are and what we’re producing and why we believe it’s the best thing for you that it’s just it just keeps on it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Steve: So since we’re on this topic of product since I’ve been a Nuun consumer for quite some time now, I noticed relatively recently You guys started introducing an a lot of varieties whereas in the past. There’s only two and it was easy for me to find that right. I just want the hydration after one. I’m going to have and then I remember when all these different varieties came. I was a little bit confused as to which one I should get. What was the philosophy behind that decision?

Kevin: Yeah. So that’s a really good point. Right arguably. You could say why even add any other products just so more of what you have which is the optimal hydration product that you’re talking about which was designed with the torture test of Adventure athletes an Ironman athletes in mind. Right like the people that are basically sweating and it works when you’re not sweating too which is what you’re talking about first thing in the morning. You’re like, you know, as you were talking about you’re saying I just take this first thing in the morning cuz it makes me feel really good and it’s because you’ve been dehydrating overnight to set also probably makes a lot of sense. The idea here is we said well is this product designed optimally for kind of daily Health occasions? And that’s where we were starting to think through hydration is needed. We need to hydrate throughout the day. How can we help that and what are different needs states that we can address through hydration?

And when we looked at what we’re now calling sport but original product is now cleaned by ingredients obviously, which we did many years ago now. That product is designed for if you will sweat preparing to sweat recovering from sweat, but it’s all around that sweat occasion. And so the other product we launched we said, okay, so we introduced we actually introduced if you’re called as a caffeinated version called Energy.

Steve: Yep. Yep.

Kevin: It’s the same product as just what caffeine and some B vitamins in there that was kind of an introduction. It’s like okay that makes sense the problem with that from a communication perspective which consumers didn’t totally understand. They thought they didn’t know it was the same product just with copying. So with one of the things that you’ve seen is we’ve had to simplify our communication, but I’ll talk to you through the portfolio really quickly and then I’ll say here’s the communication then we did a vitamin product. It was basically about daily health and it’s like the electrolytes are in their same complete electrolyte profile, but we lowered it because you don’t need as high as sodium levels. You don’t need 300 milligrams of sodium when you’re not sweating you do need it if you’re preparing for during or after the split, but if it’s just like I’m working away at my desk or if you you and I are talking to podcast, you know, I’d probably I’d love some electrolytes because it will make the water work harder for me get at the same time. I don’t need it as high.

So that’s when we came up with that and we added in 11 different vitamins and minerals that the research suggested that most people were deficient in so that way you’re constantly getting in vitamins and electrolytes while you’re hydrated throughout the day so that was the idea but it’s causing confusion back to your point. In fact since then, we’ve also launched an immunity product which is, you know, we looked at air born in emergency and we said well, what about these situations and we felt like what was happening with the current competition? And we have this philosophy of we had to start all over again. How would we do it? When you looked at the immunity side of things these products were basically getting an a vitamin C arms race. I’ve got 1,000 milligrams. I’ve got 2,000 milligrams. The problem with that is you can’t actually absorb all that.

Steve: Yeah.

Kevin: So that’s when we developed some pretty, so long story short. We have all these different products and it was causing confusion. So what we’ve done since then and just like in the last two months is flowing through it shelf and that’s what you’re saying is we have a Nuun sport that’s fpr sweat occasion, we have Nuun vitamins daily health and it calls it out on there. We have immunity to boost your immune system and even most recently just launched a rest product to help you get a more restful sleep. So there’s just different ways to hydrate throughout the day you need to hydrate throughout the day. Maybe we can encourage people to hydrate more for more Optimal Health and we can address different need states at the same time. That’s kind of the philosophy. We just have to be really clear on when to use it. Like which one do I use and when.

Steve: Yeah, so I guess what confuses me and this is kind of outside the scope of the interview but like if I’m taking a hydration do I need to take a vitamin one then or should I take both if I take the restful or the immunity that’s like four tablets, I guess right there which seems a little..

Kevin: Yeah.

Steve: And so that’s where the confusion, I’d rather just take one and cover, you know, 3/5 of that

Kevin: Yeah, so if I was if you were to just pick one product, I think you would work with what you’ve been always drinking the Nuun hydration Court product a high electrolytes because it’s really good for any occasion. Is it excess electrolytes? Yes, because its water soluble you’ll just pee it out whatever you don’t absorb, but you don’t always need that high. So for those that want to dial in for that’s what we find is our consumers very involved. It’s like what do I need for what occasion and how do we deliver on that? Again, did you only what you need versus what you don’t and that’s why we have two different products for different occasions. So it’s a very fair comment though. Like I completely understand here because here’s the flipside the downside is so vitamins is a phenomenal product, but it’s not designed optimally if you are about to go out for a century ride bike ride because the electrolytes are going to be high enough.

Steve: Right

Kevin: But it’s perfectly designed for you know again you and I having a podcast discussion right now. I’m just kind of relaxing and chatting because the electrolyte levels are optimal and I’m getting vitamins. I don’t need you don’t need even more electrolytes at this point.

Steve: Okay

Kevin: So I realized maybe a small confusion but..

Steve: I was just kind of curious what the business decision was. But I mean the business decision really is so you can move into new markets essentially, right?

Kevin: Yeah, kind of exempting from a personal perspective. You’re right. So from a business perspective what it would tell you this is when we launched vitamins and when we’ve launched immunity and then now rest they’ve all been highly incremental in terms of business volume to the current sport product the sport product continues to grow and then these additions have been incremental but also Nuun Markets new need States is what we’re addressing.

Steve: I mean now we’re essentially tackling multivitamins as well as Airborne, correct, right?

Kevin: Yeah.

Steve: Okay.

Kevin: That’s true. Yep. So it’s a new way to enter into the brand.

Steve: Exactly. Yeah and basically piggyback on what you have that’s already successful. Because I know for a fact that time are you taking Nuun every day instead of taking Centrum. For example, I might just take a vitamin, Nuun.

Kevin: Yeah, I think that’s fair. I think that’s fair.

Steve: So, okay. So back to the original thing we were talking about. So what were the things that you decide to cut out? So you we talked about what you Amplified? What did you not amplifier but decrease essentially?

Kevin: yeah what do you stop doing? Right? And so one of the things that I mentioned to you as we made the change in the product that was one of the things that we we really stopped doing was we said, how do we change the product and and turn this a different way the other thing that we did was we stopped looking for fast channel extension at the time. Now, we’re doing more Channel expansion because we’re ready for it, but we weren’t ready for it. So whether that’s the club channel the drug Channel we were going down those paths and behind the scenes and actually entered into stores and we weren’t doing great in those and so how do we pull back from that and that’s that’s kind of where we collectively said we need to Stop doing that and let’s go deeper where we are and really retrench to get stronger growth rates and then start to expand but don’t go too far out.

It’s those closer and adjacencies, you know, the reality is as our consumer tends to be highly involved. They want to read the ingredients. They want to know what it’s for which is why we can do different need States. If you go too far down the path of a conventional General market, we may not be relevant for them yet at this point and that’s what we are finding. So that’s one of the things that we did differently stop going after drug. Stop going after Club.

Steve: I guess that makes sense. I mean when you go after too many things you don’t do any of them well, and so I guess your philosophy was to just go deep and then once you’ve saturated that particular Avenue then look to expand.

Kevin: Yep, exactly. And by the way, you won’t really ever know a few saturated it because there’s always likely a bit more room to grow. So, I think it’s I think it’s when you feel like you’ve got and somewhat of an over index and now you’ve built up in a without a lot of data being smaller companies, you’re going on a little bit of intuition to say, I think I think we’ve got pretty good awareness now. :et’s go to the next adjacency of consumer and reach and then that’s when you go to the next channel.

Steve: I guess you can measure diminishing returns though, right?

Kevin: True. You’re right.

Steve: Absolutely. Maybe that’s it. Okay, cool. I feel like I caught you kind of like an inflection point right You released all those new varieties relatively recently. I want to say so what is the next growth face that you see for Nuun?

Kevin: Yeah, I believe there’s still a few more needs dates that we believe that we can extend to for hydration, like taking the tablets hydration plus so think it as electrolytes but lower level than the sport electrolytes plus this so electrolytes plus immunity electrolytes plus to deliver on a more restful sleep. So there’s a few more indeed states that we have in mind that we want to do on that. There’s also some different platforms that we think we can build from and reinvent a few different categories out there. So I can’t talk too much about that. But if you think about nutrition uncompromised and take it from a supplement perspective, but that probably should be a good indicator of okay. So what are some sleepy categories kind of stale and stagnant that that really need to be reinvented and so we’ve got our eyes on a couple of different categories where we’ll build a platform to reinvent.

Steve: Okay.

Kevin: I’ll give you an example for that. That’s not that’s not Nuun, but it will give you a chance to give you context, you know. Kudosuour friends over at Justin so whichever one probably those that know it and most people do now as an almond butter. If you go back in time when they went into the category, it was a stale peanut butter category selling for a buck .99, $2.99 a jar. Now people are buying anywhere from $7.99 to $11.99, $14.99 for almond butter because it’s a better quality and it changed the whole category from peanut butter to nut butter and I think we can go into a few different sleepy categories and get you to rethink the approach in terms of better nutrition higher quality and but just more efficacious.

Steve: Okay one last question for you that I was just kind of curious about in terms of your online versus brick and mortar strategy, which do you put more emphasis on which is doing better for you and just kind of what is your outlook on that?

Kevin: Well, there’s no question in my mind. That digital is where the fastest growing Market is period out there in terms of consumables and beyond that. In fact, I have a fundamental belief that two things here, passes. The world is moving today will never it’ll never be too slow again. So if you haven’t got your digital capabilities up you’re already behind and you better get caught up pretty quickly. So that should let you know that I think digital is definitely work emphasis needs to go that being said, there’s still a lot of room in grocery and traditional channels where people are shopping and and it’s it is the bigger part of our business still to this day. I believe the bigger growth area of our company over time is definitely digital.

However, I think there’s still a ton of growth in the more traditional bricks-and-mortar area. So it’s the answer is it’s a little bit bag. It’s yes, it’s yes on both but I would lean digital because I do think that digital did not see other philosophy is digital is changing everything. In life, period. So we really need to make sure we capitalize on that. We’re seeing growth happens pretty close on both. It’s a little faster on digital but it’s also a little bit smaller base granted It’s over time that the gap closing.

Steve: was going to ask you was on the digital side. What is there left for you to do in terms of growth? Is it just doing more which you already have or are there additional avenues that you have to try?

Kevin: Well, I think one of the things that we’re learning that we need to get better at is our own direct to Consumer website. I think that less is revenue but more about learning whether that’s data science Performance Marketing. We are all those terms out there. We’re OK at it. We’re absolutely focused on how do we get better at it? And the idea here is how do we learn more about our consumer? How do we offer more toward loyal consumers which will drive higher retention and loyalty and I think that’s a really big area for us to get better at and get better at quickly on the digital side of things.

Steve: Okay.

Kevin: Yeah, you know, there’s obviously Amazon and online stores or out there and we’re growing really well that’s not going to change but I think the area that’s very different for us is through our own website because at that point you have you own all the data and then now we can really build a deeper relationship and understand what we’re doing well and what we’re not and in their consumers need.

Steve: You know one thing I just noticed because I was shopping on your site earlier. I‘d buy Nuun and I consumed it consistently, but I’m not on a subscription and that was actually looking on the site for a way to save money on a subscription but it wasn’t maybe already have one but I could not find it at least for me as an avid consumer. Like I think if I was incentivized to get on a subscription basis, then I would join instantly. But anyways..

Kevin: We’ll make, I agree with you. I agree with you. It’s definitely in the center part.

Steve: Okay, so can kind of conclude this interview where can people find more about your product and if they have any questions for you or want to contact the company directly. Where can they get a hold of you guys?

Kevin: Yeah, absolutely. You know, we’re really fortunate you can find us in a lot of stores online. We already mentioned we talked a lot about REI. The fleet Feats of the worlds are also at Whole Foods and Target, Kroger stores. So we’re basically going to find us a most of most of the grocery stores and stores where you shop today most and then obviously online look us up on any social media handle. So Nuun hydration is the handle for I think all of them being Instagram, Twitter, and well Facebook just look up your hydration. If you want to find me personally, my name is Kevin Rutherford in my Instagram and Twitter handles a little bit different. It’s the clean_lantern that’s clean underscore lantern and the team the team called me that one and it was all about Beacon of light for her planet the planet and humans and all the earthlings that share it with us. So that’s the idea. So but yeah, you can find us there and really appreciate the time. It’s been really fun chatting.

Steve: Yeah. Cool. Thanks a lot of come the show Kevin really appreciate it.

Kevin: Thank you.

Hope you enjoyed that episode. Now, I personally love getting an inside look at how my favorite hydration tablet company has managed to grow to an eight-figure business. For more information about this episode, go to mywifequitjob.com/episode273.

And once again, I want to thank Privy for sponsoring this episode. Privy is the email capture provider that I personally use the term visitors into email subscribers. They offer email capture exit intent and site targeting tools to make it super simple as well. And I like Privy because it is so powerful and you can basically trigger custom pop-ups for any parameter that is closely tied your eCommerce store. Now, if you want to give it a try it is free so head on over to privy.com/steve. Once again, that’s P-R-I-V-Y.com/steve.

I also want to thank Kaviyo for sponsoring this episode, Kaviyo is my email marketing platform of choice for e-commerce Merchants. You can easily put together automated flows like an abandoned cart sequence a post purchase flow or win back campaign. Basically, all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot. So head on over to mywifequitherjob.com/klaviyo. Once again, That’s mywifequitherjob.com/klaviyo.

Now. I talked about how I use all these tools in my blog and if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store head on over to mywifequitherjob.com and sign up for my free six a mini-course just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.

Outro: Thanks for listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast where we are giving the courage people need to start their own online business. For more information visit Steve’s blog at www.mywifequitherjob.com

But before we begin I want to give a shout-out to Privy who’s also sponsored the show. previous a tool that I use to build my email list for both my blog and my online store. Now, what is Privy do, well Privy’s an email list growth platform and they manage all my email capture forms and I use Privy hand-in-hand with my email marketing provider. Now, there are a bunch of companies out there that are managing email capture forms, but I like Privy because they specialize in e-commerce. Right now I’m using Privy Display a cool Wheel of Fortune pop-up basically user gives your email for a chance to win valuable prizes in our store and customers love the gamification aspect of this and when implemented this form email signups increased by a hundred thirty one percent. Now, you can also use Privy to reduce car abandoned with cart saver pop-ups and abandoned cart email sequences as well one super low price that is much cheaper than using a full-blown email marketing solution. So bottom line Privy allows me to turn visitors into email subscribers and recover lost sales so head on over to privy.com/steve and try it for free if you decide you need to the more advanced features use coupon code MWQHJ for fifteen percent off once again that’s privy.com/steve.

I also want to give a quick shout-out to Klaviyo for sponsoring the show whether you are just getting your business off the ground or looking for new ways to scale Klaviyo offers fast simple and repeatable ways to grow now with Klaviyo you can personalize your marketing build your customer relationships and automate your online sales and it is now easier than ever to create amazing email and advertising experiences. Now I want to talk about Klaviyo’s new entrepreneurial growth guide packed with must read blog post case studies and getting started content this guide will help you prioritize what to do next for maximum revenue growth that moving to a new marking problem can be intimidating but Klaviyo helps you get up and going fast with proven technology and countless support resources. Now, you can check out this free content now over at Klaviyo.com/mywife once again that is Klaviyo.com/mywife. Now on to the show.

Intro: Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast we will teach you how to create a business that suits your lifestyle so can spend more time with your family focus on doing the things that you love. Here’s your host Steve Chou.

Steve: Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. Today, I’m thrilled to have Dawn LaFontaine on the show. Now, Dawn was a finalist of the five minute pitch by Shark Tank like show with Mike Jackness, Greg Mercer and Scott Voelker where we gave away $50,000 in Cold Hard Cash. Now, Dawn runs an e-commerce business selling cardboard boxes for cats. This is called Cat In The Box and her products have been featured in Parade, Product Hunt and the Boston Globe and in this interview, we’re going to talk about Dawn’s triumphs, her obstacles and getting started with their business and with that welcome to show Dawn. How you doing today?

Dawn: Oh very good. Thank you so much for having me Steve and it’s truly a thrill in a pleasure.

Steve: So Dawn, How do you feel now that the I’m in a pitch is all over?

Dawn: Oh my goodness. I’m just so utterly relieved. I just I’m just glad I didn’t, you know, didn’t screw it up and I did a good job, and I’m just you know glad to have had the experience.

Steve: Yeah, and I was telling Dawn right before this interview that I thought, you know for the finals at least Dawn’s preparation for her final five minute pitch was amazing. She clearly came prepared. She did a great job and I was very impressed.

Dawn : Well, thank you for saying that that actually means a lot coming from you.

Steve: So Dawn, what’s nice about the podcast is we get a chance to dig deeper into your backstory. Unlike five minute pitch when you only have five minutes, so please tell the audience about your product and how you got started with it.

Dawn: Sure. So I make Whimsical cardboard box toys for cats to think inside the box. If you have a cat or if you know someone who has a cat you probably already know that cats are just weirdly attracted to cardboard boxes. I mean you could leave a box that earrings came in on the counter and a cat will definitely try and squeeze into it. So if you have a cat you probably already keep like an old Amazon box around for Cat to sleep in or hide in or play in and that’s great because you’re meeting your cat’s needs for a cardboard box, but you don’t know where that box has been it’s dirty. It’s ugly and it might be imprinted with toxic inks and my boxes they’re kind of unique. They’re clean. They’re safer cats. I am print them with human grade soy-based inks. They’re environmentally friendly all recycled cardboard their fun attractive their bit of a conversation piece and most importantly, you know cats really do love them.

Stwvw: So, how did you get the idea? I mean, it seems kind of random to me. At least when I first heard your pitch. I was like, wow, I never would have thought of yet.

Dawn: You are not a cat owner.

Steve: Yes, that’s correct.

Dawn: I actually got the idea on a trip with my mother to drop her cats off at the cat sitter. This woman had a really beautifully appointed home. She obviously cared a lot about her Decor but her living room was filled with old shipping cartons, and I know she saw me looking around which is kind of embarrassing now, but she said, you know to be quite sheepishly, you know the for the cats. So I’ve owned cats. I knew they’d like boxes, but it did get me thinking. Why do their owners put up with dirty ugly Amazon boxes In their homes? Why not something, you know, that’s, clean attractive, cat safe, maybe something even a little bit stylish and that’s how the idea for this business came about.

And let me just back up here a minute and say that I often think of quote-unquote great product ideas all the time. And now that I’ve you know involved in this I know it’s not about the product idea but the implementation, you know, that’s the hard part but as I walk through life thinking about better ways of doing normally walk through life thinking about better ways of doing things and when I thought of this particular one I said to myself for a couple of reasons that this is the idea that I should pursue.

Steve: So when you thought of the idea, first of all have you started any sort of business before this one?

Dawn: I just did a little service-related business while I was raising my kids. I’m a professional writer editor. So I didn’t, you know, just a little bit of freelance writing and editing on the side as a way to contribute to the family, bottom line. So I’m not it wasn’t a business in the sense. I didn’t have a website. I didn’t mark it. I mean people came to me so I don’t think it’s really comparable to this kind of business.

Speaker 2: Okay, and are you working full time right now, or?

Dawn: No, I am, this is a perfect job for me.

Steve: Okay. So what kind of full-time job

Steve: I’m sorry so, Cat In The Box is a full-time job for you.

Dawn: Yes. Yes.

Steve: Okay. So when you started this were you working or?

Dawn: No. And in fact as my kids have gotten older I was still home full time with them. I’ve been home with them for 21/22 years or so and they were you know, my son had just had you know gone off to college and actually was graduating college. My daughter was just going into college. So I had sort of even weaned myself off of the freelance work that I’ve been doing as I’m trying to mole what you know mall over what should I do with the rest of my life. I mean, it’s really my age is really a Crossroads in a person’s life. And this is the path I decided to take.

Steve: Yeah. So what were some of your motivations I imagine the freelance work was going well with the writing. Yeah why business?

Dawn: Couple of reasons, one is when my husband and I were first married before we had children. I was really the big Breadwinner in the family. I made you know, as a percentage anyway of our family income a lot bigger piece of the pie than he did and while I stayed home with the kids, it’s just not something you think about at the beginning of the road when there You know newborns or kindergartners even. He’s you know worked for the 25 years moved up through his career. And now he has a really interesting strategic job and I don’t have all that time left in my working life to start over where I was in my 20s and you know work my way up to the point where he is, so it was hard after I devoted so much of my life to somebody else to think of starting all over so, you know to my two kids which I’m happy I did but to start all over.

And then interestingly it’s sort of the same Crossroads here. He actually got laid off from a job that he’d had for 15 years and at that moment I said, well, I mean, I, you know, I got to get back in the workforce. I we got to have an income and I actually just applied to two part-time jobs that I was overqualified for and I was the kind of person in my twenties if I went on an interview, I got a large percentage of job offers that I went after and here I applied to you know, really kind of Modest part time jobs, and I didn’t get either one of them. Snd it started to make me think about you know, what do I really want? Rest of my life and that the idea that I needed to control my own destiny. And interestingly, my husband actually never really ended up having a gap in his work history. He got one from one job to another he got a severance check from the old job and we use that to start this business.

Steve: Okay, and in terms of this business how did you know is going to sell like, how’d you go about validating you before you got started?

Dawn: Had I taken your course from day one. I’m going to do that. This was just like hmm, you know, I’ve owned cats they would like this and that that’s really not a great idea, especially since my product really doesn’t exist. I mean if seen since a few sort of similar kind of things nothing that’s exactly the same but I couldn’t say well oh there you know, so and so is selling a million dollars worth of these things a year. I should be able to grab a tiny piece of that market. I the really wasn’t anything that existed on the market like this and I really didn’t do my due diligence and testing it to start out. Unfortunately.

Steve: I mean, but it was a hit clearly because all this And all this press and a decent Instagram following from it.

Dawn: Right. I mean, I think the bottom line is I cats absolutely love it. That’s not question. I’ve got a million videos and photos showing that they love it. They do love it and the the cat owners really like it too because they are clever and they’re fun and they love to take pictures of their cats in them. The problem that I face is a completely different one had maybe this category existed before I started this wouldn’t have been this issue. But this is this is not an SEO play. I have to convince people that they might be interested in something like this and they’re not looking for me. I have to go out and look for them.

Steve: Yeah. I don’t know if that’s necessarily the case, but we can talk about that a little bit better kind of curious about is presumably you’ve never manufactured a product before how did you even know how to get started making this thing?

Dawn: Well, I didn’t and but I am the kind of person who researches something to death anything whatever it is, so that I’m actually that’s the part of the this thing. I think I’m good at so it was you know, I knew what I wanted to make. I’m not a designer. So I had to find somebody to design it for me. But in terms of finding the manufacturer, I just started cold calling and cold emailing box manufacturers cardboard manufacturers in the US and the problem wasn’t finding a manufacturer. It was finding somebody who was willing to work with me was a kind of a Goldilocks problem the big manufacturers who had the capability to do complex designs.

Like what I was asking for we’re not interested in a little business like mine and the smaller companies that would have been thrilled to have me as a customer simply just didn’t have the capabilities. So it was a matter of finding, you know, just that right manufacturer who is willing to work with me and had the ability to make what I was looking for.

Steve: Can you talk about this process though? Is it, was it just literally trial and error to find the right manufacturer or did you use any language or negotiation tactics to get them like a larger guy to work with you?

Dawn: The larger ones really wouldn’t so..

Steve: Okay.

Dawn: No, they and you know often you know, you contact A salesperson through email or through or by phone and they’re generally willing to help and they’re willing to say well I had one guy who told me you’re never going to find somebody to manufacture this in cardboard. You need to do it in paper board, which is the stuff that like game boards are made of or or cereal boxes. And I know that that doesn’t meet the cats biological needs that corrugated cardboard meets so that.

Steve: I’m sorry. Why is that actually I don’t I’m not a cat on her so I don’t know but what’s the difference between paperboard and the cardboard for a box?

Dawn: I mean a cat will probably go into a paperboard box to I mean, they will go into a paperboard box too but it doesn’t quite meet their needs. So I think I mentioned in the five minute pitch presentation that one of the key reasons that cats are so attracted to cardboard boxes and this is something that has been shown scientifically is that cats do not like to live in the temperature of that. We humans like to In the house, I mean, they like it 86 to 97 degrees in our house. None of us are keeping our house at 97 degrees. So they’re basically freezing all the time and one of the really cool things about cardboard about corrugated cardboard are those little corrugations the as you probably know are is very insulating. And so those crates create little air pockets and it makes the inside of a cardboard box very very warm a corrugated cardboard box very warm. And so that’s one of the reasons that keeps, you know, trying to find its way back into a box.

Steve: Okay, and then so you ended up finding someone small to work with you.

Dawn: It’s there. I would say they’re more of a medium sized manufacturer now the disadvantage of and they’re just if they’re great. I mean they do a great job. They’re a wonderful manufacturer, but because I am not a big customer of theirs for example, but right now I’m in the process as you are well aware of readers of Designing a new a new product. And so, you know, they sent me a prototype which is was not what I asked for and you know make my changes send them back I get stuck down to the bottom of the pile. And I got to wait till they get back to me for another iteration. So it’s just a very very long process. It can take months, especially, you know, I would love it if I just gave them my dimensions and they would just make something that shape and size with those size holes and that placement of things but they just they do things their way. They think it’s a better way of doing it and then I got to keep going through various iterations.

Steve: What’s the design process like so first of all, where did you find your designer? And what is the like how do you even design a box? Is there like CAD software for that or?

Dawn: Yeah, well, yeah, they have actually specialized software there. The Box Company actually has employees who are box Engineers. These are people who went to college and two major and packaging engineering which I did not know was a field that either right and I guess to varying degrees they’re good at the designer or the not you know, you know, not just the assembling or the creation of the box, but also the creativity behind the box and I don’t have any design background or ability at all, but I knew what I wanted it to look like. I just could see it in my mind. I just you know, maybe not that great at expressing it exactly how I wanted it. I mean even things like for the milk carton, for example, I have a for folks who are listening. I have a design that’s shaped like a traditional milk carton like a half gallon of milk the little top where the date stamp is

I mean, they couldn’t get the size of that right? I know it doesn’t seem like much but when it’s too small, it doesn’t look like a milk carton and when it’s too big, it doesn’t look like a milk carton. So I kept having to say bigger or smaller bigger smaller, whatever.

Steve: Interesting. So that’s not conveyed digitally in the file in the design file?

Dawn: They have to actually create the design file.

Steve: Got it. Okay.

Dawn: They’re actually like a creative room where they’re actually hand cutting everything to create a prototype. So they’ll create a you know, cut it all out and then I’ll say no and you know, it has to be like this. It has to be like this and so it came back to me and until I got what I thought was the right shape that would fold properly that look like I want what I wanted it to look like and that a cat would be willing to go into and then in terms of the appearance of the box. I worked with a designer that I worked with. I think I mentioned I just I did had a freelance writing and editing background. I worked on a bridal magazine for some years and this was the woman who I added the magazine and she was the designer.

Steve: I see so the process was the designer doesn’t actually design the box. It designs the design then you handed over the Box manufacturer and they turned into like this box file.

Dawn: It was actually just the opposite we started with the shape of the Box first and then she has a design to that shape. So they actually provided her with the outline of what the box would look like and then she had to go and design the design for that.

Steve: I gotcha. Gotcha. Okay in terms of like all the lettering everything they later convert her design back into the box side or they Incorporated together.

Dawn: Right. And that was extremely complex process because publication Printing and other words printing on documents is nothing like printing on a box. There are very very different. And there’s a lot of error when you’re printing on a box. So you have to create a design that allows for for the design to move at least a quarter of an inch in any direction. So it’s really so I mean, for example the cheese box, they really just wanted me to do solid yellow box. I had gone through so many versions to make the little what looks like the Swiss cheese holes. I various different three-dimensional looks but none of those met the needs of their printing press so that we ended up with something that you know that satisfies me, but we went through multiple different completely different looks for that that one that worked for me and for them.

Steve: I never would have thought manufacturing a printed box would be so complicated.

Dawn: Me neither.

Steve: So how much money did it cost you to get started with this?

Dawn: Yeah. I was actually before our conversation. I was looking back through my files. I’m not even sure what to count but I’m going to say somewhere in the order of around 14 thousand dollars that included the printing plates and the cutting dies which were at least half the price up front. That also included the manufacture of the actual boxes and you know some photography and of course the work of the designer

Steve: So interesting. So these are plates that print them. It’s not like a printer that prints on the boxes.

Dawn: Right there. There is a natural like an old-fashioned kind of plate and if you saw the cutting die, I mean you wouldn’t even know that that was going to make a box you would it’s so antiquated looking. It doesn’t even it doesn’t look like something that should be in the modern era but it’s an unusual process.

Steve: Okay. So I guess that provides you with some barriers to entry right? So now that you own this place like the plate is yours, right?

Dawn: Right.

Steve: Okay, and then no one else it’s it makes it much harder to copy this box basically.

Dawn: I think it does and I know there’s a lot of talk and there was even during the five minute pitch process about patents and so on and so forth, but there are other things that that may even be a higher barrier to entry and this this whole process. I mean you really have to be dedicated to do it and you have to have some money up front to spend on these kind of things.

Steve: Okay, and in terms of getting that first prototype and all that it was that expensive? Just working with them like digit to pay them upfront.

Dawn: No, they’re actually pretty generous about that. They wanted my insurance is that I plan to buy something which I I said, yes, of course, but and I guess they would have probably charge me for their time had I not purchased but my intention was to do it and when they got it right then I just had to pay for the printing plates and the and the kind of guys up front.

Steve: Okay, and did you start with just a single design?

Dawn: I started with you. Actually my first thought was oh I’ll do five and I’ll make it climbed all I’m like, what was I thinking I mean, I barely got to out it took me like eight months or

Steve: Oh my goodness. Okay.

Dawn: Between going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth over the sing it took forever. So yeah five was not going to happen and they weren’t going to be bundled.

Steve: All right, so you launched with to and how did you launch that? Did you start a website at first or..

Dawn: I did that was actually the first thing that I did was just start a website. I’ve actually listen to some of your free material and I understood the whole, you know, potential conflicts with Amazon and some of the problems I thought oh, well, I’ll start my own website that all you know, that eliminate all those problems. Well creates all kinds of new problems instead, but that’s what I did. So, you know..

Steve: Which platform did you choose and are you a technical person?

Dawn: I would say I’m not a technical person in the sense that I don’t have a technical background, but I’m definitely not afraid of Technology. I enjoy digging into that kind of stuff and I’m willing to learn. That being said I didn’t think it was a good use of my time to you know, do some of the open cart things that you had also talked about and I really liked the look and feel of some of the Shopify options. So I chose that to start with

Steve: Awesome. And then in terms of the design did you do it yourself or did you get a developer?

Dawn: I’m really a do it myself or kind of person all the way around I’m Frugal I like to save money. I like to see what I can do. And then later on if I have a need I will hire somebody if they can provide a service that I can’t render myself. So the design of the website so far as me and the redesign of the website or at least the front page will be me.

Steve: I actually think it looks pretty nice and I’m looking forward to seeing you redesign as well.

Dawn: As I said it was based on something that you said on your lecture and it really really struck me how it could be improved.

Steve: All right, let’s talk about sales. How did you get your first sale?

Dawn: The first sale was actually through product hunt. So I think the day I launched my website. Site actually wrote a note to somebody at product hunt and first they said thanks, but no, thanks and then immediately sent me another email back and said okay and so..

Steve: For the listeners, can you kind of describe what product Hunt is first? Right?

Dawn: It’s actually a platform for people who are interested in what’s new in mostly in technology and it’s a platform for them for for new products to get exposure to this very interested community and oddly. They also have a slight interested in cat products. I don’t understand..

Steve: I was going to say for product. I didn’t think that your product was a fit. Right?

Dawn: Right and I would say generally know and if it was a dog product it probably would have been a no but oddly they just seem to have some some cat products on there. So that’s sort of struck me and I did find one of the product Hunters who had actually promoted a cat product before I reached out to her directly and So eventually she did hunt the product for me and which means that it got up on their platform and I got some, you know views it didn’t didn’t explode on that platform like some technology products do but I got my first couple of I don’t remember how many was maybe one or two or three? And that was it sales from for product type

Steve: I’ve actually never used product type before so what is the process like of getting on there? And what is the actual listing look like I voted before but I don’t think I’ve ever tried to list anything on there before

Dawn: Right. Well what you see is what it is. So getting onto products, I guess they say that you have just as much chance hunting the product yourself in other words just you know, sort of applying and getting on there. But the backstory or what I’ve read is that it actually pays to have an experienced product Hunter another words somebody who already has a relationship with product hunt and they have a history of promoting successful products and they’re kind of ranked on proud. You can find the ranking of these hunters and maybe there’s you know, there’s a top hundred or so and the hunter that I ended up using was in the top hundred. So for me, I thought it was important to reach out to somebody who had Variants and interest in pet related products.

And the person that I chose so they actually post it for you and they have their own set of followers and that the idea is that you have an established audience already eyeballs that are already on a product looking for what this product Hunter is posting.

Steve: How did you convince this woman to to do that for you?

Dawn: My, I think my writing history does help. I’m good at writing convincing letters with the right tone and the right length. I mean the right there, you know, just..

Steve: I mean, what did you say? I’m just kind of curious if you remember

Dawn: I wrote something a little bit clever something about you know, however many YouTube videos can’t be wrong castle of boxes. There’s like a million YouTube videos about cats and boxes and then just wrote something that was just warm and and hopefully a little bit clever and it caught her attention. And as I said, I think she said no first and then immediately wrote me another note said I changed my mind. Yeah..

Steve: She’s a cat person?

Dawn: She has hunted other pet products. I did not end up establishing a personal relationship with her where I found out whether she indeed is a a pet or a cat owner, but she has hunted other pet products before and I thought that was important because that meant that her audience was interested in pet products.

Steve: And how did you find her in the first place? Is there like a list of the top 100?

Dawn: Yeah, there’s a list of so it’s just her name and she has an unusual name and I just you know kind of did a Google Search and she’s actually in the UK and she has a Consulting business there and I was able to track her down through her either through her LinkedIn page or through a contact form on her on her web page.

Steve: If you sell on Amazon or run any online business for that matter, you’re going to need a trademark to protect your intellectual property. Not only that but a trademark is absolutely necessary to register your brand on Amazon. Now, I used to think that any old trademark registration service would work and that could even try to register my own trademark by myself on the cheap, but I was dead wrong. Securing a trademark without a strategy in place usually results in either an outright rejection or a worthless unenforceable trademark. Now, that is why I work with Stephen Wagner and his team from Emerge counsel. They have a package service called total TM, which provides the same attention to detail and process that large law firms do at a fraction of the price. Now for me personally, I like Emerge counsel because of their philosophy, their goal is to maximize IP protection while minimizing the price. So before you decide to register a trademark by yourself or file for other I could protection such as a copyright or a patent, check out Emerge counsel first and get a free consult. For more information go to emergecounsel.com and click on the Amazon sellers button and tell Steve that Steve sent you to receive a $100 discount on the total TM package for Amazon sellers. Once again, that’s emergecounsel.com over at emergecounsel.com. Now back to the show.

And so you get your first couple sales on product hunt. How did you get all the Press?

Dawn: I have a writing background.

Steve: Okay.

Dawn: I just..

Steve: That comes in real Handy. Apparently.

Dawn: Yeah. I’m glad I have at least one or two skills that I can apply not that’s it. That’s where it ends. By the way. I’ve no desire. No marketing skills. I have no I’ve never sold the thing in my life, Girl Scout cookies, that was probably the last thing I want so right so I’m I know how to write a press release and the traditional media. It’s a little bit about, you know, darts on the dartboard, you know, send out a whole bunch of them and maybe you’re lucky to get one or two people to respond to you and and the thing about also knowing about how to write a press release is that I know what Looking for and so I know what to write in my letter.

Steve: So can you talk about this process? So by pressure release you don’t mean like using like PR web or one of those services. Do you?

Dawn: No, no. You can either write a press release and then sends it along with a personal letter to an editor that you’re targeting. The first thing to do is to decide who you’re going to Target don’t go for the Wall Street Journal first,

Steve: Boston Globe is pretty big

Dawn: Right but I’m a Boston residents. So I went through the the Metro West Section, which is where I live. So I live in the little bit West of Boston and so they’re always looking at the bottom line is journals are always looking to fill a newspaper. They got a lot of newspapers and I gotta fill them. So what you want to do is you got a busy journalist who doesn’t have a ton of time to do a lot of research. So if you can provide everything that they need in your letter for an article links to your actual photographs links to you know to your website all the who, what, when, where, and how of your business in the letter you’re saving them. Kind of work and they might be inclined to publish just for that reason and if they have an interest in your topic in this particular case getting through the Boston Globe door through the Metro West Section door is a great way to get into the Boston Globe because they’re interested in more local business news. So.

Steve: So a couple things I just want to ask you about. So how did you get ahold of the editor or the contact information? And then what’s in this letter exactly just in case someone who’s listening wants to try to do this method.

Dawn: Right, So actually they make it really easy to find their contact information because they want you to contact them. So usually there’s a byline or something like that at the end of the similar article. So look for somebody who’s written an article like one you’d like to be written about your business. So that’s the other thing too. The story has to have a hook. So in my case was really important to do it at the beginning for this particular section of the newspaper for this particular Editor to, so the hook was I just opened this new business. I think I sent it to So it was Saunders and she may have sent it to you. Like I got a little blurb about five minute pitch in one of my other local papers.

Steve: Nice.

Dawn: Same thing, because five minute pitch was you know, that’s that’s an event. That’s a hook. So you have to have a hook. So if you’re you have some news about your business, you have a new product you started a new business and it depends on what your particular local media outlet is is looking for and keep read it and and see what they’re looking for. Then it’s easy enough to identify who writes those stories and usually the newspaper website has all those all the contact information right up there and they’re looking for your email send them an email that contains everything that they need for a story. Wite it clearly make it so

Steve: So what is everything they need for story. They need the story. They need photos. What else?

Dawn: it’s always the who was, that’s that’s a journalist thing. Who, what, when, where, why, and how so whatever your story is try and answer those questions completely for them. Give them every single thing that they would need. Look at a similar story. What’s there? Well, it’s located in such-and-such town. You know, the business does X Y & Z. This is why it’s Unique provide them with great photographs. And in fact, I think I provided a beautiful high color, full color, high quality photos and that section of paper was color that day and I think it was because of my photos. So I got really really beautiful photos in it and I provided that to them and they didn’t have to go doing the work of digging around for it. Provide them with quotes in your note. You can say, you know, whatever whatever you want to say. They published my quotes exactly as I put them in my letters.

So think about what you want to convey about your business first and foremost have write it clearly, right it succinctly and then provide that also in the letter. So you’re almost writing the story for them and it saves them a lot of work and they may be inclined to publish just because they have space to fill and you’ve provided them with everything that they need.

Steve: This sounds like a pretty long email.

Dawn: You know if you looked at my articles on actually can click on them through my website. They’re not that long. I mean newspaper articles aren’t that long? Okay. So we’re doing a big huge feature splashed way that would be different and and they may be interviewing other people and so on and so forth for this there, you know, pretty short little blurbs.

Steve: Okay

Dawn: A couple had you know sections of a column.

Steve: and once you get in one of these Publications do they lead to sales was my next question.

Dawn: They did actually so the Boston Globe is actually I’m sorry. That was it was another local paper called the Metro West Daily News, which is the really big local paper around here and they have a lot of small little Publications that have different names but they feed all the information into these small Publications that actually gave my that actually had a lot longer shelf life than the Boston Globe even though the Boston Globe had has a bigger readership the small local paper is really what everybody reads and because they have all these little additional papers under different names, but with the same content, I got to go out into all these different communities. So my Story had a lot more longevity that way and I actually got more sales trickling in overtime through the smaller paper than I did through the you know, the one day Splash from the Boston Globe.

And the Boston Globe thing, basically that got all my friends to call me and say hey I saw you in the Boston Globe really led to more sales was my little what MetroWest Daily News are big local paper which has, you know, feeds these smaller papers.

Steve: So interesting going forward. Are you now targeting some of the smaller publications then?

Dawn: I need to have a hook. So the five minute pitch was one had I won I would have probably done more with that

Steve: I see.

Dawn: But it’s in the interim maybe when I release a new product or if you know something else, you know different happens, then I’ll have the hook and I’ll be able to go back to the to the media outlets and do it. But right now there’s nothing to say yet.

Steve: I see okay interesting. It’s interesting how that works. So what else has worked for you in terms of marketing your products.

Dawn: Hmm

Steve: Had Instagram had an effect?

Dawn: I’m getting visitors from Instagram and I have definitely had some sales Instagram and I’ve only recently sort of started to crack the nut about Pinterest to and I notice Shopify has a lot of statistics and data that come through which is really helpful about where people are coming from. And so I can see now that now that I’ve sort of started to figure it out that more people are coming from Pinterest now, too. So, yeah, the problem is also one of the advantages of sap of eyes you could see where people are and because Instagram and Pinterest is a worldwide audience and right now I really can’t ship worldwide. I can see, “h that person’s looking at me from Africa. They’re looking at me from the UK and I really just can’t I can’t ship there. So even though I’m driving traffic to my website from these social media outlets, they’re not necessarily driving sales.

Steve: Okay, actually for people who haven’t watched your episode. What are some of the struggles that you have actually?

Dawn: Right. So I big struggle the one that I’m addressing now is that my products are while they’re light. They are far too large to ship efficiently. So and so shipping is ridiculously expensive even in the US but prohibitive shipping internationally and I have a lot of anecdotal demand in other words people reaching out to me personally through direct Messenger on Instagram and so forth. Could you ship this to me tonight? I’m in such country and I have to say no you’ll have to wait for the you know, the next product project. I mean it costs about 60 bucks to ship it to the UK, which is really outrageous. So that’s so the size is prohibitive from the point of view of shipping and it’s also prohibited from the point of view of being able to get retail space and really I can’t do FBA on Amazon. So..

Steve: Okay. So actually how much do you charge for a box and how much does it cost you?

Dawn: Right. So I charge $29.99 right now and that includes free shipping in the US and the shipping cost anywhere between seven and sixteen dollars per box to ship depending on how many zones I’m shipping a And then that’s another negative thing. Also. I wanted to mention about shipping out. I’ll finish your answer your question a minute.

Steve: Sure.

Dawn: But I can only ship to to the further zones through parcel select shipping which is an utter disaster and it’s not something I want to subject my future customers to so in order to. So Priority Mail. I need to get the box onto a certain size. So back to the the margin question the boxes cost. What did I say..

Steve: 99 oh, it’s cost you by 16?

Dawn: right. And so the shipping boxes themselves costs a dollar fifty to two dollars and then to make the boxes I think. Oh, I can’t remember the exact number but something around between 4.50 and five and a quarter. I can remember the exact amount but somewhere around there and it was 90 cents or something for the velcro that’s on them.

Steve: Right? So just curious how price-sensitive these cat lovers are. Like I know pet lovers are willing to spend lots of money for for products that will make their pets happy. I’m just curious how you arrived at $29.99 ?

Dawn: Really it was add up all of the costs and add a little of profit and let’s see if people buy it. And I do think I think I have had comments from people who are not pet owners I about the price of the boxes and I’m not sure if that’s a factor or it isn’t and I won’t know unless I’m able to get the price down a little bit.

Steve: You know, what’s funny is we have international customers and the ones in Australia seem to be willing to pay egregious shipping prices often times much more than the product itself. I think they’re just used to it. I guess..

Dawn: I’m part and I’m not sure if you’ve ever visited Australia, but their minimum wage is about twenty six dollars an hour there. I took that she was a barista at McDonald’s believe it or not loved her job as a true professional and she said twenty six dollars an hour to work in McDonald’s and you know, she can afford a house and a family and all I minimum wage in Australia. So I think that’s how come they can afford to have something shipped to them from the US.

Steve: Interesting, I did not know that

Dawn: me neither until I visited.

Steve: so okay. What were some of your other struggles and what are you struggling with right now? What’s going to happen going forward? Like what are your plans?

Dawn: Well my initial plan. So the very very near term would be to get some additional box designs. I think I don’t have enough to call it really a storefront. It’s really almost it’s almost a one product business, but it it’s a to product business and it’s I don’t think there’s enough choices for different people. So so my first challenge is I’ve got to redesign the Box in a way that it fits in to certain Dimensions that will allow me to ship not only nine zones in the US By Priority Mail at a reasonable price, but also to you know, especially to Europe and maybe even Japan and elsewhere where people are really cat crazy. So right now, I’m in the process of Designing. I think I shared with you at five minute pitch my new design and I’m working with the Box the packaging engineer at this moment to create a design that will be collapsible or packable nice within certain dimensions and within a certain weight.

Steve: Cool, I remember you telling me you actually shipped one of your boxes to Japan, right?

Dawn: I didn’t actually there was a customer that wanted one so badly and I told him it’s just too expensive to ship to Japan. He actually went and used a buyer’s agent someone who purchased from me in the US and shipped it to him. I think I know who it was. So I he was Japanese as well and his job is to do these kind of unusual things. And so this particular guy, he just owns a couple cats in Japan and he posts pictures all the time of my product. He really, you know, his cats really loved it and he really loves it.

Steve: Okay. Yeah. So clearly that guy would have been willing to pay lots of money to ship it. I would guess?

Dawn: he would be yes. I’m not sure how you know if he’s unusual or not.

Steve: So what are some other marketing methods that you’ve tried or in the process of implementing actually?

Dawn: Well in anticipation of offering a new product I am trying to just see if I can get one of my boxes up on Amazon. It’s there now. I gotta watch some more of your videos, Steve. I’m not doing something right. So I searched for it. I can’t find it. That being said I sold a couple through Amazon and one person bought one through Amazon and then went and bought three or four more through my website after that.

Steve: nice.

Dawn: So I don’t know somehow somebody else found it. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong either in my search or the creation of my listing. So it’s a work in progress, but it but it because I’m really not going to make a profit selling on Amazon. That’s not a priority for me at the moment. It’s just something I’m going to fiddle with as I go along in anticipation of being able to put this other product on Amazon.

Steve: Gotcha. Gotcha. So looking back with your business. Do you have any advice for the listeners who are kind of on the sidelines? Just thinking about starting their own.

Dawn: I would say well first of all, I would say take your course. I’m truly I’m not and I’m not just plug in next. I’m talking to her really I wish now and I said to you at the beginning of this that I’m really really frugal. And I want to see if I can do things myself and you do offer a lot of free materials which are helpful, but not the whole story. So I highly recommend if you have the money to invest in your class to truly start that from the beginning. So maybe you don’t make some of the mistakes that I made right from the beginning like in terms of having a product. That’s too large. That’s something I may have learned a little sooner from you if I’d started it and you know done the process in the right order here, but I would say the other thing is that I know that you devote a lot of your course to choosing the right Niche on the right product and I would say maybe you disagree with me.

It’s not so much about the product. It’s about the implementation and what you learn the starting a business like this is that’s what stays with you if the particular product that you’re trying to sell doesn’t work out that doesn’t matter because the bigger part is all the other stuff that you learn and you could apply that to anything so I would say just jump in and give it a try and don’t blow the bank on the first thing that you try and do I think there was somebody on Five Minute Pitch who had said something about starting with an $80,000 mold for his product?

Steve: Oh yeah yeah

Dawn: And that’s that was one of my criteria right from the beginning one of the reasons I chose cardboard because I have all these crazy ideas about things. Well, it’s got to be cheap. I can’t you know, first order of business is not to bankrupt the family.

Steve: Yeah.

Dawn: So don’t bankrupt or family, but just jump in and give it a try and everything that you learn can apply to something else. If in fact the one thing doesn’t work out.

Steve: Yeah, I would actually agree with everything you said I think one of the problems with when people just get started and they have no idea how to get started, sometimes on Amazon you can get away with just a good product right? Because Amazon is not really good from a branding perspective. And then once you get that confidence that you can get some sales and then you start your own website, then you know, it’s all about implementation marketing and that sort of thing and in fact, you know, I think I revealed this at seller Summit. I started an e-commerce store with my kids selling T-shirts. T-shirts completely saturated. It’s going to be all about marketing. So if you know what you’re doing on that front, you’re right the product Almost Doesn’t Matter. Long as you’re really good at getting the word out about your business. And as long as you have some sort of hook and some sort of story to get people to buy.

So Dawn, Thanks a lot for coming on. I really appreciate you being a contestant. I’m really glad we connected through the contest. I’m glad to have met you in person at seller Summit and I thought you’ve just done a great job and I wish you all the best with your business.

Dawn: Oh, thank you so much and thank you for saying that was a complete pleasure talking to you today.

Steve: Oh and on forgot if anyone wants to see your boxes, I where can I find you online?

Dawn: Oh, they can look at the cat is in the Box.com.

Steve: Okay, so The Cat Is In The Box and then everything related to purchasing and all that information is on that site.

Dawn: Absolutely

Steve: Cool. So if you’re a cat lover, I’ve actually seen her products in person. I’m not a cat lover, but just the design of the boxes. I thought was very impressive.

Dawn: Well, thanks for saying that to that’s that’s very nice to hear.

Steve: All right. Well, thanks a lot for coming The Showdown really appreciate your time.

Dawn: Thank you very much.

Hope you enjoyed that episode. Now, If you cut Dawn’s Five Minute Pitch finals presentation, you know that she’s a hard worker and I have no doubt that her business is going to totally blow up. For more information about this episode go to mywifequitherjob.com/episode272.

And once again, I want to thank Klaviyo. Klaviyo is my email marketing platform of choice for e-commerce Merchants. You can easily put together automated flows like an abandoned cart sequence a post purchase flow or win back campaign. Basically, all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot. So head on over to mywifequitherjob.com/klaviyo. Once again, That’s mywifequitherjob.com/klaviyo.

Oh, I also want to thank Privy for sponsoring this episode. Privy is the email capture provider that I personally use the term visitors into email subscribers. They offer email capture exit intent and site targeting tools to make it super simple as well. And I like Privy because it is so powerful and you can basically trigger custom pop-ups for any parameter that is closely tied your eCommerce store. Now, if you want to give it a try it is free so head on over to privy.com/steve. Once again, that’s P-R-I-V-Y.com/steve.

Now I talked about how I use these tools in my blog and if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store heading over to mywifequitherjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini-course just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.

Outro: Thanks for listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast where we are giving the courage people need to start their own online business. For more information visit Steve’s blog at www.mywifequitherjob.com

And Kim is the founder of Click and Carry. The ingenious invention that allows you to carry an insane number of bags hands-free that she was also the winner of the five minute pitch. And today we are going to do a deep dive into her business and her story.

But before we begin, I want to give a shout-out to Privy who is a sponsor of the show. Privy is a tool that I use to build my email list for both my blog and my online store and right now I’m using Privy to display a cool Wheel of Fortune pop-up.

Basically, these are gives our email for a chance to win valuable prizes in our store and customers love the gamification aspect of this and when I implemented this form email signups increased by a hundred thirty one percent. Now, you can also use Privy to reduce cart abandonment with cart saver pop-ups and abandoned cart email sequences as well and one super low price that is much cheaper than using a full-blown email marketing solution.

So bottom line Privy allows me to turn visitors into email subscribers and recover lost sales. So head on over to privy.com/steve and try it for free. And if you decide you need some of the more advanced features use coupon code MWQHJ for 15% off. Once again, that’s P-R-I-V-Y.com/steve.

And I also want to give a shout-out to Klaviyo who’s also a sponsor of the show. Now whether you are getting your business off the ground or looking for new ways to scale Klaviyo offers fast simple and repeatable ways to grow and with Klaviyo, you can personalize your marketing build your customer relationships and automate your online sales and it is now easier than ever to create amazing email in advertising experiences. So I want to tell you about Klaviyo new entrepreneurs growth guide.

It is packed with must read blog posts case studies and getting started content. This guide helps you prioritize what to do next for maximum revenue growth. Now moving to any new marketing platform can be intimidating but Klaviyo helps you get up and growing fast with proven technology and countless support resources. Now you can explore this free content now, Over at K-L-A-V-I-Y-O.com/mywife. Once again, that’s K-L-A-V-I-Y-O.com/mywife. Now on to the show.

Intro: Welcome to the my My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast, we will teach you how to create a business that suits your lifestyle so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here’s your host, Steve Chou.

Steve: Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. Today, I’m thrilled to have Kim Meckwood on the show. Now, Kim was actually the winner of the five minute pitch my Shark Tank like show with MIke Jackness Gregg Mercer and Scott Walker where we gave away $50,000 in Cold Hard Cash to a single company. And that was Kim’s. Kim runs an e-commerce business selling Click and Carry, an ingenious tool that allows you to comfortably carry a bunch of bags all at once and sling them over your shoulder.

Now, it is truly an amazing invention that has sold over 300,000 units. Anyway, I’ve been looking forward to this interview now that the winter has finally been announced for 5 minute pitch. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to talk about the triumphs and the struggles of Entrepreneurship and how Kim got started with her business and with that welcome to show Kim. How are you doing today?

Kim: Hi Steve. Thanks so much for having me. I’m doing well, and I’m absolutely thrilled to be here and I’m really honored to be your winner on Five minute pitch. It’s huge for me. Thank you.

Steve: You know what’s funny about the five minute pitch, you know, we only saw each other virtually and then we finally got to meet in person at my event to seller Summit and it was awesome. It was great to see everyone in person.

Kim: I couldn’t agree more and I can’t believe how many great new friends. I have as a result of your five minute pitch. So thank you all around. I feel really lucky and it’s an honor to meet you.

Steve: Yeah, you know, it’s amazing how all the finalists got along really well and just started, you know, hitting it up. Basically.

Kim: Yeah, they’re pretty great. In fact, I actually have John’s product for my cat.

Steve: Oh, you purchased it already. Awesome.

Kim: Yeah, and I sent one to my mom to so, so prudence and Leila have a cheese.

Steve: Nice nice. So Kim, please tell the audience about your product what you sell and how you got started.

Kim: Sure. So I have a product it’s called Click and Carry and it’s just a simple handle device and it has two areas that allows you to put in as many bags as you can fit. Each side takes 40 pounds for a total of 80 and then you can secure them into place by rotating the top into place and then you either hold it in your hand with a comfy gel grip or even better you wear it over your shoulder and your hands-free.

It’s just very necessary for condo living or for moms who have to have a free hand for their baby or for people who just want to have a free hand to unlock their door.

Steve: I’ll post a picture of it in the show notes. So people can, sometimes you really have to see it in order to understand the product fully.

Kim: I agree and as you know, because you’re you were one of the few judges who actually had a Click and Carry, it’s one of those things where once you use it, you can never go back because it just really saves your arms and hands from getting the grooves from carrying so much weight.

Steve: Absolutely, so how did you get the idea for this? And yeah, how did you get started manufacturing? Did you start already knowing how to make stuff, or?

Kim: Okay, so this is such a bizarre story, but I have really vivid dreams and, in my dream,, appeared to Click and Carry but it was actually flat and it was a Jetsons ask dream where there are those flying cars and they zip in and zip down kind of like a helicopter. And in my dream, it was basically a line of those cars but one slot was missing.

So this car zipped in and zipped down and the Click and Carry was there it was in the form of an ex the cars zipped down it closed and then the train took off so I thought to myself. Oh, wow, that makes sense. That’s a way to secure things together, but you’ll still have room in the middle to put your hand. So I just modified it slightly. I made it a little bit rounded so it fits perfectly on one shoulder and then the product was born.

And the interesting thing is that I was talking about it for a while and I was sketching it. And at the time I was in medical device sales for Medtronic I used to work in Brain stimulation. So one of my clients she’s a neurologist at USC. She I guess was sick of hearing me talk about it. So she said you know Kim will you shut up and stop talking about it and do something about it. So I took her advice.

I actually met her neighbor who at the time was studying an entrepreneurial studies at the Pasadena design school. So I hired her neighbor to help me with the prototypes because the Pasadena design school had access to a 3D CAD printer so which was huge because at that time each CAD print was about $175, but if I had done it in just the real world it would have cost me probably a thousand each time.

I made a prototype. So with the help of this design student, I created the winner and once they had the winning clicking carry prototype, I sent it off and I made a mold in China.

Steve: How did you get in touch with a vendor who would make a mold for you?

Kim: That’s another weird story. Okay. So I live in a Condo building in Los Angeles and they call me the mayor here in my condo complex because I talked to everyone and just so happens that across the hall. There was this guy his name is Stewart and he worked for TIE and Tie’s the company that makes beanie babies.

So I told him all about my invention and what is trying to do and he put me in touch with his Factory that made the beanie babies. They were able to make a steel mold for me. And so I made the mold

Steve: Wait. Okay. So the Tie manufacturer you got in touch with them and they decided to make a mold for you?

Kim: Yes. Well, I mean, they also made steel molds. They didn’t just make Beanie Babies. They had, it was, it’s a really big Factory over there.

Steve: Okay.

Kim: But..

Steve: How much of the mold cost?

Kim: At that time, It was $5,000

Steve: That’s really cheap. Actually.

Kim: It is. But not when you’re bootstrapping. I mean for me at the time it was a lot of money, but the sad news is that I knew that it wasn’t going to work that it wasn’t going to be perfect. But I also knew there was a good chance I’d be able to modify my mold. So what happened is I received the first prototype back from the mold and initially, I’ll actually send you a picture of the original one.

Originally the slot where it turns it was just a straight line. So what would happen is when click into place, even though there was a male female parts prevent it from moving and dang stationary since it was just a single line. It was easy for the Click and Carrt to continue to move. So it just didn’t suit the purpose.

So I redesigned it and I made it kind of like a tooth and I’ll make sure that I get that to you so you can show your podcast viewers what it looks like but I changed the groove which also allowed me to modify my patent. So I ended up getting two patents from the same mold and now I finally had the winner. So that’s when I decided I did that I was going to take that revamped version and go and get a patent. So that’s just what I did.

Steve: So in terms of manufacturing the mold part, how much did it cost to redo the mold?

Kim: That was about $3,000 to modify the $5,000 molds. Luckily, It was using the same shape of the product. It just needed to be modified slightly so you could only take away from a mold. You can’t add to a mold.

Steve: Right.

Kim: So I was lucky in that sense that I was able to just take away a few things and modify it slightly. So ultimately the first mold cost me about 8,000 and my current mold cost about 25,000

Steve: And this mold is it’s in China?

Kim: it is in China. Yes.

Steve: Okay. And did you ever go visit there or was this all done remotely?

Kim: It was all done remotely and lucky for me the factory that I used to work with, they used to do a trade show in Orange County, California once a year, so I would meet them once a year here in the state.

And we would just talk to each other via internet. I should have gone but the interesting thing and sadly this is still the case in China if you’re a woman owner or inventor, you’re just not taken as a credible.

Steve: Mmm.

Kim: Inventor, in fact, many of the times when they were when they were in town meeting me. I would bring my nephew who I had working for me and my company and they would always ask questions to him, even though he wasn’t the owner or the inventor but he was a guy so

Steve: Right.

Kim: So I felt safe that they came here to meet with me. So it was a much safer way to go.

Steve: Okay. And so at this point you’ve spent $8,000 you have a new mold what happened next?

Kim: So I just started going around town and talking to local stores and I started sewing up farmers markets and I even did the Pasadena the Pasadena Rose Bowl, which is a swap meet that has I think 50,000 visitors once a month and I was just trying to get the word around and..

Steve: How many did you make in your first production run? I forgot

Kim: Probably about 5,000

Steve: 5,000 Okay.

Kim: Yeah.

Steve: And how much did it cost for that? First run, per piece?

Kim: Oh my gosh, they were really expensive and luckily I’ve turned things around but I think when I first started they were two dollars and nine cents a unit and then they ultimately went up to about two dollars and Seventeen cents a unit and that remember that’s not including importation taxes and getting it to the United States.

Steve: Mmm. So your landed cost was maybe around $3 or?

Kim: Pretty close. Yeah. It was it was pretty high. Luckily. I’ve modified the mold and made a new mold that and reduce cost but at the time that was what I had to work with and that was kind of a hard sell because it’s just a plastic piece of good. So people don’t want to pay a whole lot of money for it.

Steve: What was the selling price in the beginning?

Kim: It was $7.99 in the beginning.

Steve: Okay and two x mark yeah

Kim: Yeah. It was fine for me because I would you know, I was just bootstrapping it and just selling out of my out of my place. So I didn’t have to worry about getting margins for retailers and things like that.

Steve: So did they just fly off the shelves at the swap meets?

Kim: No, no. No.

Steve: Okay, I’ll let you continue.

Kim: They didn’t because it’s the kind of product that needs a demonstration and all of the sales that I made were made showing how it’s used or demonstrating it on a mannequin or actually physically showing the person they use. Once they actually had it in their grasp or over their shoulder, that’s when I would be able to sell them. But it was a one-on-one kind of thing. So.

Steve: Okay.

Kim: That’s when I really knew I had to really Branch out into the website thing.

Steve: Okay, and then so how did you start generating sales at the swap meets and that sort of thing weren’t working that well?

Kim: So then I started to get smart and I did research and I found out about a trade show in Chicago called the home and housewares show. And I knew it was a big risk. It was going to be very expensive. It probably cost me close to 10,000 to do it because I think..

Steve: So you bought a booth at the show?

Kim: I did there they have a section and this is great for young companies who want to get their product out there if it fits the genre. There’s an area called the inventors corner where you get a discounted Booth.

I think it was something like five or six thousand, but obviously that doesn’t include getting all your stuff there and you know having monitors to show videos and things like that, but the beauty of inventors corner is the fact that all of these bigger companies come in and try to find a young brand new company or brand new unique product and then they allow you to pitch your product to a panel.

When I pitched, the people on the panel were QVC, HSN, and SkyMall and companies like that. They were always looking for new products oh, Lakeland UK, which is a popular retailers in England. I was able to pitch to them. Unbeknownst to me, they really liked my product.

And the funny thing is I’ve gathered all of their cards and when I got home from the trade show, I followed up and I reached out to QVC. Bernadette of QVC didn’t call me back and didn’t call me back. I thought that was really strange. She seemed to like my product but then I got a call from the Bethenny Frankel show. Bethenny Frankel is the girl who sold this Skinny Girl Margarita franchise for I believe about a hundred million dollars.

Steve: Wow Okay.

Kim: I know, she’s a rock star. She makes margaritas and wine that they’re low-calorie and I think she’s well not I think, she’s one of the New York Housewives. At the time, she had a talk show and so I had applied for it months earlier because she would help a female entrepreneur once a week and a segment called Bethany, Bethany in your business, and I never received a call back.

But then, all of a sudden, out of the blue, I got a call from her people. And they asked if I would be interested in doing her show and I said, yes, of course because I knew I would get business advice from her. And again, she had just sold her company for something like a hundred million dollars. I knew I would get her business advice and perhaps a stipend.

I was expecting maybe five or ten thousand dollar stipend to help me in my business. And instead, I ended up getting a contract with QVC which was a Cinderella. It was crazy. It was such a Cinderella moment and it really it changed the trajectory of my business.

Steve: How does QVC work exactly? so they have a contract. Do you have to produce a certain amount of units?

Kim: You do. So it works in many ways. I was really lucky. They basically brought me in under their Sprouts program. So they really made it easy for me. Usually people have to pay for all of their inventory and they only get paid as they sell the product.

But because I was the Sprouts winner that year, I was the gadget of the year. Since I was the winner, they allowed me to have a guaranteed sale. So they initially ordered I think it was thirteen thousand six hundred units.

Steve: Oh wow Okay.

Kim: I know it was crazy. It was it was an interesting time because they made a lot of exceptions for me. Usually you have to have all those products in stock and I just didn’t and I had like maybe whatever the leftover what from my 5,000 units was. And they ordered 13,500. They filmed me. I filmed that Bethany episode in April.

That’s when they told me. They wanted to order the 13,000 units. I went on a month later, but the units weren’t ready. It takes about 3 months to create that many units at that time. It’s different now. And then like another month or so to get to the United States, so I filmed in May I sold out in 7 minutes.

And then customers were going to receive their products in August of that year. But the funny thing is I did so well that they added another five or 6,000 units too, to that initial order because I sold out.

Steve: So, did you have to front all that money for the production or did they help you with that?

Kim: No, I had a front all the money, which means I was out of that money from April until a month after it was delivered which was August 8th. So until September 8, I was I was out that money and then when they do send you the money they take away five percent because they count on returns. So.

Steve: What are the terms of the QVC deal? Like how much do they take? So you retail price before you said was $8.00, right?

Kim: Yes, yeah because I sold a set of four and they sold it for $25.

Steve: They sold 25 and how much of that do you get to keep and how much do they take?

Kim: I ended up keeping a little bit over five dollars a set. So was it wasn’t huge obviously. It was like well, let’s say about a dollar forty a unit is what I made. Okay. I didn’t really know what I was doing at the time. But it was it was still okay, it was fine, but it was a real success story in that right after that delivery. They ordered 60,000 more.

Steve: 60 thousand. Wow. Okay.

Kim: Yeah, so I had to figure out how to find the money to make the product. So that’s when I made a really big error because I didn’t really know how to go out there and pitch and find investors at that time and I had to learn these things kind of on the Fly and my Dada just passed away. So I wasn’t going to ask my mom for the money so what I did as I use my 401 k because you sometimes you have to strike while the iron is hot.

Steve: Sure.

Kim: Though I knew I was going to have a tax penalty. I thought I was going to be 20 or 30 percent but it ended up ultimately being about 50%. I know, on a bright note though. I didn’t get that tax penalty until about a year and a half later. So I was able to really function and build the business in the meantime.

Steve: So 60,000 units menu had to front like a hundred and twenty k or a little bit more than that?

Kim: Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Steve: Okay.

Kim: I think was like a hundred and thirty thousand and that wasn’t including shipping it to the US and oh one thing I forgot to mention about the initial order is you know, you have to keep your timelines if you’re working with QVC. You don’t want to set the wrong precedent. So my factory lagged a little bit and I actually had to fly the first order into the United States which cost me an additional 13 thousand which would normally have cost me like maybe 5,000 if I shipped it.

Steve: Right.

Kim: So.

Steve: So the money that you made from that first run of QVC, wasn’t that much was it like on the order of 20 grand then?

Kim: I don’t remember the exact amount and I should have had this prepared for you. But it was I want to say offhand I made, I don’t know, I didn’t want to discuss..

Steve: It was just far less than you needed to front the money. Right?

Kim: Far less. Yeah.

Steve: Okay far less. Okay.

Kim: Far less, yeah I was I was lucky I had the money in the 401K to be able to continue working with QVC cuz it and it was a great thing for a few years and I could I could go back and I eventually will but it was a really great thing.

Steve: So, okay. So you you borrow money to buy this production run for 60,000 units what happened after that?

Kim: So then I continued to go on until you go on until the units are sold. So I’ve I was on like seven or eight times on QVC. In fact, they even did a segment on me during breast cancer awareness month because I’m a Survivor. And they brought me on and they did a beautiful segment and I was able to tell people how you know, you have to believe in yourself and you know stick with your plan and try to get over adversity and do what you need to do.

So QVC’s been amazing to me and it’s been a really credible source, for example, when I go and I try to sell to other retailers when I say that I have been working with QVC for so many years they’re really impressed and they know that I have a quality product because it takes a lot to be proved as far as the quality of your product at QVC.

Steve: So there was a gap where you stopped selling all together, is that because that tax bill finally hit and then you for to produce anymore?

Kim: Yeah. It was a little bit of that in a little bit of, you know, I was to the point where I was just living off the proceeds from Click and Carry. That was great. But when you have these orders and that was at the same time getting orders from other places like Ralph’s which is a local grocery chain here in Los Angeles, you’re putting out all this money, but you still have to live and I was to the point where it was really hard for me to pay for my mortgage.

And more importantly for my health insurance because I was a cancer survivor. So I had to make the choice to go back to work. I kept Click and Carry alive and I continued to sell the whole time. But I had to go back to a daytime job just to just to make sure I was going to survive with Click and Carry.

Plus on QVC, I received 4.7 out of five stars. And that was after many many reviews hundreds of reviews. And the only negative comment, I would get on Click and Carry is the fact that it was difficult to open. So that’s when I realized that I needed to make a new version and I decided to back off a little bit on QVC to re-engineer my product and that’s when I met an amazing Mentor. His name is Mark and he invented the perfect push-up and he then taught me the ropes.

He taught me how to pitch to find an investor. He taught me how he used his Factory and how his Factory produced over 10 million versions of the perfect push up with very little error and he put me in touch with them. So then I switched factories and now I’m proud to say I’m with a new Factory. My new mold is significantly better in that, there’s very little error in the product that I produce and I’ve reduced cost and the amount of material going into each product by 81 cents a unit which is about a 37 decrease in cost. And that’s just it’s a game changer for me. It just it brought me to a new level and that’s, all thanks to mark.

Steve: This new mold. Was it significantly more expensive than the last mold?

Kim: It was, my new mold is 25,000.

Steve: Okay. So that was more in line with what I was expecting actually for the first round.

Kim: Yeah, that’s it was it was 25,000 and in the United States the same mold would be somewhere between sixty five thousand and eighty five thousand. And the per piece units were more expensive in the United States. I wish that weren’t the case because I’d prefer to make a US.

Steve: Sure.

Kim: Company, but unfortunately it was a lot less expensive for me to make my own mold in China and to produce there.

Steve: How did you get into Ralphs and those other stores?

Kim: All just knocking on doors, cold calling? I really used the clout that I had with QVC to get into these places. The same with the Container Store and Lakeland UK and then there’s a Japanese company called Essaouira Park. And it was all because you know, just being aggressive and getting out there and just doing your research or going on LinkedIn and finding out who the buyers are.

Steve: So what is it cold call look like? Like, pretend you were cold calling me.

Kim: Sure.

Steve: What would your script like?

Kim: So I have this cute little PowerPoint presentation and I had a printed out version as well and I told them about my success on QVC or I would play them my b-roll that I show on QVC. A b-roll is a, in my case. It’s a 53 second video that shows all the different uses of Click and Carry. I would show that to them I would tell them how the function.

Steve: Back up for a little bit. How did you get that first meeting did you cold call? Were you introduced by someone from QVC?

Kim: Glad you asked that question because I’ve missed that part right? I would send samples in the mail to them. I would find out who the buyers were. I would send a little care package. I would send pictures of the product in use. That’s how I would get my foot in the door. So many of those times people would call me or you know, email me and ask for more information.

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Okay, so they didn’t know you at all and you didn’t have any warm intros to these people. You just literally cold called them sent them a care package and then they reached out to you?

Kim: Yep. That’s right. In fact.

Steve: Amazing.

Kim: Yeah. In fact my buyer from Ralph’s. He’s one of my best friends to this day. He’s since retired from Ralph’s his name is Chris, but he and I probably talk once or twice a week. He’s in fact if I get to the point where I’m very successful, I’m bringing him on board for operations. He’s awesome.

Steve: It’s funny how these things work out, isn’t it?

Kim: It really is.

Steve: All right. So you have your pitch deck and I’ve seen this pitch deck obviously since you pitch this in five minute pitch. And is a very compelling pitch.

Kim: Thank you.

Steve: So I can see why after that you got into these stores. The one question in my mind is I imagine the margins are better than QVC for these retail shops. So how come the money from that wasn’t better than QVC?

Kim: Actually, no, I’m sorry. You’re not right. The margins are about the same and it’s because remember it at the time it was a $7.99 item or let’s say all the way up to $9.99. because that’s what the container store sells it for is $9.99. You have to give them a price so that they can make at least a 50% margin.

Steve: Right.

Kim: So it, I would say the average was about a dollar forty a unit as what I would make.

Steve: Okay.

Kim: Because it’s retail and I think I told you this because one of my issues with retail is that when people see it in retail, they’re not sure what it is. They don’t know if it’s a chip clip or if it’s one of those little gadgets that women hang their purse off the table with.

Steve: oh yes, yes.

Kim: So I actually need to revamp the way I work with retail and there’s this new idea now where there’s a mini screen that Loops a video and they could be charged with a UCB charger and they last for about six months and they continuously Loop a video. So people can actually see the product in action and see what it’s for, but I’ve actually pivoted and changed my strategy because of you and because of the other judges because you’ve opened my eyes and you’re absolutely right.

I was missing the boat in regard to selling online because the margins are significantly higher. I can make my money there and then I could afford to buy things like this little screen that would Loop a cute b-roll and show people the product in action on a show, at a store and actually relay the proper message. And so that’s what my concentration is right now online.

Steve: One thing I was curious about also is how did you come up with your pricing? Like was $7.99 kind of arbitrary?

Kim: It was kind of arbitrary and now I think $9.99 is probably the perfect price. In fact, I get a lot of feedback that perhaps it’s too low, but since it’s a brand new product It’s an Impulse buy. I think you have to kind of lower your cost to entry initially to get it out there. So I kind of think it might be a fair price at $9.99.

Steve: I was just kind of curious if you tested that at all because impulse buys for me are anything under 20 bucks like a no-brainer buy anything under 20 bucks.

Kim: Mmm-mmm

Steve: And I was just wondering what you could get away with. I don’t know. Just thought I just wonder if you do any testing on the pricing or if you got any feedback from people from QVC or the retail shops on your pricing.

Kim: No, I didn’t do any testing but see that’s that just goes to show why I am so lucky that I won the five minute pitch because that’s a great suggestion that you just gave me and that’s something I will Implement. Because I didn’t do any testing and the beauty is then now I’m concentrating online. It would be easier to test their and fast.

Steve: Absolutely.

Kim: Yep, and I’m currently testing a single unit on Amazon Prime at $11.99 and then a set of two for $19.99. So it’s incentive obviously for people to buy two. But I’m so I am selling units at $11.99.

Steve: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think there’s room for to go up. I don’t want to just preemptively say that but it seems to me that you could get away with higher pricing.

Kim: Thank you.

Steve: So let’s switch gears a little bit. So a lot of the listeners of this podcast are people who want to start a business and follow down your path. And so I wanted to get your perspective on some of the more difficult Parts about getting your business off its feet and what you did about it. What would you say was your greatest challenge?

Kim: Well, my current greatest challenge is showing people what it is because it’s basically changing the way people shop for groceries. My biggest challenge right now is getting the word out and product awareness.

Steve: What about in the very beginning when you first got started? Actually one question, I forgot to ask you is did. You know that this was going to sell when you started making it like did you have any initial orders before you create the mold and invested all that money?

Kim: No, I just knew in my heart and I know in my heart that this is going to be everywhere. It’s going to be like an umbrella and I know that sounds like a conceited thing to say, but I know I feel like that dream that was a gift from God. Like it was this is something that’s going to make people’s lives easier. Even if it’s just a little bit easier, especially people who don’t have cars or in third world countries who have to carry heavy things. It’s going to make lives easier. I just know it’s going to be out there everywhere. One day it’s just the challenge is getting to that point with a shoestring budget.

Steve: Sure. Absolutely actually. My next question was how much did you invest it sounded like $5,000 to get started with this?

Kim: Yeah. No, it’s way way way more I would say today, I’ve probably because I put a lot of my my proceeds back into it because it takes money to make money, you know, making marketing pieces packaging promotions. I probably put about a quarter of a million dollars into this business and much of it was the patents. And the multiple molds and shipping and production there. There’s a lot to it keeping up licenses every year.

Steve: I meant like to get your initial first couple of units for sale. So you spent 5,000 for the mold and maybe an additional production of 5,000 units, right?

Kim: Yeah.

Steve: So we’re looking at like 15 grand or so.

Kim: Yeah, that would be about right.

Steve: Hey, I know you’ve invested obviously a lot more over the lifetime of the product but also produced a lot of things as well.

Kim: Yeah, I have yeah, but yeah initially, yeah, I would say 10 to 15,000 like I did it as inexpensively as I could.

Steve: Then so once you had produced your product, I’m just trying to get an idea. So the swap meets was your initial strategy and then what kept you going? I mean when things weren’t going well.

Kim: Just that believe I just for example, when I had to go back to work because I didn’t want to lose my condo. Like I mean, I had already lost my 401k the anxiety level if I lost my condo on top of that I wouldn’t be able to handle it and I would be homeless.

So I just I knew that I had to step back for a little bit and be conservative but I kept the dream alive and I would work nights and weekends. Wake up super early mornings to keep the dream alive and it’s just something I know in my heart that has to be out there and I’m not going to stop until it is. I am not gonna stop until I can do just Click and Carry again because there was nothing more exciting than to wake up and to be creative and to work on your own dream.

It’s in fact, my days would be 12-15 hour days because I loved what I was doing and that’s what I would I would push to every entrepreneur out there who has something and has something that they believe is special, believe in it. Don’t listen to the naysayers. Just keep moving forward because if you believe in it, there’s a reason and I really, I believe there’s a reason and I’m going to get this out there if it kills me.

Steve: In terms of your initial motivations for starting this, it wasn’t because you didn’t like your job or anything right? It’s just because you had a dream one night and then this you just knew that you had to bring this product to the market?

Kim: Yeah, actually, let me go back and tell you, I did love my job. I loved it. It was amazing and fulfilling. But when I first started talking about it when I first had the dream, I was in pharmaceutical sales, and I was selling this drug for Parkinson’s that was just a slight modification to the gold standard. It’s called was called Percopa, which is the staple of a Parkinson’s drug regimen is called Cinema or Cardio Levodopa.

The company I worked for put this product on the market as of a kind of like a Band-Aid because they were going to be launching a new product once it was FDA approved. And the FDA approval kept getting delayed and delayed and delayed.

So initially when I first met the doctor Jennifer who helped me to find my help me with the cad design. I had really nothing to talk to any of the doctors about because it was a slight modification on the gold standard said that’s when I would talk to them about my ideas and inventions and we talk about life, but then I end up getting a job with Medtronic and deep brain stimulation.

So it was a very serious job and it was a very exciting job, but what happened is a couple of years later, I was there for about five or six years. A couple of years later I ended up getting breast cancer. That was a really scary time and luckily everything’s fine. I’m cancer-free. But when you go through something like that life event like that you realize how short life is and even though I made it a ton of money. I didn’t really have any free time. I realized what really made me happy was working on Click and Carry.

So I ended up getting breast cancer in February of that year the completed all my surgeries by the end of March of that year and I decided right then and there I was going to quit my job. So I saved up all my money till the end of the year and then I just did something crazy and starting in the new year. I started Click and Carry and it was never so exciting as those three years where I just did Click and Carry. And didn’t have a day job and I can’t wait to get back to that place and I’m going to get there soon.

Steve: Okay, So last question for you Kim if you were to start all over. Again, and I never you’ve made your share of mistakes and whatnot. What would you do differently today if you were to start all over again?

Kim: Gosh, well, so there’s so many different tools now available to people and online sales have really blown up. Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, they’ve all blown up. I would use those vehicles to get the word out and the awareness out versus starting in retail, which I enjoyed.

Those something that you pointed out to me and you were absolutely right. I started with the hard part first. The good news is now I know the Beast that is retail, and I know how to be successful in retail, but I could have made this a lot easier on myself by starting out selling online or starting on Amazon and that’s something that people now have the luxury to do.

Steve: Would you go back to that trade show again or?

Kim: yes, I would I wouldn’t be allowed to go back into inventors corner, but though I would obviously have to be more successful in order to go back. Because the booths on the regular stage are a lot more expensive than and inventors corner. But that Is just the end-all be-all for products like my product. It’s the home and housewares show is a magical event that really introduces you to a lot of people around the world.

Steve: You know, one thing I actually forgot to ask you to just popped into my mind. Was that worth getting was it a hassle and has it protected you in any way?

Kim: I wouldn’t say it was a hassle because I did it the right way in that. I actually hired an attorney was very expensive. I actually have two attorneys. I have an attorney for my patents and one for my trademark, but it was the best thing I could have ever done because it gives me the confidence to know that I’m protected at least in the United States.

If someone were to infringe on my patent, I am very safe. I’m I have two utility patents on Click and Carry, but even better the United States patent and trademark office did a story about me. They have a publication called it’s called, Inventor’s Eye and they put me in a segment called Spark of Genius. So if someone were to try to infringe on my patent, I’m not only do I have a United States Utility Patent, but I’m also in their publication so I’m extra protected.

Steve: So just curious have there been any copycats that you’ve experienced at all?

Kim: There have been 16 products since 1962 to carry groceries. But the reason I was awarded a Utility Patent is because mine is the only one that can be worn over the shoulders as well as carried in the hands.

Steve: I see.

Kim: But there’s a new product. It’s called grocery grips and it’s just a strap that you kind of Sling over your shoulder kind of like a hobo strap and in a way, I think they’re infringing on my patent to a small extent but it’s not truly hands-free.

So I haven’t filed any paperwork, but they’re trying to say it’s hands-free when in actuality. It’s not necessarily hands-free because you can’t you have to hold it with your hand down one side and it doesn’t evenly balanced though, the weight so it defeats the purpose.

Steve: So Kim moving forward, it seems like you’ve had a lot of hardships and you recovered from them and you’ve won $50,000 from five minute pitch. What are your future plans in the near future?

Kim: So my future plans are number one, I’m going to get the mentorship from the four of you. I am so thrilled about that. Because one thing I won’t do is waste money in the wrong direction. So I’m going to hopefully with your help take that money and I’m going to produce many ads for Instagram for Facebook for YouTube. I’m going to reach out to influencers who are let’s say Mom bloggers do-it-yourselfers for the construction industry. I’m going to use my money wisely. I’m going to do that because I’ll be educated by all of you.

Steve: Awesome. Well Kim where can people find you online and get a video demonstration of your product?
Kim: So if they go to clickandcarry.com, it’s C-L-I-C-K-A-N-D-C-A-R-R-Y.com, you can see quick video that shows how the product is used. It’s the b-roll that I use on QVC and it’s also available on Amazon Prime and the videos also there.

Steve: Awesome Kim. Well, you know what I like about you a lot? And this is what made you stand out in the competition is that you’ve went through all these hardships, but you didn’t give up and you’re in a really good position now to kick major butt.

Kim: Thank you. I can’t wait to get out there and kick major butt and I know I’m going to be able to do that. Thanks to you. So thank you for picking me.

Steve: And Kim, Thanks a lot for coming on the show.

Kim: It’s an honor. Thank you.

Steve: Take care.

Hope you enjoyed that episode. Now, I just love Kim’s spirit, her work ethic and the fact that she’s not willing to give up no matter what the circumstances. And with an extra 50k and our mentorship, I know that she’s going to be successful. For more information about this episode go to mywifequitherjob.com/episode266.

And once again, I want to thank Kaviyo for sponsoring this episode, Kaviyo is my email marketing platform of choice for e-commerce Merchants. You can easily put together automated flows like an abandoned cart sequence a post purchase flow or win back campaign. Basically, all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot. So head on over to mywifequitherjob.com/klaviyo. Once again, That’s mywifequitherjob.com/klaviyo.

I also want to thank Privy for sponsoring this episode. Privy is the email capture provider that I personally use the term visitors into email subscribers. They offer email capture exit intent and site targeting tools to make it super simple as well. And I like Privy because it is so powerful and you can basically trigger custom pop-ups for any parameter that is closely tied your eCommerce store. Now, if you want to give it a try it is free so head on over to privy.com/steve. Once again, that’s P-R-I-V-Y.com/steve.

Now I talked about how I use these tools in my blog and if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store heading over to mywifequitherjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini-course just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.

Outro: Thanks for listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast where we are giving the courage people need to start their own online business. For more information visit Steve’s blog at www.mywifequitherjob.com

Steve: You’re listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrapped business owners and delve deeply into the strategies they use to grow their businesses. So I just got back from my annual e-commerce conference the Sellers Summit last week, and after sleeping for the past seven days to recover, I am finally ready to do a recap of the event in today’s episode. Now, overall it was easily the best Sellers Summit that we’ve ever held. And to help me out, I invited my partner in crime Toni Anderson back on the show to help me with this recap.

Before we begin, I want to give a shout out to Klaviyo for sponsoring this episode. Always excited to talk about Klaviyo because they are the email marketing platform that I personally use for my e-commerce store and I depend on them for over 30% of my revenues. Now Klaviyo is the only email platform out there that is specifically built for e-commerce stores, and here is why it is so powerful.

Klaviyo can track every single customer who has shopped 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 auto-responder sequence to my customers depending on what they purchased, piece of cake, and there is full revenue tracking on every mail. Now Klaviyo is the most powerful email platform that I’ve ever used and you could try them for free at mywifequitherjob.com/K-L-A-V-I-Y-O. Once again, that’s mywifequitherjob.com/K-L-A-V-I-Y-O.

I also want to give a shout out to Privy who is also a sponsor of the show. Privy is the tool that I use to build my email list for both my blog and my online store. Now, Privy is an email list growth platform and they manage all my email capture forms. And I use Privy hand-in-hand with my email marketing provider. Now, there are a bunch of companies out there that will manage your email capture forms but I like Privy because they specialize in e-commerce. Right now I’m using Privy to display a cool wheel of fortune pop up. Basically a user gives their email for a chance to win valuable prices in our store and customers love the gamification aspect of this. And when I implemented this form email signups increased by 131%.

I’m also using their new cart saver pop up feature to recover abandoned carts as well. So bottom line, Privy allows me to turn visitors into email subscribers, which I then feed to my email provider to close the sale. So head on over to Privy.com/Steve and try it for free. And if you decide you need some of the more advanced features, use coupon code MWQHJ for 15% off. Once again, that’s P-R-I-V-Y.com/Steve, now onto the show.

Intro: Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. We will teach you how to create a business that suits your lifestyle, so you can spend more time with your family and focus on doing the things that you love. Here is your host, Steve Chou.

Steve: Welcome to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast. Today we are doing a special episode because I’m not interviewing anyone on the show. Now instead, I brought Toni Anderson back on the podcast to do a recap of Sellers Summit 2019. Now if you don’t know Toni by now you probably haven’t listened to many episodes, she is my partner in crime for the event. And this is actually appearance number six I think for her on the show.

Anyway, Sellers Summit is a conference that we throw every year. This is our fourth year. And the show is all about bringing e-commerce entrepreneurs together and learning new strategies on how to sell physical products online. And today we’re going to do a recap of the event, what worked, what didn’t and some key takeaways. And with that, welcome back to the show for the sixth time, Toni, how you doing today?

Toni: I’m doing great. Do I get a special sticker for sixth time alumni?

Steve: You get an Oh Gee sticker, perhaps?

Toni: All right, all right.

Steve: Well, I haven’t gotten any negative feedback from you coming on yet. So until I do, I’ll keep you coming back for more.

Toni: All right, keep up the positive emails guys, come on.

Steve: So I haven’t actually had a chance to look over our survey results. Every year after the event, we send out a survey. But I know you probably have, you’ve probably been very diligent about looking at it. How was the feedback for this year?

Toni: Well, I think as usual, we received a lot of positive feedback from the event. Most people say that it met or exceeded their expectations, which always makes me feel really happy. And I think the main reason why we get that feedback every year, and this is actually they say this in a survey, is it’s the small group mentality that we have about the event.

Steve: Absolutely. I mean, in terms of networking, we actually haven’t really strayed from the original formula since we first started, right, a really small, tight, intimate event.

Toni: Well, I think that is what makes people feel comfortable at the event and makes them — I think it helps them learn even more, because not only are they learning in the sessions, but they now have friendships that they’ve built outside of just going to the event. These people communicate with each other all year round and so they’re able to catch up with old friends. And then after the sessions, talk about the things they’ve learned and continue to learn, even though there’s not a speaker actually presenting it.

Steve: And you know community building isn’t exactly my forte, but I think we’ve built like a pretty good community. What do you think?

Toni: I like them? I think they’re pretty cool.

Steve: Yeah, I like everyone there, which is strange for me, it’s unusual for me.

Toni: It’s not strange for me, I like everybody. But it’s really fun I think for us too thinking back on that first year. And we did something really cool this year that was mostly your idea to recognize…

Steve: It was?

Toni: Yeah, I think so.

Steve: Okay.

Toni: Recognize our original members I guess we’ll call them are people that have come to Sellers Summit every single year. And to me, that was a really big deal because our first year even though I had done events in the past, we had never done an event together and I’d never done an e-commerce event. And so these people took a big risk I think with us the first year giving us their money and expecting to learn something, and hopefully we delivered for them because they keep coming back. But it was cool to recognize that core group of people that have been coming back for four years.

Steve: Yeah, we gave out these cool t-shirts that said Sellers Summit oh geez for the people who had been all four years. And then all of the alumni who had come back before, they had special stickers on their badges to denote that they’d been there before.

Toni: And we had I think a core of maybe 12 or 15 original four time attendees, but our three time attendees is actually a pretty large group of people. I would say that’s 50 to 60.

Steve: Oh, wow. Okay, I didn’t realize that. I didn’t have the numbers in front of me.

Toni: Yeah, we’re not going to be able to afford t-shirts for them. They’re just going to keep getting stickers. But it’s cool to see those same people like Rick and Natalie and those people come back year after year, because they really do feel like friends at this point.

Steve: Yeah. And as usual, we stuck to the standard formula. We catered lunch every day, everyone eats together and we have cocktail parties every single night. We also make sure no one eats alone. So we have these dinner signup sheets where people can just have dinner together and arrange their own meals. So this past year, I think that was one difference that the reason why I enjoyed this year more than past years, I feel like the caliber of attendee was even better than all the prior years. Would you agree with that?

Toni: Oh, absolutely. I actually, I’m just getting all these facts together. So they’re a little bit fresh in my mind. But I think we have 77% of our attendees are selling full time already. So this is their real job. This isn’t a side hustle. And I think 81% of our attendees, or maybe it’s higher than that have been selling for more than a year. So the experience level with our attendee has really skyrocketed from our first year.

Steve: Yeah. And what I like to see is like everyone who I’d met in prior years, their business had grown significantly this year. And it was just really fun to kind of talk about what they’ve done to grow their businesses. And some of the people who have attended, their business has really blown up, like three to five x in just a single year, and that actually made me feel really happy.

Toni: Yeah, it’s fun to catch up with those people. I think one of our oh geez, Chris Nelson, when he came in the first year, he had his — I think he had already purchased business or started business. But he was doing I think a couple of thousand a month, which isn’t bad. That’s a great start to a business. But I mean, at this point, he has his own building. He’s got I don’t even know how many employees now, I think 13 or 14, he’s doing seven figures. And it’s cool to see his progression over the past four years. And we have a lot of people like him in our group.

Steve: Yeah, it’s been really amazing. Now, before we get into the key takeaways, anything we did differently this year than last year?

Toni: We expanded our masterminds, so I cannot remember how many we had in 2018. But this year we had six mastermind groups. So it’s almost half our attendees were in a mastermind, which is pretty cool. And we expanded the amount of 1 million plus masterminds. So I don’t remember what we had two years ago, but this year, we had four masterminds dedicated to sellers with a million or more in revenue. So I think that was something that we did new this year.

Steve: So just for the benefit of the listeners who don’t know what the mastermind is, we sell a special pass where we actually screen attendees to make sure they made at least $250,000, or $1 million, respectively. And what the mastermind is, is we lock ourselves in a room, we cater and food and we spend the entire day helping each other with their businesses. Everyone gets a chance to be in the hot seat where they can tell the group what’s working with their business and then one question that the rest of the group can help them with.

And then everyone basically in the group helps that one person a lot of time with their issue. Personally, the mastermind is the most rewarding part of the conference for me, and I just really love how open and comfortable everyone is, and how willing everyone is to reveal their problems and their triumphs.

Toni: Absolutely.

Steve: Sorry, I interrupted you, where were you going?

Toni: No, that’s okay. No, I agree with you. And I think it’s interesting because that’s what I’ve received the most feedback on post event. I’ve got people emailing me, messaging me on Facebook saying, we love the mastermind. We want more, we want more, can we have more days? They want it, they want have a mastermind for a week I think. So that’s really cool to see these people that have been with us for a couple of years too and in the masterminds just continuing to want to continue those relationships with each other, continue growing with each other, and that they feel comfortable enough to want to continue those relationships even outside the Sellers Summit.

Steve: And what was your personal opinion of this year’s mastermind compared to last year’s?

Toni: Actually, what was interesting to me is that I think this is another a little bit of a change for us is that at least in my mastermind group, we had a lot more people that weren’t primarily Amazon sellers. So I think in my group, we were 60% off Amazon, completely off Amazon, so some of these people have never sold a product on Amazon at all. So I think that was the biggest change for me is seeing people in the group that are really smart with marketing and content and email and Facebook ads and being able to have those conversations in addition to all of the Amazon conversations that we have at the event.

Steve: You stole my answer.

Toni: Oh my gosh, I’m sorry.

Steve: You always do this to me; you always steal what I was going to say. So basically Amazon is getting a lot more cutthroat. In my keynote, I mentioned that over 40% of the top sellers are now based in China, there’s rampant piracy. I think one of the statistics I quoted was one in three listings, at least in the clothing category are counterfeit listings. And so there’s now a big impetus for people to get their listings off Amazon and establish their own audience. So a lot of my mastermind this year, at the one that I ran at least was focused on building a presence outside of Amazon and building your own brand.

Toni: Well, and I think part of the reason why we have the same answer is because I gave both of our groups a lot of non-Amazon sellers. I think you and I love all the other side of things, too. And so for our personal knowledge, I think we are able to contribute a lot more on the off Amazon space as well for that group.

Steve: Yeah, no, absolutely. And I don’t want to just focus on the mastermind. So for the regular attendees who have a regular pass, we also have kind of — I don’t want to call it a mastermind, but it’s kind of like a pseudo mastermind, right with the roundtables?

Toni: Oh, absolutely. It’s just a shorter version basically, where we get our speakers and other mentors. Some of them are former speakers at the event. And everyone leads a small table discussion for about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes, where attendees and speakers and some of our sponsors lead them to get together and discuss in-depth the topics that the speakers talked about during their session, or even topics that we didn’t get a chance to cover in sessions. Like this year, I did one on content marketing, which we didn’t really cover in a session, but it allowed people to sit around and talk about how do you start a blog? What kind of content should you be creating? How do you get that content out there? And we do that every year. And that’s one of the things in the feedback that I get when I read these surveys that people want more roundtables more time, because it really facilitates more small group learning, which is what we love.

Steve: Yeah, this is actually the first year I didn’t give a breakout session, mainly because writing the keynote just takes a whole lot out of me. And so I decided to focus my efforts on the round table. And this year in the round table, I covered SEO and conversion optimization. And what was interesting was that Andrew Youderian, he’s a buddy of mine, buddy of ours, he runs the Ecommerce Fuel forums. Every year, he takes a survey of all the merchants in his community. And what was interesting is that almost everyone in that community, their top traffic source was SEO. So SEO is a great way to get free traffic. And in the past two years I would say, I’ve been focusing a lot on SEO, and it’s starting to pay dividends now. And so I kind of went over all my strategies on how to do so.

Toni: Well, and I’ve noticed too, and I think it’s your Profitable Online Store private group, people are starting to ask a lot more questions about that as well. So it’s definitely a topic that people are wanting to learn more about.

Steve: I mean SEO is not dead. And definitely conversion optimization is not dead because a lot of people are driving traffic to their sites when their sites are not quite ready, and then that’s when they fail. And then they blame it on like the ad platform like Facebook ads is dead or Google ads, it’s just not working for me.

Toni: Right. And I think especially with Facebook ads becoming more expensive. If your site is not ready for that traffic, you’re almost wasting your money.

Steve: Yeah, no, absolutely. So one other thing that I forgot to mention is these roundtables, they’re all run by the speakers. And one thing that is really cool about the Sellers Summit is that every speaker hangs around the entire event and mingles with the attendees. And it’s not a big event. So you’re going to see everyone multiple times during the day, including the speakers.

Toni: And that’s another thing that we hear all the time in our post event survey is that they love that everyone is so accessible at the event. And honestly, we’ve had opportunities to have some I would say big name speakers at the event that we’ve decided against having them because we know that they like to show up and then leave. And that’s okay, that’s their thing. But we’ve actually shied away from that because we feel like I mean, I know you are a total believer in this that most of the learning happens after the event at the bar.

Steve: Well, yeah, how would you know that, you never stay up that late?

Toni: I know. I have to get mine in during the session because I’m in bed.

Steve: Yeah, that’s the reason why we have these cocktail parties every night. It is true, that’s my MO. What I’ll do is I’ll get a speaker or someone I want to get to know better to the bar; I’ll get them a couple drinks. I will not drink however. And then I will just simply ask the speaker to reveal everything to me.

Toni: So if you’re coming next year, that’s how you can learn everything.

Steve: Yeah, so I’ll order like two vodka shots, except one is going to be a water shot, which I take and then yeah. It works really well.

Toni: But I totally agree. And that’s actually — and I know we hear this and I know this is tough you and I have been to a ton of events together that we don’t run, it is hard sometimes to have those conversations because it is loud. And no matter where you do them, it’s going to be loud because you have 150 people talking, which is why I think the dinner groups are great additional way to have those conversations because it is a little bit small and quieter. It’s a little bit of a smaller group. And then you can continue those conversations at the networking event later on. But the dinner groups are a way to get your foot in the door.

Steve: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, for me, I’m much better in smaller group situations when it comes to being social than it is in like one large group where you can barely get a word in edgewise.

Toni: For sure. I have one more thing that I noticed that we did better this year. I don’t know if it is did better. But one more change that I thought was cool this year is we had a lot more females at the event, which people were very — all the females were very excited to see more females at the event and we’ve had more female speakers. So I think that’s a cool thing because there’s a lot of really amazing female entrepreneurs out there that are doing cool stuff. And it’s fun to get them on stage and get them in front of our group of people.

Steve: That is interesting. Do you know what the breakdown was?

Toni: Of attendees I do not. But everyone agreed with me at the bar that it was more.

Steve: Okay. Well, I didn’t notice like lines for the women’s restroom this time.

Toni: Yeah.

Steve: Well, it wasn’t like that before. So yeah, clearly there was more females, and the female speakers kicked ass. We’ll get to that in a little bit. So we switch gears and talk about like key takeaways.

Toni: Sure.

Steve: Are you ready?

Toni: Yeah.

Steve: So first off, I started off the conference with my keynote by talking about how Amazon’s growth is slowing. So Amazon has been growing like gangbusters, but believe it or not in Q1 of 2019, they only grew by like 16% or something really low like that. Meanwhile, the percentage of Chinese sellers had been increasing. Last year I think was like at 25%. This year it’s at 40%. And as I mentioned earlier in this podcast, there’s rampant piracy all over the place. And so it is more important than ever to create a strong brand. But a lot of people, they throw on this word brand but specifically what I’m talking about is a brand that is hard to copy.

What I’m talking about here in the keynote is a brand that relies on developing a community of rabid fans. So, all the talks for 2019 were specially curated to help you succeed in 2019 for stuff that is related to strengthening your brand. So Toni and I, unfortunately, we don’t get a chance to attend all the talks, because we’re each in a different room monitoring them. But I thought it’d be interesting to just kind of go down the different talks, and just give our opinion and our key takeaways on some of these talks; do you want to start Toni?

Toni: Absolutely. So, one of my favorite, favorite Sellers Summit speakers is Dana Jaunzemis. And what I love about every talk she’s done for us is that it’s all based on logic and math.

Steve: So that’s what you like about it? I thought you weren’t a math person.

Toni: I do. I’m not a math person, but I like when other people talk about it. But what I love about Dana is that she is very strategic in her business. And this is something I think she used Amazon as her example. But you can use this, whether you sell on or off Amazon. And she basically talked about finding those profit heroes in your business, those products that are the most profitable, and maybe those aren’t your best sellers, which is something to think about. Your best seller might not be your most profitable product. And so she went through this whole process that she uses to evaluate her products.

And so she doesn’t get distracted by other sort of — my gosh, I’m blanking on what they are called, you chasing the rabbit, I can’t think of the right word.

Steve: Shiny objects.

Toni: Shiny objects, yes, she doesn’t get that shiny object syndrome, because she’s so focused on the bottom line and finding those products that are the most profitable and then optimizing those. Things as simple as updating your listing, making some changes and she actually asked a question in the group, how many people go and update their listing on a regular basis? And less than half the room raised their hand. So what I loved about that talk was just sort of going back to the basics that in the back your mind you know you should be doing but most people aren’t. And just walking you through the whole process of how she does that to identify these items and these products in a catalog. And then what she does to sort of optimize them and maximize her profit with those products that are the most profitable for her.

Steve: I wasn’t in that talk but I saw the slides. And one thing that I’ve just noticed in the e-commerce community in general is everyone just talks about revenue, revenue, revenue which is a vanity metric, very few people talk about profit. And that is actually what Dana focuses on. And that’s what everyone should be focusing on really, right. At the end of the day, it’s about how much money you actually get to keep.

Toni: Exactly, exactly. And actually she did a similar talk a couple of years ago and I actually went in and made some adjustments. And I’ve seen my most profitable product increase in sales just based on some of the things I took away from her talk a few years ago. So I’m excited to implement the things that she shared this year, and hope to see more profit growth as opposed to revenue growth.

Steve: Yeah. And while you were in Dana’s talk, I was in Ed Ruffin’s talk on scaling Amazon advertising for growth. And what was interesting about his talk is he was — he kind of outlined his story about how his Amazon PPC strategy has evolved over time. And I don’t want to go into specifics on Amazon PPC in this podcast. But let’s just say that he found a new method that is working much better than the old traditional methods that you may have been hearing about just kind of online or what people have been writing about. And what came out of Ed’s talk, afterwards, I went to talk to him, I said, hey, I would like to switch over to this new strategy.

And so what we’re doing now is Ed and the Seller Lab’s team, they are going to go through my account and convert it to the new way. And we’re going to do a case study; we’re going to document all the numbers and the increase in sales as a result of switching over the strategy. And that’s going to go on the blog.

Toni: All right. And his recording is also available too if you’re interested in since we’re not going to talk about it.

Steve: Yeah, I don’t want to go through the specifics because it can be a little technical.

Toni: For sure.

Steve: But yeah, excellent talk. It was eye opening for me, because I’m not using that strategy right now.

Toni: Awesome. Yeah, I didn’t get to see that one so I’m excited to watch it.

Steve: And then after that, I think you were in Michael Paulson’s of Jungle Scout’s talk.

Toni: I was in; I actually didn’t get to hear all of it. I was running around a bit. But first of all, he’s a great speaker, he was substituting for Greg this year for us and he did a fantastic job. But I think this is — the talk was interesting to me the part that I got to see only because for my business, we’ve had tons of supply issues with our manufacturers. And so I’m always trying to find new suppliers. And this was a whole new strategy on how you do that. And it’s very simple. It’s nothing. It’s something that everybody can do. And something really fun that I don’t think will convert well on the video is he actually had everybody playing a game at the end, where you had to answer questions about importing products and cost of goods.

And it was actually pretty fun to see. And all the results were coming up live on his screen on the big screen in the room. So I hope that conveys well on the video. I’m not sure if it will, because it was a fun — it’s fun to see how much people thought they know and didn’t know about cost of goods and products and things like that. So unfortunately, I didn’t get to hear the whole talk. So that’s another one that I’m waiting for on the recording.

Steve: And while you were in Michaels talk, I was in a talk about the Google Display Network with Ilana Wechsler. And Ilana, it’s a funny story how we met, we met at Traffic & Conversions at the wicked reports booth. And we were both trying to extract information from the guy running the booth and I don’t think we were getting the answers we wanted. And we just ended up talking to each other. And then that’s when I discovered that she knows a lot about advertising. And a lot of people, they’re running Facebook ads, but most people are not running Google Display Network ads.

And so Ilana gave a really great talk. And it got really high reviews in the survey too about how to leverage the Google Display Network, which actually has a much larger reach than Facebook. And one key point from her talk which I’ll reveal is that a lot of your ads that you’re running on Facebook can be used with the Google Display Network with equal efficiency. And so you can easily expand your reach just by adopting some very simple principles with the Google Display Network.

Toni: Yeah, her talk was I think, one of our attendee favorites based on the survey. So I’m excited for that one as well.

Steve: Yeah. And then next up, Mike Jackness gave a talk about how to extract max value from your customers. I wanted to moderate that talk, because I gave Mike a really personal introduction, since we’re good friends. But he delivered. Basically, when a customer comes, he basically documented the entire journey of when a cold customer comes onto your site, how to nurture them into a warm customer. And then once they make a purchase, how to keep them buying over and over and over again. So I think that got really good reviews as well.

Toni: It did. And if you’re not familiar with Nathan Resnick, how old is he? I just have to ask, 22, 24, he seems so young.

Steve: I think he’s 26. I’m not positive. He had his birthday again right during Sellers Summit, as he…

Toni: That’s right. Yes, he did. Yes. We’re so kind to invite him to Florida on his birthday. He actually, every time I hear him talk, I’m just amazed that he’s as young as he is, with the amount of knowledge that he’s gained. And I think he did — I think his story is that he lived in China right as an exchange student when he was a teenager, and is fluent in the language and created a product?

Steve: He speaks better than Andrew for sure, yeah.

Toni: Well, that’s our standard, come on. But Nathan is always very impressive with his knowledge. And I know that we just had a big — I think you actually posted or he might have posted about it in a group about tariffs going up. And so he basically shared a strategy that he’s using to avoid some of those tariffs, by basically bringing your goods through, can I say where? I don’t know what we’re allowed to say and not allowed to say.

Steve: I don’t know. Just go ahead and say it and if we can’t say it, I’ll just edit it out.

Toni: You’ll bleep me out; you’ll just do a big bleep. Basically, by bringing your goods through Mexico and avoiding some of the terrorists and there’s a whole strategy to do it, which we don’t have time to get into on the podcast. But if the tariffs are something that’s really affecting your business right now, this is a talk you must listen to, because it’s a very once again, a very simple strategy, but one that will work and it’s totally legal. And it was funny at the end of the talk, and

I’m not sure this part was recorded, a couple people asked him what I would consider maybe some like black hat strategy things and he was not going to comment. He was not going to — we don’t endorse any black hat at all, from the stage for sure, and I think you and I don’t endorse it on our businesses, either. But people were very interested in being able to use his strategy. And he kept saying to these people that were asking is you can do this and avoid the tariffs, you don’t have to try to trick the system basically, because there’s a whole legal method of how this works.

Steve: Yeah, I don’t think it’s worth the black hat method. And Nathan and I actually talked about this over drinks, of course, and he was telling me they are black hat ways but if you get caught, the penalties are very steep.

Toni: Right. And that’s what he was saying in his talk is it’s not — there’s a system that works legally. So why not try that as opposed to risking, it could be a big risk for your business.

Steve: I mean that the timing of that talk was awesome, because I think like the week before Trump had just raised everything to 25%. And I don’t actually foresee an end to this trade war anytime soon now that they started blocking some other companies like Huawei and SMIC. So, all right, so next up, we had firing on all cylinders, high powered Amazon business sales with Brad Moss. If you guys don’t know who Brad moss is, he’s been on podcast a couple times at this point. He is the former head of Seller Central.

And basically, he did a breakdown of how he analyzes Amazon businesses to basically maximize their sales. And he talks about all the things you have control over and how to analyze different aspects of your numbers and adjust your inputs accordingly. I know that’s kind of vague. It was actually a very detailed talk that I plan on watching over and over and over again to make sure I get every last nugget out of it.

Toni: Which is funny because that’s exactly how I would describe Matt Sanocki’s talk as well. He talked about email deliverability. And I think even when I introduced to him; I said something about this is a talk that you’re going to watch three times before you get all the information, just because he packed a ton in in the 50 minutes. But basically, obviously it’s about email deliverability. And I think for all of us, it stinks to build your list and then have the emails not get to your customer. So he talked about some strategies that you can use to make sure that you’re in the inbox, which is getting harder and harder.

And he talked about different email service providers and the different strategies and how they work with each one. And I actually had a conversation afterwards telling him that like you and I have had issues with Sellers Summit emails not even getting to like Hotmail addresses. And so he had a lot of strategies for what you can do with the emails that are not being delivered. And then also what you can do with the email addresses that are sort of fallen off, so they aren’t opening your emails, they’re sort of dormant and the things you can do with those emails before you just get rid of them all together. So it’s definitely one of those talks that you’ll watch two to three times before you are able to implement everything that you learn.

Cool. I just wanted to take a moment to thank all the sponsors for the Sellers Summit. Without these sponsors the conference would not have been possible. So in no particular order, I want to thank Klaviyo my email marketing platform of choice, HYC Logistics, a freight forwarding company that will hand hold you through the entire process. BigCommerce, my fully hosted shopping cart of choice, Payoneer, the payment platform that I recommend when you’re doing international sales, Viral Launch the keyword tool that I recommend to all Amazon sellers, Privy the email list growth platform that I recommend to all of my students, Avalara, the sales tax platform that I recommend to all e-commerce merchants to handle all their sales taxes, Product Labs, a company that helps six, seven and eight figure Amazon sellers grow exponentially.

Seller Labs, they offer a bunch of tools that I use, including Scope and Ignite, which will help you manage your Amazon PPC. FEInternational, the company that I trust to buy and sell businesses, Second Office, the Filipino VA firm, where I actually found my Filipino VA to which I’ve used for the last year or so and she’s been great. TotalTM and EmergedCounsel, which is the service I recommend to get your trademark, and Drip, the email platform that I use for my blog. It is a superior email marketing solution if you’re in the blogging space.

PickFu which is a polling platform that allows me to make decisions on my product listings like soliciting feedback from real humans, Jungle Scout, which is the de facto standard for Amazon research tools, Gorgias, which is the tool that I use to handle all my customer service, Urtasker, which is a firm that allows you to outsource all of your Amazon tasks. And I used this from recently and they increased my sales over 30%. And finally FreeeUp which is a freelance marketplace where you can find a freelancer that specifically specializes in e-commerce. Once again, I just want to thank all these companies for making Sellers Summit a success this year. Now back to the show.

Next up, we had the four part formula that will explode your business and create a future proof brand with Scott Voelker. You know what’s funny about this is this is actually the first time that I’ve seen Scott speak at Sellers Summit. I mean, he speaks every year, but this is the first time I actually was there to witness the true power of this man. He has tons of energy online. And over the years, he’s changed his focus over to building a brand. And he talks about his framework about building an audience prior to even deciding what product you want to sell. And it is actually the way to go going forward today in e-commerce in my opinion, too.

Toni: Well, and it cracked me up because I was sitting in Brett Curry’s Google Shopping talk and I get a text from you that says something like Scott Voelker has amazing energy or something like that. And I had forgotten that you had never seen him speak live. And is because I’m always in his session and I thought, well, yeah, why do you think I always put him after lunch? But anyway, it cracks me up because I almost laughed out loud in the middle of Brett’s session when I got that text from you, because I’d forgotten that you had not seen him before.

But Brett, he actually did a similar talk last year on Google Shopping. And last year, I went home and I tried to implement it and I got really angry. I think I probably yelled at you Steve and then I gave up. And so this year, he did his talk that basically, if you got stuck last year from his talk, you will be unstuck this year. He basically went step by step through the process of how to set up your ads. And they’re actually pretty inexpensive when you compare them to Facebook, although one caveat he did have in that talk was that they don’t scale the same way so just something to be mindful of if you are interested in Google Shopping ads. But he basically walked us through lots of examples in his slides, lots of best practices. So if you’re interested in Google Shopping, definitely one to watch.

Steve: Yeah. I mean, if Toni can follow it then…

Toni: That’s right.

Steve: That says something right there.

Toni: There is a lowest common denominator for me in that but it was good. And I think you actually maybe talked to Brett during the year and said, hey, we just need a little more information. And it’s a tough subject to cover in 50 minutes if you have zero knowledge of it for sure. But he did a really good job this year in an overview but enough information where you can go do it on your own.

Steve: I mean, this was based on feedback from last year. Last year, I actually told him to do it advanced Google Shopping talk, mainly because that was the talk that I wanted to see for myself. But it turns out that a lot of people are actually aren’t even running Google Shopping. So this year, I asked them to do a more basic talk. And it sounds like it got better feedback this year than last.

Toni: It did. Because if you’re not familiar with Google Shopping at all, which I wasn’t last year, it definitely cleared some things up because there are a few I don’t want to say tricks, but things that aren’t intuitive in Google Shopping.

Steve: Yep. So that was actually all the talks for day one. Day two, we kicked it off with Bill D’Alessandro on how to scale past solo partnership. And I know for me, this resonated with me, because I’ve been a solopreneur almost solopreneur I should say. And a lot of things that Bill said about how he actually succeeded in obtaining the four hour workweek but then he became miserable, because he was making all this money and he had all this free time but it wasn’t satisfying him. And I’ve started to feel this way a little bit in the past year as well. And so I don’t know, did his talk resonate with you at all?

Toni: I actually did not hear all of his talk but this is my recommendation for his talk. As you know or some of you guys know, my nephews are our AV team. And so they film all of our sessions for us. And I heard and they’re in their 20s, they’re early 20s, they’re 20, 22 and they loved this talk. And I feel like anytime you can resonate a talk with a 20 year old who’s just on the first steps of being an entrepreneur, you’ve really hit a home run. So I’m looking forward to watching that one. People were buzzing about this talk afterwards. It was crazy. I could hear people walking out of the room talking about it. So I’m sure it’s worth. I can’t wait to watch it.

Steve: I mean, if you want to grow your team, and basically get past solopreneurship, Bill’s talk was awesome. It was incredible. The only reason I reacted the way I did was because Bill and I we – you know what’s funny about this is we actually had this talk before he created this talk at Ecommerce Fuel. We were kind of debating the merits between solopreneurship and what he’s trying to do, which is build a huge company. And so it was just interesting for him to put all that in an organized fashion in a talk, very valuable. And I know most people actually want to build a big team and a big company. So I’m probably in the minority there.

Toni: You are definitely in the minority.

Steve: Yes. Next up, we had Ezra Firestone talking about Facebook chat bots. What can I say about Ezra man? That guy is an excellent speaker. It was it was funny, it was informative. There was one point actually during his talk where his mic kind of fell off. And Todd, who runs our AV, he was motioning to me; he is like, hey, go and fix it, go up and fix it. And so I went up there. So his shirt had become unbuttoned. So in the middle of this talk, I just walked right up on stage, I buttoned shirt, he kept on talking. I buttoned the shirt, adjusted his mic, and that was that, he didn’t skip a beat.

Toni: That doesn’t surprise me at all.

Steve: But it was an excellent talk about Facebook chat bots. It turns out a lot of people haven’t been using chat bots. So it’s actually a great primer for it.

Toni: Well, and I think the interesting thing about that is that so many people that we talked to throughout the week were — they’d started their business on Amazon, which is pretty typical, and were really either seeing the writing on the wall or feeling the need to diversify. And so I think people were really interested in some of these off Amazon talks, because that’s going to be such a huge component in building their own online store. And so I think that’s one of the reasons.

I mean, Ezra is an amazing speaker, and I know he always does a good job. You and I have seen him at other events. But I think people really were super interested in the email marketing talks and the Facebook marketing. And those sort of talks were really resonating with people, Scott’s and Brett’s talk because so many people are looking at their Amazon sales and looking at the competition and looking at the Chinese competitors and realizing that they have to make a change in their business.

Steve: Absolutely. How’s the email segmentation talk?

Toni: Oh, she’s the boss, Alexandra. She’s amazing from Klaviyo, she just talked about segmentation. And this is actually something that I feel like I’m pretty good at. So I might suck at Google Shopping ads, but I’m pretty good at email. And it was interesting because some of the things that she talked about were so granular, but easy to do, especially within the Klaviyo platform that I’m not doing and it was like these little light bulbs. And I actually spent most of her talk texting other people that I knew in the room saying we need to do this, you should do that.

Think about this for your product, even down to like, if you sell anything, I’m trying to say if you’re like a fashion or jewelry or anything that has colors involved, you can even segment on the colors that people are buying and then creating emails that actually have those colors in them. So if you have a customer that always buys your gold jewelry, right, say you’re selling jewelry, and you can create emails where everything that email is gold tone, including the buy button, right at the VMware button. And so she just gave a lot of tips on how to think about segmentation, which I think I thought that I was doing a great job and thinking about versus…

Steve: You always think you’re doing a great job Toni.

Toni: I do, I do only on email, really. So but I was thinking segmenting on order value or products that they’re purchasing or frequency of purchase. But she got so much deeper and I thought that was really cool. And I think for a lot of people who have multiple SKUs, it’s something that you should be thinking about, and it’s a great way to improve your conversions on your emails.

Steve: Yeah, I mean, a lot of people come and ask me, why should they spend the money on Klaviyo? And her talk is the reason right? You can segment very granularly with all of your emails, and that’s what makes it so powerful.

Toni: For sure. And she knows her stuff. So there was — there’s nothing she didn’t cover either that or in the Q&A. So it’s definitely, it’s one of those other ones that you’re going to watch two to three times to get all the information.

Steve: So how was Trent’s talk about scalable wholesale businesses on Amazon? I asked him to talk because I know that there’s actually a bunch of attendees that sell wholesale, and so I thought I’d asked him to just give his perspective on it.

Toni: I’m not going to lie; I had no idea what he was talking about when he got started. I didn’t really understand the whole wholesale on Amazon business, which I’m sure it’s not shocking to you. But he did a really good job of breaking down from how do you get started into like how do you negotiate the contracts? How do you deal with other sellers? And so he did a really good job of walking people through the steps from if you were like me, and had no idea what wholesaling on Amazon was, to being able to actually, you could take that talk and get started.

Steve: Okay.

Toni: And not — I don’t want to say very easily because it doesn’t. It definitely seems like a difficult process. But it’s definitely a doable thing if that’s something you’re interested in. And it was actually a really well attended talk. I think maybe people were interested in maybe branching out.

Steve: Yeah, absolutely. I mean one thing that’s great about Amazon wholesale is that it is a low risk. I mean there’s always pros and cons to wholesale versus private label. But in general, in terms of monetary risk, Amazon wholesale is a little bit more favorable. You don’t need as much money to get started.

Toni: Yes. And he gave a lot of strategies on the negotiation side, which I thought was good, because there is a lot of negotiating that goes on when you’re trying to get a customer. And so he gave some actual, I don’t want to say they were scripts, but it was close to a script on how you actually approach people and close the deal, which I thought was great.

Steve: Yeah. And while you were in Trent’s talk, I was moderating a panel on transport and tariffs, product sourcing, and protecting your IP from theft. Because I think, I want to say that most of the questions were involved in protecting your own IP, because people are getting knocked off left and right. And what was great about — what came out of that panel was that one, patents are not the best way to protect your product for a variety of reasons. And then Stephen Wagner suggested alternate ways that are a lot less expensive in protecting your IP.

And we also had a bunch of questions about tariffs and getting cheaper prices out of your freight forwarding that both Pam and Nathan Resnick were able to answer. And then Greg, the reason why we had Greg on the panel was because he has all this practical knowledge, because he still sells, I want to say six figures per month in terms of product. And so while everyone else was talking about IP theft and freight forwarding, Greg was actually giving knowledge about what he actually does with his Amazon business. And so it was actually really well done I think.

Toni: Yeah, that should be a good one to watch too, because I actually, I talked to Stephen afterwards. And I think we needed to give him a cough drop or something. He was very talked out after that session, which was great.

Steve: Well, you know me; I got down to every last detail. So if they gave a vague answer, I actually went in just pressed on it until they got tired of talking about it.

Toni: You didn’t let them get away with…

Steve: I didn’t let them get away with vague answers.

Toni: There was no it depends.

Steve: Yeah, you got to test it. Well, no, I don’t want you to tell me what the actual thing is.

Toni: That’s right.

Steve: All right, and then Casey Gauss, you want to come on his session?

Toni: I actually did not get to see a lot of it. I was getting ready to set up for the roundtables that came right after that. But if you’re familiar with Casey, if you’re familiar with Viral Launch, Casey packs in a ridiculous amount of information in a very short period of time. I think this year he had 80 slides. So I have to go re-watch it because I only caught the very beginning of his talk, but he’s so knowledgeable in getting products on Amazon, ranking, driving sales. Their case studies are pretty phenomenal, if you’ve ever taken a look at some of the things that they’ve done at the company. But yeah, he gave a talk on basically how to get your product on Amazon, how to get it to rank without having to give away tons of products.

Steve: One thing I like about Casey is he always talks about his suggestions or his tips and tricks based on data. Because he runs Viral Launch, he actually has tons of data from all the sellers that use his product and that sort of thing. And what he does is he compiles all that information into real strategies that you can implement with your Amazon business.

Toni: And he gave a lot of examples in his talk for the time that I was in there. So it’s definitely one that you want to take a good look at the slides because a lot of that data was on slides in his talk.

Steve: And while you were in Casey’s talk or not in Casey’s talk I should say.

Toni: I was setting up cards on tables.

Steve: Toni is the one running the event and she has to run around while I enjoy myself. At least that’s what she’ll tell everyone. But I was in Molly Pittman’s talk about Facebook ads. And I don’t know about you guys but Facebook ads has changed dramatically in just the past year. Because a lot more people are using the Facebook platform and it’s become a little bit more saturated, Facebook has been — well, they’ve been getting a lot of flak also with all these data leaks and that sort of thing, also. So they’ve really made a change in terms of the way ads work to favor more engagement. And so Molly just outlined a whole bunch of examples of ads that are working for her that have changed dramatically in just the past year. It was a must watch talk.

Toni: Awesome. And we got a lot of good feedback about her talk as well. And it’s that same theme that we’ve seen this year, of people are just very interested on driving sales off Amazon.

Steve: And this year to close the event, we actually got a closing keynote.

Toni: Well big time. We’re big time now.

Steve: Yes. What do you think of Craig’s talk? Did you stay for this one at least?

Toni: I sat in the front row.

Steve: Oh you did, okay.

Toni: Yeah. I mean, we saw Craig at Ecommerce Fuel Live. And he did a talk on shipping rates, which totally was not relevant for me at all. But he was such a good speaker and he has that Scott Volker personality I feel like.

Steve: He’s different than Scott Voelker, though.

Toni: Well, different but he’s got the same energy level on the stage.

Steve: Yeah, yeah.

Toni: So he’s very engaging. When Scott talks onstage, you pay attention, when Craig talks, you pay attention. And actually, my nephews once again, their feedback was, he’s one of the best storytellers they’ve ever heard and they would listen to him all day. So I actually really enjoyed his talk since I asked him to speak on it.

Steve: You want to tell him what the topic is?

Toni: I’ll let you talk because you actually were a little bit shaken up after his talk it seemed, shaken up is not the right word.

Steve: Okay, so he talked about becoming a purposeful business, basically going beyond just making money and helping the community. And it was just amazing what Craig has done with the community. A lot of us we start our businesses to make money and we don’t really think about like a higher purpose. And I actually talked about this in my keynote, like there’s businesses like Toms, who gives away all these shoes every single year. And the reason why people are loyal to businesses like Toms is because they actually help the community. Now, I’m not saying that you should do it just as an ulterior motive, but it really makes your business a lot more meaningful. And so when stuff gets difficult or whatnot, knowing that you’re actually helping the community will actually keep you going through the hard times.

Toni: And I think one of the interesting things that he talked about is it also gives your employees a reason to stick it out to and I think that’s an interesting tie in that he made in his talk. I think he might have done that in the other talk we heard from as well, but just that they they’re working for something bigger too. And I think that is important. And I thought it was cool too in Sellers Summit with that talk, because I feel like for two or two and a half days, people are just bombarded with information, and strategies and tactics, but at the end of the day, you have to figure out, you have to weed through all of that and figure out what you need to do for your business. And if you have like a bigger goal or a bigger purpose in mind, it helps you sort of weed through the noise and figure out what your business should be doing for your goals and your vision.

Steve: And After Craig talked, that was the official end of Sellers Summit, but we had a bonus session, which was the 5 Minute Pitch live finale. If you guys aren’t familiar with 5 Minute Pitch is a Shark Tank like show that Mike Jackness, Scott Voelker and Greg Mercer now we put together where we gave away $50,000 to one lucky business. And we had five companies come and pitch the audience of Sellers Summit live. And then the audience voted to see which pitch they liked the best and they narrowed it down to the final two. And then we had a panel of seven judges, where we voted to see who the winner was. And we actually handed out a big $50,000 check on stage. It was incredible.

Toni: Yeah, and I didn’t get to go because they had this rule where if you weren’t in the room at like 4:55, they locked the doors and actually had someone guarding the doors because everything was being recorded for your show. And so I actually didn’t finish up with Sellers Summit till later. So I actually wasn’t able to get in. And actually our keynote, Craig couldn’t get in for a while. He stood out there waiting. But what I heard from everybody was that the tension in that room was like palpable, right? People were like sweating and nervous. And this was in the audience, not even the people pitching.

Steve: I was really nervous because over the course of the season, I’d become emotionally attached to these people. And with so much on the line, I could tell they were really nervous. I don’t know, I felt something, I was whispering to Jackness during the thing, which probably got picked up on the mic. I was like, oh man, I’m so nervous for all these contestants. So we’re actually turning that into a podcast, which will be available I think in the next couple of weeks or so. So if you want to catch up and binge watch and all the episodes, they will be available on iTunes pretty soon.

Toni: But it was a packed house for that. And I heard it was amazing. And congratulations to the winner who I don’t think we can say yet, but congratulations.

Steve: We cannot say yet, but it will be revealed soon enough.

Toni: And I have to say like I’m most bummed that I missed the giant check. I really wanted to see a giant check in real life so I’m bummed that I did not get to see that.

Steve: Okay, well, that’s kind of unusual. I can buy you a check if you want.

Toni: Do you watch the Office?

Steve: I do of course.

Toni: Do you remember when they did the fun run and they were going to present the giant check that the giant check itself cost like $300 and they’d only raised like $500?

Steve: The giant check is kind of pricey yeah.

Toni: I just wanted to see one in real life after the Office. It’s a bucket list. I just need to see a giant check.

Steve: Give it to Toni to not want to see the talks; she just wants to see the giant check.

Toni: That’s right. And how cool for the winner though. I mean, that is a really cool experience for everybody. And I’m glad that Sellers Summit got to be a part of that this year.

Steve: Yeah, absolutely. So I hope you guys who are listening are interested in these talks, we are going to continue to sell the virtual pass. When do we usually close those? I don’t even remember.

Toni: We don’t keep them for sale forever only because the content is constantly changing or the information is constantly changing. So we want the content to be fresh. So I think we keep them for sale for about six weeks.

Steve: Yeah, for about six weeks, I would say. So maybe in August I guess we’ll close on those sales. But those tickets are available. If you want to check out all the sessions, if you didn’t get a chance to attend the event, we’ll keep that card open for six weeks or so. And I can tell that the reception for this year’s event was good because right now we’ve already sold a bunch of tickets for the following year, which is always a good sign.

Toni: Last year we sold out — well for 2019, our tickets were gone by mid-February. So a lot of conferences pretend like they’re sold out but then they have held tickets back. When we sell out, we sell out; we don’t have any extra tickets. And it actually got so bad this year that Steve had to post in our Facebook group needing an extra ticket, because I would not sell him a ticket because we were totally maxed. So if you’re thinking about going for 2020, grab your ticket now. One, they’re not as expensive; the price goes up as time goes on. But we never have another sale. So it’s not like the price is going to be low on Black Friday or anything like that.

Steve: Yeah, we don’t do that.

Toni: The price is the price. We don’t mess around. Like that’s how it works. And two, don’t be like Steve. Don’t be in the Facebook group crying in March saying that you need a ticket because the gatekeeper is not going to get you one.

Steve: I think you just wanted to see me beg.

Toni: I did. I did. I didn’t have a ticket, though. I really didn’t.

Steve: I think you enjoyed it because prior to posting on the Facebook group, I was like, come on, I just need one, give me one ticket woman. And then you were like, I don’t know. Maybe I could be pissed.

Toni: Here’s the thing, though, here’s the thing, I am loyal to our attendees. And the one thing that we hear every single year, the reason why people come to Sellers Summit again and again, is because they love that it’s small. So if I keep selling tickets, we don’t stay small. So I have to be loyal to the people that are loyal to us. And that’s why.

Steve: Now you’re making me out to be the bad guy trying to expand this conference.

Toni: I know, but I do think that’s why people love it. And I think that’s why people keep coming back because it’s so easy to meet people. And it’s so easy to connect with the speakers. And it’s easy to connect with the sponsors, like everyone is just like – it’s like silly, but a big happy family.

Steve: We’re going to keep it small. If anyone asks, we are not increasing the size of the event. It’s going to stay small, intimate, we’re all going to eat together still. And that’s just the type of conference that I want to attend, quite frankly. And all the sessions are going to be strategy focused. There’s not going to be any fluff, and that sort of thing because that’s just the way that we like things.

Toni: well, I think for us personally, when we attend events, it’s time away from our families. It’s money that we’re spending. If this isn’t going to help us grow our businesses, it’s probably not worth our time and money investment. And so that’s how we feel for our attendees as well. So that’s why we keep creating a conference that does and Sellers Summit does.

Steve: So Toni, where’s the event next year? I know we have everything booked already.

Toni: It is. It is in Fort Lauderdale. So all of you who we’re not a fan of the elevators in Miami, that will be a problem no more. All of our sessions are actually even on the same level next year. So we are in Fort Lauderdale in May, we are May 6th to the 8th and it is the same hotel, The Westin that we’ve been at before so it is right on the beach. There’s actually a walkway directly to the ocean. People like Kevin [inaudible 00:54:19] can get their morning swim before the event and tons of restaurants, everything is really walkable. So we are back at the Westin in Fort Lauderdale.

Steve: Awesome. And by the time this episode comes out, the sales pitch should be up over at SellersSummit.com. Anything else you want to add Toni?

Toni: I hope to see you guys next year.

Steve: Yeah, same here.

Hope you enjoyed that episode. Now we are selling virtual passes to Sellers Summit 2019 for the next six weeks. So if you want to catch the recorded sessions for yourself, head on over to SellersSummit.com. For more information about this episode, go to Mywifequitherjob.com/episode 258.

And once again, I want to thank Privy for sponsoring this episode. Privy is the email capture provider that I personally use to turn visitors into email subscribers. They offer email capture, exit intent, and site targeting tools to make it super simple as well. And I like Privy because it’s so powerful, you can basically trigger custom pop-ups for any parameter that is closely tied to your e-commerce store. Now if you want to give it a try, it is free. So, head on over to Privy.com/Steve, once again, that’s P-R-I-V-Y.com/Steve.

I also want to thank Klaviyo which is my email marketing platform of choice for e-commerce 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 Mywifequitherjob.com/K-L-A-V-I-Y-O, once again that’s Mywifequitherjob.com/K-L-A-V-I-Y-O.

Now I talk about how I use these tools on my blog, and if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to mywifequitherjob.com and sign up for my free six-day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.

Outro: Thanks for listening to the My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast where we’re giving the courage people need to start their own online business. For more information, visit Steve’s blog at www.Mywifequitherjob.com.