#441 - Viral Product Launch Secrets: How Kate Bray's Genius Idea Took Over TikTok

#441 - Viral Product Launch Secrets: How Kate Bray's Genius Idea Took Over TikTok Kevin King: Welcome to episode 441 of the AM-PM Podcast. I've got a great story for you this week. Someone that has been involved in e-commerce since 2017 really found out about Amazon in 2021 and just this year launched our first product that's probably going to do most likely eight figures. And it's an amazing story. She's gonna be telling that story. Her name is Kate Bray. I think you're gonna really enjoy this episode. Talks about a little bit about her background and then talks about the whole story of how this product came to be. It's a unique product for women and it's solving a problem that she had. She put it out there, the way she tested it, the way she launched it. Just a really cool story. So enjoy this episode with Kate. Unknown Speaker: Welcome to the AM-PM Podcast. Welcome to the AM-PM Podcast. Where we explore opportunities in e-commerce. We dream big and we discover what's working right now. Plus, this is the podcast where money never sleeps. Working around the clock in the AM and the PM. Are you ready for today's episode? I said, are you ready? Kate Bray: Let's do this. Unknown Speaker: Here's your host, Kevin King. Kevin King: Look who it is. It's Kate Bray. How are you doing, Kate? You're finally got you on the AM PM podcast. Kate Bray: I know I'm hard to, I'm hard to book, but our people are, you're like, you're like hard. Kevin King: I had to talk to my people. I had to talk to your people and then your people had to talk to somebody else and then they had to get back. And then I was like, We had to like, you said I had to send you green M&Ms first. Kate Bray: Yep, yep. Kevin King: Have them nearby before we do the recording. So I'm like, Jesus Christ, who is this girl? Kate Bray: I have to tell you, this is so cool to be here because I discovered Freedom Ticket in 2021 and it was the first time I'd ever heard about like financial freedom and all that woo-woo. Kevin King: You saw my video where I was standing in front of a Lamborghini, right? You saw that video? Kate Bray: Oh yeah. No, I love it. It was just so inspiring. It's just so cool to be here. I just want you to know that was so pivotal in my life hearing you talk about all that stuff. It's an honor to be here. Kevin King: I feel privileged because I'm now interviewing you. You're always the one, and when we go to shows, chasing me like, Kevin, can you give a second? Unknown Speaker: Yeah, that's my favorite part. Kevin King: For the Incrementum Digital channel or whatever, can you say something? I'm like, whatever, whatever. I'm like, all right, all right, let's do it. Kate Bray: Yeah, no, I love doing that. That's the only way I can get people at shows to talk to me. So I'm not even recording. I'm just standing there with a mic and a camera to make it look like I am. Kevin King: Oh, that's the trick. Oh, now I feel special. I feel wanted. You really didn't want to record me for my knowledge. You just wanted to talk to me. You're supposed to do that with the hot dudes though. I did. You're supposed to do that with the old fat guys. You're supposed to do that with the hot dudes. Kate Bray: No, I did. That's what I'm doing. Kevin King: So 2021 was your introduction into e-commerce. You said the Freedom Ticket or had you done something before that? Kate Bray: Yeah. So I started in e-commerce in 2017 at a company called NetRush. So I started on the advertising side and it took me a minute to grasp the concept of a marketplace. I just thought Amazon sold all this stuff and we were just advertising it. But after a few months of You know, training, I just, I thought that was so cool that it was almost like a local ma and pa shop digitally. And just from there, my love for Amazon specifically, but then now it's kind of grown into just marketplaces and e-commerce has grown. So, yeah. Kevin King: So did you do something before that or that was your first job like out of college or something? Kate Bray: That was my first job out of college. So I started as a nursing student and I'm not a nurse and dropped out and decided to do marketing. Kevin King: Wait, wait, wait. Let me write that down. Do not ask you for anything medical or nurturing in any way. Kate Bray: I'm barely a mom. I'm just kidding. I love my daughter. But no, I tried to be a nurse and I loved the knowledge, but the actual application of it just was not for me. And it actually ended up benefiting me because I advertised supplements for three years at NetRush and then went over to Incrementum right after that. Kevin King: Were you running Amazon stuff or Google stuff or what were you, social media, what was it? Kate Bray: It was pay-per-click marketing and that was right when they launched Amazon DSP for the first time and so I kind of found that, I found my way to, I guess, value as an employee by specializing in that over time and I worked on brands like Nordic Naturals and my favorite supplement brand, Natural Factors, they're Canadian. And Prana was another one from Columbia. It was we were an agency. I think they still are. We were an agency retailer hybrid. So we warehoused the product and then also and we owned the product that we were selling. But we allocated, I think, 12 percent of sales back to advertising. And so my department was responsible for We're going to talk a little bit about advertising for that strategy. Kevin King: Did you know anything about advertising when you started working there or did they train you? Kate Bray: They trained me. I spent $50 one time on a LinkedIn ad on accident before that and I'm just a really good talker, so they let me in the door. It was funny because I met their team at a snow show. Like outdoor retailer about six months before my interview and I walked right up to the VP of sales and I was like, I'm gonna work with you in six months and he was like, okay. Kevin King: Did you have a camera and a microphone? Kate Bray: I didn't know. Kevin King: So you actually met them and then you actually So then you applied or pursued them? Kate Bray: Yeah. Yeah. I hounded them. Yeah. Cause I, I just thought the agency, the idea of an agency was so cool. Cause they had hammocks and it's still, it's like, I still love it. Um, they like hammocks in the break room and Nintendo 64 for, you know, lunchtime tournaments and the whole Silicon Valley in Oregon dream. So I thought that was pretty cool. Kevin King: Was this in Portland or Eugene or somewhere else? Kate Bray: It was in Portland, just like 10 minutes North of Portland and Vancouver. Um, right across the river there. Kevin King: Okay, I actually did a family, I know it was a wedding. I was in just north of that, up towards the volcano. Kate Bray: St. Helens? Kevin King: Yeah, St. Helens. I was up nearby there and I was at a wedding like two years ago in that area. So I drove across the bridge to Vancouver and up whatever that freeway is. Kate Bray: Oh, cool. Kevin King: It's gorgeous, isn't it? Yeah, it's really pretty. Yeah, it's a really, really pretty area. I mean, Oregon's very diverse. You got Portland with all of its food trucks, kind of like an Austin, very liberal. And then you got Eugene, which is kind of more of a country town, kind of reminds me of like College Station in Texas. Kate Bray: For sure. Kevin King: Down in the south in Coos Bay, it's like a country and western. Kate Bray: Yeah, it really is. It's super diverse. You've got the coast, which is, I'm in the Willamette Valley region, which is there's wine everywhere. And then 45 minutes from here is the beach. And then an hour and a half from here is the mountain. So you can go any direction and you've got the climate of your choice. It's crazy. Kevin King: And what's the lake there, the crater lake, the blue? Kate Bray: Yeah, there's lots of TikToks. Yeah, it's Crater Lake. Yeah. Kevin King: I couldn't remember that exact name. That's really pretty too. Kate Bray: It is. Yeah. It's so, yeah, especially right now when it's all snowy. Kevin King: Oh, that would be amazing. I saw it in the summer. So when it was all like crystal blue and everything, it was really cool. Kate Bray: Yeah, I agree. Kevin King: Like right at sunset. So you started working for this agency and then what led you to leave there? Kate Bray: So this strange man one day on LinkedIn sent me a message and said, um, do you want to come work for me on the DSP team? Do you want to come launch my DSP team? And I was like, what's this? Like I'd never heard of increment of digital or anybody from this space. And I, I took the interview and within 15 minutes of meeting Leron and Brian, it was like, I was like, I'm quitting my job. I'm selling my house. I'm going to go work for these guys. I don't know why. I remember walking out barefoot to tell my friends, like, I just took a job with this stranger from the internet. Kevin King: This was over online. Kate Bray: Yeah. Yeah. And this was like maybe, oh gosh, we were about six months into the pandemic at this point. And everybody's like, oh, Kate's lost it. So I took the job with Liron and like. Kevin King: What did, what did he see some work you did or was he just. How do you know who you are or what you do? Kate Bray: Leron and Brian have this secret sauce when it comes to hiring people. They have so many systems and automations and feelers out for the team. I don't know how they actually found me. I wonder if he just searched My experience or like maybe I had DSP in my profile, but they're always always looking for for team members and that was I think the team was maybe 20 people at that point at Incrementum So they were they were really trying to fill these positions at the time. Kevin King: So yeah, he must have just searched Yeah, I've known Leron since I think 15 or 2016 day. So when he was a seller before incrementing digital was even a an idea Like he had just gotten out of I think he was doing insurance or something Something like that. I mean just got now that it was just in Amazon. He was doing well on Amazon. He actually I met him at an event I think in Atlanta with Jeff Cohen. Jeff Cohen was with a company that had one of the feedback softwares that was big at the time. Kate Bray: FeedbackWiz? Kevin King: Yeah. Was it FeedbackWiz or FeedbackGenius or something like that? Kate Bray: Yeah. Kevin King: And I went out to their event, and Leron was out there, and I was like, who is this guy? I mean, he was like, he knew everything. He was like, every time someone was talking, we have a group discussion, he'd be the one like, yeah, it works like this, and it's like, who is this guy? Kate Bray: Yeah, he's smart. He's wicked smart. He's so smart. But what do you, have you ever, I've never been a part of a community like the e-commerce community before. I mean, it seems like this is so special because I was introduced to it through Leran, so I was just blown away by you and the friends that I've made and just it's crazy. It's so cool. Kevin King: Yeah, I think the Amazon space is a little different. I mean, I've had these discussions, exactly the same thoughts that you had because I go to non-Amazon events too. I go to like Funnel Hacking Live and Affiliate World and DealCon and video events and podcast events and stuff. And you see little pockets of people here and there talking and you'll see sometimes like someone's like, oh, they're hugging each other like they haven't seen each other in a year. But it seems different in the Amazon space. It seems like I always say it's like almost cliquish. It's like high school because you got these little groups. So you have like the people that came up through amazing.com, the people that went through Helium 10, the people that go to Steve Chu's event, the people that are in Titan, the people that are in MDS. And there's like these little pockets of people that kind of are little communities. And then there's some overlap. Kate Bray: Yeah. Kevin King: But there's something about it that's like when they get together, it's different. And I was just this last year at New Year's, I was like, I'm gonna have some people over for New Year's in my house here in Austin. I started thinking about it. I don't know anybody in Austin to invite. All my friends live other places. And I knew a few people. I mean, like Amy Weiss is in San Antonio. I said, come on up. So she came on up. And a few people I knew were out of town or had other plans. But I had a list of people. I was like, well, Norm doesn't live here. This one doesn't live here. So it's like, yeah, there's something about it. And that's one of the reasons I like going to these events. It's because there is like an unspoken camaraderie or something. You just, I don't know. It is different. What do you do at Incremental? Are you, I know you do like their, you do some of their social stuff and social media and like the video stuff when you're around about, but what's your like day job? What are you doing? Like the bulk of your stuff? Are you doing? Running DSP, are you running accounts or what are you doing? Kate Bray: No, not anymore. I don't run accounts. I used to, but I'm VP of marketing. So I, most of my time is spent running meetings and branding and doing strategy. So I, my specialty is in human connection. I love being on meetings and talking to people and making sure that they're efficient and making sure we have action items and all that. So I tend to take that on most of the time. I actually run our all hands meetings and it's one of the funnest parts of my month. Cause I get to, you know, it's like the hour where I get to ask everybody what, you know, if they were a country song, what country song would they be? And, you know, organizing an answer from 60 people is not no easy task. So, um, it's really fun. Um, so it's, it's sort of a hybrid between marketing and HR in a way. Um, they used to call me the chief fun officer for a while, but, um, then yeah, then now my focus is more around, Systems and meetings and branding and strategy and I love that. It's like the perfect culmination of all of my skills. Kevin King: So branding for incremental or branding for clients? Kate Bray: Incrementum and then I do some auditing of brands off of Amazon. So on their other channels, I'll take a look and I have a couple tools in my toolbox that mostly like We're both research tools, but I'm also getting really familiar with some of the new marketplaces that are popping up. I liked, you know, TikTok shops analytics for a while there, but you know, we'll see. So, yeah, I'm involved with the audits and, you know, filling in the gaps when we're throwing a bunch of information at a client about their Amazon presence, making sure that all of the information tells a story and connects and has something linear to it. And I really enjoy that because One of my other specialties is taking complex topics. My dad's an engineer. My brother's an engineer and making them visual and making them fun and digestible and so I get to do that a lot with our audits and it's really fun. Kevin King: So what is your favorite, absolute favorite part of the job? Is it organizing the, because I know like a couple months ago you guys did a What do you call it? A retreat or an on-purpose... Kate Bray: Oh my gosh. Kevin King: Offsite? Offsite, that's the word I've been looking for, yeah. Do you organize those and produce those? Kate Bray: Yes, now I do. We got on an EOS system and so it's easier to do that now. And it's taught me a lot about how to make sure that those meetings are not too corporate and not too stuffy and, you know, more about team connection. But I love doing that. I think the The one thing I do that makes time disappear is editing TikToks or editing short form videos. Yeah, I love doing that. Especially when it's funny or it's satirical. That's when I really enjoy myself and then I'll post it in the Slack channel and everybody's like, oh yeah, okay. That's good. But it's really fun. I think that's my favorite part of the job. Kevin King: Do you do the Thursday newsletter too? Kate Bray: No, that's Benny. It's gotten much better since she took it over, huh? Kevin King: I didn't say that. That's a marketing thing. I was just wondering because you guys always put that out on Thursdays. Kate Bray: It's so good and you know who she's learning from. I was like, Benny, there's this guy, you gotta follow his newsletter. It's Kevin King. And she was like, oh yeah, I read that every week. I'm like, okay, good. Unknown Speaker: I hope twice a week. Kevin King: It comes out twice a week. Kate Bray: I hope three times a week. Unknown Speaker: Every week. Kate Bray: She's so sharp too. I think she started in e-commerce maybe two years ago and she's far and beyond me in her comprehension of some of these tools and best practices now. I love Benny. She's a vibe. Kevin King: A lot of these agencies are kind of boring. They're kind of stale and especially when it's hard to get a cohesive personality when everybody's working remote. So what do you do to actually, like you said, you're the chief fun officer is one of your nicknames there. What do you do when a lot of the company is remote and actually to put some energy and some fun into just a bunch of numbers and kind of a boring thing for a lot of people? Kate Bray: Yeah, that was I think one of the biggest culture shocks switching from a very corporate agency to Incrementum was the difference in a shared mindset. I think that starts with identifying people who have We have a growth mindset. As cliche as that sounds, you have to find people who are consuming the same content that you're consuming around how to be a better person, how to be a better communicator, a better business person, and people who like to exchange that information because we have a lot of Slack channels. We have Water Cooler Hangout. We have Inspiration Channel. We have books that we're all listening to, podcasts we're all listening to, and then we have an Amazon advertising channel that gets, I think, probably the most traction. It's this energy of sharing knowledge and everybody in the room wants to grow and acquire knowledge and be better. And then you need a couple of personality hires. So when that kind of gets stale, you need someone who I think is going to be willing to wear an elf costume to a Zoom and, you know, rally maybe six or seven other people to at least change their Zoom background for the Christmas party or, you know, and our CEO is Jewish. So, you know, we have to, we have our party in a non-ambiguous date. No, I think it's just a combination of a shared mindset and then I think, are you familiar with Brene Brown? Kevin King: Yeah. Kate Bray: She talks about what it's like to find a place where you belong and I think you have to create an environment where people feel safe, emotionally safe, being their weirdest self and they're accepted for that rather than saying, Like this is the interpretation of growth mindset. No, like if you want to share your knowledge, you want to argue about something, the only agreement we've made is that we're both trying to get better, but the manifestation of that can vary however it needs to in any different individual. So it's a bunch of things. And we've tested a lot of different We're third party providers for team building and karaoke and these other activities and truly I think it all just comes back to a shared mindset. You know, cultivating that. Kevin King: Well, speaking of that shared mindset, I mean, Leroy, like I said earlier, I've known him for a while. He used to be super active on social media. He's not nearly as much anymore, which makes sense. He's busy, but he would answer anybody and everything. Every question, you know, I can't do that. People message me all the time asking for advice and I'm like, if I just answered that, that'd be my full-time job. Kate Bray: Yeah, I believe it. Kevin King: I'm not disrespecting people and sometimes I get angry. They'll send me stuff four times like, just see if you saw this. Have you seen this yet? You didn't answer me yet. Those make me even want to delete them more. But he used to be really good at answering every single one of those. And then he would also was someone that would call people out. He and Brandon Young. And Brandon still does it, but you don't see it with Lerone as much anymore. If there's some bullshitter saying something about Amazon or whatever, he would like put them on the spot. So does that trickle down in the company where it's like everybody just be honest with each other, just there's no bullshit, there's no corporate crap, there's like, is that part of the culture? Kate Bray: Yeah, I think that's like a safety to make mistakes. That's very present at Incrementum. You know, we're handling millions of dollars in ad spend. So there's, you know, a definitely a limit for the kind of a mistake that you could make. Like, there's, he's very much just good energy to be around to share a room with or to share a Zoom with most of the time. And I think he cultivates that by avoiding negativity and avoiding negative interactions and reacting to things. So when someone comes to them and says, you know, this client, this thing happened with their inventory, they're upset with us. And then this happened to the listing and all this chaos. He has really mastered the It's, you know, it's neutral. There's definitely a way out. We're going to find it and it's so, it makes it so much easier to think quickly through big problems when you have a CEO in charge like that. It's very helpful and yeah. I don't know if I've ever really thought through that, but that's a good question. Kevin King: So what, for the people listening, we've said the word incremental digital several times. What can you just, what is incremental digital? What do you guys do? Kate Bray: We do retail media. So we are Amazon gurus. That's how we started. Our founder sold on Amazon for several years and started running, you know, this friend's PPC and this friend's PPC and these brands started taking off and all of a sudden he had this agency. And, um, we've been in business officially since 2019. Um, So we started on Amazon. We've expanded now to Walmart, Target, Ulta, TikTok shop, Instagram shop. And you know, our, our team is really, really specialized in terms of, you know, you oftentimes you'll hire an advertising agency and you'll get your run of the mill weekly report. Our team is obsessed with numbers and we're constantly sharing knowledge. We're constantly sharing expertise across, you know, departments and, um, Yeah, you know, we love what we do. We say Amazon is our ICA guy, which now that we're, you know, specializing in these multi-channel retail media channels, I think it's probably more accurate to say retail media is our ICA guy, but yeah. Kevin King: And if you're wanting to see the Billion Dollar Seller Summit from Iceland, you can go to BillionDollarSellerSummit.com and check out the live stream. If you're listening to this after April 12th, you can actually check out the replays. But if you wanna get the live streams, got a bunch of extra content in it, check that out at BillionDollarSellerSummit.com. So, I mean, the size, you said it's like 80 employees, so that's about, I don't know if you're allowed to say or not, but how much ad spend is under management at Incremental? Kate Bray: 66 million in ad spend and then, yeah, and most of that is in search. So, I mean, that's always been our bread and butter, but, you know, we've got, it's been interesting to watch these different channels like Sponsored TV and always DSP. DSP is a very steady, Business for us, but yeah, about 66 million, I think, a year. We're going for 75 in 2025 because it rolls off the tongue. Kevin King: 75 in 2025. Exactly. So in doing all this, you said you started the Freedom Ticket in 2021. So you've had a little itch in your belly to actually do something on your own for a little while and like, I want to, I see what all these people are doing. Kate Bray: Yeah. Kevin King: I want to make me some money. Come on now. I got an idea. I ain't no fool. I got an idea. I see a problem that a lot of women are having. Um, what if I developed a product that helped them with this problem? So how did that, how did that, how did this idea and we'll talk about more of it, what it is and stuff, but how this idea for this product that you, We are launching right now and getting going and starting to kind of take off. And you just were at the, back in February, you're at the Market Masters Think Tank. You got a few ideas and stuff. I know you didn't sit in an actual hot seat, but just by being there and watching some of the other ones and some of the people you got to hang out with, that was like, I think that really helped you get some ideas and stuff. But tell us, how did this, how did this come to be? Kate Bray: Yeah, so I always tell people I've always been seller curious. I've worked with sellers for so long and one of the weirdest things about going from college to an agency was giving advice to brands and experts in their field without experience myself. Kevin King: So basically you're both. Kate Bray: Right. Yeah, it was. Kevin King: All right. Make it till you make it, right? Kate Bray: It's so true. It's so true. But I've had, I don't know if you're familiar with the disease endometriosis. Do you know what endometriosis is? Kevin King: Yeah, I know exactly. I used to have a boy that had it where it's just horrible. Yeah, for those that don't know, it's a It's a down there and the female private parts where they basically can prevent you from having a baby and all kinds of stuff It's it's yeah, it's a common issue a lot of women that they don't talk. Kate Bray: It's not really talked about it's very taboo So yeah, so the basically your end your uterine tissue grows everywhere else in your body so it can move to your brain it's it turns into kind of a cancer and and The thing about it is that it cramps just like you would get menstrual cramps, and it's excruciating for a lot of women It's not just during your menstrual cycle. Kevin King: It's like any time. Kate Bray: Yeah, yeah, and we're just now getting some you know studies done and results back and learning about it a little bit more and It's it's a chronic illness. It's something that debilitates people and I actually have a friend. Kevin King: You're gonna have a surgery on it though, right? Kate Bray: Yeah, so I personally have had it removed four times. It's just like a cancer. Kevin King: Four times? Kate Bray: Yeah. Kevin King: You were able to have a child too though. You said you had a daughter. Kate Bray: I did. Yeah. Which is actually a miracle because I got done with my first surgery and my doctor was like, how are you walking around? Like, this is insane. Your, your insides are messed up. And I was like, thanks. I made those myself, jerk. So I did have a daughter. Yeah. And she's a miracle. But, um, yeah, it was, I have a friend who's having her colon taken out because the endometriosis has essentially all but eaten her, her insides. Kevin King: Really? I didn't realize it spread like that. I thought it just stayed in the female reproductive area. Kate Bray: I think the majority of people who have heard the word endometriosis, they don't understand it, which is part of the problem. It's a taboo subject and so people don't talk about it and they hide it and there's not a lot of solutions out there for it. There's not a cure for it. So I got really frustrated because my only My only solution for the pain was a heating pad, a bath, and a boiling hot shower or something temporary. And I think I have a bucket of heating pads from 2019 that I just tore apart. I started to think, you know, like, okay, I know a little bit about Amazon. Maybe this, maybe I can find the manufacturer's name on this, you know, the inside of this heating pad. It didn't work. But I sat with the idea of a diaper for years thinking like this would feel amazing on my pain because it's not like I'm just getting cramps right around my belly button. They're on my hips. They're on my back. They're at reb. I apologize for the listeners. We say it's on my coochie and everything hurts at the same time. And so I started to learn more about Solving a problem and how I could potentially, you know, work with vendors or work with sourcing agents or work with agencies to help me bring the idea to life. And I didn't pull the trigger until I posted on TikTok in July of 2024. And it immediately took off because I had my prototype. I made my prototype. I sewed it myself at my house after three or four or five different attempts. I probably poked holes in the electrical wiring so I don't plug that one in anymore. But I posted on TikTok and it got... Kevin King: How did you make the prototypes? You made it by hand? So you took like some other heating pads and just kind of stitched them together that already had... Did you have electricity running into it and you just kind of modified it? Kate Bray: Yeah. Yeah. Because there's a, there's a, a heating coil that goes through it and I know how to sew. So I just created the outer with a flame proof outer and then sewed the coil down the way it's supposed to be sewn. And, um, yeah, and it worked just fine. Um, but, and so I figured, you know, if I can do this, I'm sure there's a manufacturer somewhere that can do this, but I needed to verify the idea. So I posted on TikTok and I also used, uh, Yeah, PICFU to ask an audience of women between 18 and 35, which they would prefer. And in both cases, I got a round thing. Kevin King: Which look or which, what do you mean? Which shape? Kate Bray: Yeah, sorry. Kevin King: So did you, did you use AI to make some shapes or you sewed like a couple of different shapes and just took a picture with your phone or something? Kate Bray: No, I actually went to Canva. Yeah, I drew it in Canva and then put the texture of a, um, Like a Sherpa texture into the shape that I drew so that it looked like the heating pad that I have. I have it right here. And I described it on PickFu. So I said, you know, rectangular heating pad, got a nice picture of a rectangular heating pad, and then made this picture look like the featured image on an Amazon listing and asked the audience which one they would prefer for period cramps. And it was resounding diaper-shaped heating pad. That's crazy. Like, I can't believe people are willing to wear a diaper, like a heated diaper. Kevin King: That's not what you would have gone with if you hadn't done PickFu. You would have gone with the other version. Kate Bray: I would have, yeah, and the other gap that I noticed was when I was using Helium's tools, people were, there's a big gap in the market for fun patterns. Like people, there's, when you go look for a heating pad for period pain, they're all pink or taupe or black. Or maybe there's a couple with some flowers on them. But this is something that you use once a month, if not more often. And if you think about, you walk into the cold and flu aisle, there's tons of different solutions and different ways to ease your pain. Whereas this is the most common way to ease period pain and there's rectangular variations that are three colors and that's it. And so there's just this big gap in the market just right there. Kevin King: So the other ones are not wearable, right? They're just like something you just put up like a heating pad you just kind of Put across yourself sometimes. Kate Bray: Yeah, sometimes they're wearable. They have the ones that strap around your waist But if you think about the 3d uterus like if the whole thing's cramping and so I've got back cramp side cramp It's not really it's not reaching. Kevin King: It's not reaching everywhere. It needs to right. Kate Bray: Yeah, and sometimes it's restrictive or there's always something wrong with it. So I Yeah, I just decided to go for it after that TikTok went viral. Kevin King: More people messaging you like, how do I buy it? Where do I go? Kate Bray: Yeah, and actually, I don't know if you know Samer Brax. He started to go viral and he was like, hey, you've got to get an email list going. You've got to start collecting these because you can't just let this go by. It's just going to turn into a viral video. I was like, oh crap. I went and built this funnel and I collected, before we launched in October, collected 3,500 emails saying, I want this when it comes out before we look at anything. Yeah. Yeah. And that was like very validating as not just as a, an entrepreneur, but as a marketer up to this point, I'm like, I'm giving all this advice out and I'm like, if you do it this way, do this way, picture colors this way, you know, but then I got to apply it and it was so rewarding and so exciting. Um, Yeah. Kevin King: So you got 30, so between August of making a prototype and doing PICFU and then putting it out there and it goes viral and you collect 3,500 email addresses, what did you, did you find a factory in China or the U.S. or somewhere to make it? Yeah. Prototyping, you got to go through samples and all that. So you were able to get that. That passed and have a product in hand in October. Kate Bray: Yeah. And because I had a working prototype, I was able to just go to Gemba and say, I'm going to mail you what I have. And if you can just turn, I want a fabric this close to this. I had a wish list of features and I got some of them. I didn't get some of them because some of them weren't necessities but had a wish list of features and they have a whole team. They have an electrical specialist. They have a communication specialist and then they have a product design specialist that all put their heads together within a matter of three weeks. We had a manufacturer ready to sample and I think after a month of them kind of tinkering, they sent me a sample and I was like, there's a video on my Instagram of me crying when I opened the box. I was so excited. Kevin King: That's cool. So those of you that, she just kind of said that in passing, but GmbH, G-M-B-A-H. Kate Bray: Yep. Kevin King: That's what they do. So there's a lot of people that don't understand or don't want to go through the process of finding a factory and dealing with all that. They have a team. Some of them are full-time employees. Some of them are freelancers. Some of these people work for Nike. They work for Adidas. They work for Procter & Gamble as their full-time jobs and then they moonlight as designers. I've used Gimba myself and I'm familiar with the guys and they're really good. You've got to pay a little bit of money to go there. This is not free but you get what you pay for. They'll do whatever level, whether it's just product design and then you can take it from there and find the factory or they'll take it all the way through. It just depends on what level of service that you want. But that I just want to let the audience know that you're talking about so you had it in October So then when it comes in October, what do you do? You email the 3,500 people and say it's it's hey It's happy, good news. It's on Amazon now. Go buy it. Kate Bray: No, so October was my first hiccup and it was exciting because I was just, this whole time I'm thinking, you know, all these entrepreneurs have these really cool stories of, you know, this is my moment. I thought I was going to fail and everything went wrong. And so I spent all of September getting ready for a Kickstarter campaign on October 1st. And about two weeks before we launched, I went to post the Kickstarter campaign on the platform. And not only did it get denied, they said, you can never post this here again because this product claims to cure an illness or whatever. And so I was so stressed out. But at that point with the emails that I had and the I mean, I didn't just have emails. I had hundreds of people from that email list sending me their stories. So saying, you know, I can't wait for this to come out. I feel so seen. And I so I knew that there was a really strong connection between the problem that I was solving and the customers, you know, seeing this brand and connecting with the solution. So I was stressed, but also a little excited to have my first entrepreneurial hiccup. And then we ended up launching and I think we sold. Kevin King: We ended up launching on Amazon or not Kickstarter, right? Kate Bray: Sorry, yeah. Specifically, I ended up using PreProduct. It's a pre-order plugin for Shopify, which initially I didn't think that that was possible. The problem was I needed capital to buy inventory. Most of the pre-order softwares on Shopify don't allow you to collect money in advance, but this one did. And so we plugged that in and I, you know, between July and October worked with an agency to get my Shopify site up and running. I mean, if you use Wayback and look at it, it's some of the most basic pictures and it's crazy, but we ended up selling 200 units on that first night, which was like, I had my watch Shopify notifications on. It was so exciting. Kevin King: 3,500 emails? Kate Bray: 3,500, yeah. So 200 conversions. Kevin King: At what price point? Kate Bray: At that point, I think with the discount, it was $50. Everybody was buying it for $50. How much did you need to go into production? I needed, well, that's where it kind of got tricky. I still didn't have a final Design I guess I didn't have I was still two or three weeks away. I think from finalizing the design that we got from the manufacturer Yeah, they call the gold golden master golden master. Okay. I remember that that's okay. Um, I And that's the cool thing was the audience, I let them know this is instead of Kickstarter. I'm still in the same phase that I was with Kickstarter. We're still kind of finalizing these designs. And so I just continued to post about it. And then part of the marketing and the funnest part about the marketing was people got to follow the journey from ideation to now we're shipping it out. And yeah, it was, Yeah, that was so cool. But yeah, 200 orders in the first night. Right now, we just crossed 1,500 pre-orders. So around January was when we finally finished production, our manufacturer finished production, and then we shipped it to our fulfillment partner, Tactical Logistics. And by about February 10th is when everybody started to get their orders. And it was, yeah, it was So cool to come full circle after working on something between, you know, October to Q, almost Q2 2025 and see some of the feedback that we got. It was super, super exciting. Kevin King: And then did you take it after shipping it out to these people that have been waiting? How many did you make on that first production run? Kate Bray: 3000. Kevin King: So you have 1500 more that you could then take and either sell to, because when those ladies get on, they probably know somebody like, Oh, you're probably seeing orders coming in right now from someone that recommendations. Kate Bray: Yeah. Kevin King: And then you took it and put it up on Amazon and that's starting to go really well too. Right. Kate Bray: Yeah. Kevin King: So I actually, in, in between that time too, I didn't know somebody that can help you with PPC or something to get that launched. Kate Bray: They might've already offered to just do it and then, you know, take it out of my paycheck. Kevin King: You might, you might have a, inside connection there of something. Kate Bray: Yeah. Well, the cool thing is we've been running, um, Facebook ads surprisingly for a month and now, and we're at a five X return on our spend for, with a pre-order with pre-order friction, which is crazy. Like, um, that kind of return with, with, Yeah, that's crazy. Kevin King: Is the price still around $50 or have you raised the price? Kate Bray: I had to raise the price, yeah, because I was starting to get a little stressed. Kevin King: Once you figured out how much this is going to actually cost, your landing costs came in a little probably higher than what you might have expected, so you raised the price. Kate Bray: Yeah, and I had a general idea of my landed costs. I raised the price, one, to slow down demand because we ended up shipping four units out to four influencers. Every single one of them posted it once and it was their most viral video for the last 90 days, which is crazy. Kevin King: Yeah, like I think in between emails after that or they're going straight to the Shopify site to do a pre-order. Kate Bray: They were, they were going straight to the Shopify site. Now we have an email captures app because that was like, that was totally unexpected. I just thought, you know, maybe we'll turn on this little trickle in here, this little trickle in here. But I had to stop giving my first units out to influencers because we only ordered 3000 units and we've got to make sure that we can catch up with this sort of demand. And so that was really cool. We've also generated I think we're at 8,000 on the brand account on Instagram, 3,000 on TikTok. But then on TikTok, my personal account, which is where I posted most of the stuff about Reb, is at 7,800. And then my personal on Instagram is at 3,500. So it's the reverse from those videos because they would tag me and then it would go viral and then we just got all this traction. Yeah, it's been crazy. And that's one of my next priorities as soon as we have the inventory to support it is this affiliate program to get these influencers, you know, taken care of, make sure they get their product. Kevin King: Based on what you're saying here, this is going to blow up. Right. Do you have any IP on this? Did you do any kind of... Kate Bray: Yes. I forgot to mention that. Yeah. So we did. We filed for a utility patent in July. Before we went through the... Before I decided to do the pre-order stuff, I made sure we had that at least pending before we... Kevin King: That can take a year to 18 months to get that. So once people start seeing this out there, now, you know, it's April. So that means you have six to eight months runway. People can knock you off right now and you can't really do anything about it while that's pending. It'll scare some people away. But once that, hopefully that goes through, then you can shut them all down. Kate Bray: Yeah. Kevin King: I have a feeling you're going to have a very healthy exit or licensing deal out of this and you're going to be making some dreams come true based on the feedback you're giving me now of how you've solved this problem that people are just rabid about. When you had the delays of shipping out, were people like, Hurry up, I'm in pain, I need this thing. Unknown Speaker: Hurry up, please, please, please. Kate Bray: Yeah, that's what's so, it's so crazy because people were counting down the number of periods they had to go through before the product got there. Kevin King: You should have made like an advent calendar. Unknown Speaker: I know, we literally did. It's so fun. Kate Bray: Yeah, that was so cool. But it's, yeah, it made it easy as a marketer to identify the pain points because the pain points were very literal. But yeah, it's just, it's crazy how The taboo of the topic has created this opportunity where it's, you know, even if the IP doesn't go through, I'm expecting that the branding and the audience and all this other stuff that we've spent some time building is going to sort of support our success. And so I have this, I'm very, very, I'm a strong believer in the abundance, the idea of abundance. There's more than enough to go around. And, you know, if competition in this space creates a world where there's fewer women in agonizing pain, like that, that's a life well lived in my opinion. So I'm excited to see where it goes. Kevin King: That's really awesome. I mean, that, that this abundance mindset is, that's, I love your attitude. I love the way you're approaching this. And you're doing something that you're passionate about and you're fixing a need. There's a clear problem and a clear pain point here. And those are the best products. And that's how you win right now. I mean, you're doing everything right. You made a couple boo-boos along the way, but you're doing everything right. And this is what people in the space need to start thinking about. They need to look at you as like more of a model instead of just trying to knock something off that's already sitting on Alibaba and put their logo on it and do the thing. Or look for problems in your life that you can solve by just modifying. Sometimes it's like you said, you just sewed a couple other things together and just modified it. It wasn't like revolutionary necessarily, but you put it in a different way that women want, that you wanted personally, that would make you happy. And then you tested it, right? You didn't just go manufacture. Like, I know my idea is good. I know it's going to sell. You're like, Let me put it up there a couple things and it just went crazy and like, okay, that's validation. And then getting into these influencers, you sent the four influences that are most viral. That's just even more crazy. I think you could actually take this. It's going to be difficult in some of the advertising because of the nature of the product and some of the claims like on Amazon and running social media and actually advertising behind it. There's going to be some challenges, but you can get creative with it. You won't be able to say what it is, but you can do innuendos or memes or different. Kate Bray: Yeah. Kevin King: But I have a feeling that this is going to be You could easily have an eight figure exit on this in the next one to three years. Kate Bray: Yeah, that's exciting. I'm going to flip that what you just said. That is like, gosh, that's so cool. Kevin King: I mean, because just based on what you're telling me, if you do this right and you're going to have someone knock you off. But if that IP comes through, you can shut them down. But there's going to be a period where they're going to be taking advantage of that window. Oh, yeah. And then a licensing deal, even with one of the big companies out there, the big feminine products companies or something could be major and just let them spend all the money and blow it up and give you a 10% royalty on everything that's sold. Kate Bray: Oh, yeah. Kevin King: I don't know how big this issue is, but You got 4 billion women in the world and if 5% of them have this issue, I don't know what the numbers are, but if 5% of them have this issue, that's a significant freaking market. That's 80 million people. Kate Bray: If you think about it like the cold and flu aisle, you think about that problem and how frequently that comes and how many solutions there are and then The movement that's happening right now with women speaking out and all this, all this stuff that's happening in the culture, like the timing is crazy because when I walk into the period aisle and it's, it's just hygiene. There's not, there's maybe Midol and maybe there's some ibuprofen, but as a consumer of that, there's no pain release that's innovative like this. It's a huge gap and I'm so excited. Kevin King: What you need to do is do a little bit of education, put up some education and a little SEO. And actually put something like retention.com or audience labs or data data zap on your web page because there's going to be a lot of women that come to your Shopify site or come to your landing page and they're going to see Like, oh, this looks good, but they're just going to be like nervous. It's kind of like guys ordering erection pills or something through the mail. They're like, I don't want to put my name and address in here because then they know I got a problem. You know, but there's going to be some women that are sensitive about that too. I don't want to be a, but if you have these tools, they can identify 40 to 70% of the anonymous visitors to your site. And so you could actually probably crush it with, if you had some sort of educational content, especially off and go back out to social media people, Even if you don't have the product, when the next batch of 5,000 or 10,000 or 100,000 are being made, go save some of those back and send them to another 15 or 20 social media people. If they go viral too, just like these others, have them go to a landing page to get on a wait list or to pre-order or if they don't want to pay the whole, whatever the price is now, 70 bucks, they just put 20 bucks down and the balance is charged when it ships or something like that. So however you want to do it. Put one of these tools on there and capture 40 to 70% of the anonymous people. You'll capture their name, their email address, all kinds of demographics. And sites like audiencelab.ai can actually append a lot of data on there so you know who's a woman, who's a man, you know their age, all this data. And then when it's available, you come back to them and you do an email sequence. There's some really cool AI tools that will actually write a sequence that's really straight to this pain point and straight to their heart and say, And they'll forgotten because they went to your website three months ago. It's like, I'm just making this up right now, but I'll do it much better way. But do you have, are you one of those that's embarrassed because you have a pain that you don't want to talk about? You can't even tell your husband. Do you have this? Do you have this? Do you have this? Are you, you're afraid to go to the grocery store because something might, You might have one of those episodes where you got to run to the car really fast or whatever it is. You could crush it, absolutely crush it off of Amazon with this. Amazon should be definitely a place to be, but I think you could actually crush it. To the tune of eight figures a year and maybe even to nine figures. Kate Bray: Yeah, I hope so. I mean, that's my dream. There's so much to learn between now and then, but like I'm so open and ready. Like I love to learn. And so that's my dream is a nine figure exit. Kevin King: So you have to come back on the podcast when you have that nine figure exit. We're going to grab this clip and I'm going to go, Kate, do you remember? Back in the first quarter of 2025, we were talking and I said something. Do I have a magic eight ball or not? Kate Bray: I'll have a few more gray hairs and maybe some concrete in the background. Kevin King: You have a really nice drink in your hand. You're like, I got my microphone. Kate Bray: I'll have a camera that time. Kevin King: Well, Kate, this has been awesome talking to you. We could keep talking for a while. This has been great. I really appreciate it. I'm sure there's a lot of women or men that know women that have this issue. If they want to find out about the product, where do they go? Kate Bray: Yeah, so we're RebRelief, R-E-B. I have to say that on the phone a lot lately. So, RebRelief on all major social platforms and then RebRelief.com is our website. Kevin King: And Incremental Digital, if they want some help with their advertising on Amazon, how do they find, how do you spell that? People are like, well, how do you spell that? Kate Bray: I know, that's funny. We always get Incremental Digital, but it's Incrementum Digital. It's Latin. IncrementumDigital.com and we are Incrementum Team across all other social platforms. Kevin King: Awesome. Well, Kate, I really appreciate you coming on and sharing. This has been great. Kate Bray: Yeah, I'm taking mental pictures. This was such an honor, Kevin. This was so fun. Kevin King: You're welcome. Kate Bray: Thanks for having me. Kevin King: You're welcome. If you haven't done the Freedom Ticket yet, I highly recommend you go check out the Freedom Ticket. You can go to freedomticket.com. It's free if you have a Helium 10 membership of any level. It's a complete course on how to sell on Amazon. And as you heard Kate say, that's how she got started figuring out what's going on Amazon back in 2021 and now. She's going to take some of that information, plus information she's learned along the way at conferences and from other people, and it's going to explode with this product launch that she's doing. I think it's going to do very, very well. We'll be back again next week with another awesome episode of the AM-PM Podcast. Before we go though, I've got some words of wisdom for you. As Warren Buffett once said, it takes 20 years to build a reputation, but just five minutes to ruin it. Think about that. 20 years to build a reputation, but just 5 minutes to ruin it. So when you do things, think about how you're doing it and what the implications are.