#508 - The TikTok Shop Playbook for Creator-Driven Growth

Want to turn small creators into big sales on Tik Tok shop? Then listen up because in this episode we cover just that. Plus what you can do to overcome the fact that you might be sending out products to creators that they never end up posting or even if your competitors are using seemingly the same strategies as you. Hello everybody and welcome to the AM podcast. My name is Shioali Patel and I'll be your host. And this is the show where we discuss all things Amazon, Tik Tok shop, and Walmart private label and how to generate reoccurring revenue streams 24 hours a day during the A.M. and the PM, hence the name of the show. Get it? A.M. PM podcast. And as a matter of fact, I recently took a trip up to New York for a week. And even though I was out eating pizza all day long, like that was my job, I was still making money online. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello guys. Welcome to Tick Tock Thursday. It's your favorite day. And guys, today we've got a really special guest who's going to be joining us. He's going to talk to you guys about how you guys can turn small creators into really big sales. Are you guys selling on Tik Tok shop already? Are you selling only on Amazon? Where are you in that journey? So we can really make sure that we are speaking to you, the audience, and doing it at a place where you're currently at in your business. So things that we cover today are really implementable. Let's bring up Josh Hadley. How are you? >> I'm doing great, Shioali. Always good to see you. We saw each other last week, so it's great to see you again. >> Yes. Yes. Very true. And I know all about you. I know why you're on here because you're an absolute beast at what you do. But I want to hear from you because I know the viewership would love to get a little bit of background. How did you get started? What do you do now? And why should people listen to you? >> Yeah. Well, first and foremost, I'm a man of faith and husband to a beautiful wife with four children. And I have been selling on Amazon and e-commerce platforms uh for the past decade. and we're doing multi-millions on Tik Tok shop, on Shopify, as well as Amazon. Really got my first start on Amazon. We got to an eight figureure brand there. And right now it's uh trying to scale to a nine figure brand. And then I'm also the host of the Ecom Breakthrough podcast. And that's where I share the actionable strategies that I'm implementing in our business to be able to scale to nine figures. So it's kind of like, hey, follow my journey. this is what I'm doing to scale to nine figures if you would like to hear and apply the same principles in your own business. So that's just a little bit about me. >> I think that's awesome and especially because you sell both on Amazon and Tik Tok shop. I think my next question would really be what would you say to somebody is is it a good idea to get started on Tik Tok shop if you're still focused on Amazon? Like when's that sweet spot to get started? >> Yeah. So here that's a fantastic question and here's kind of like the problem that I see with a lot of entrepreneurs is they go to a new conference or they listen to a new podcast and just because they heard somebody else was killing it on some other sales channel, they immediately pivot their business and then they start focusing on that new sales channel or just new shiny object, right? And so here's kind of the best recommendation. It doesn't necessarily matter what revenue level you're at on Amazon. What does matter is, do you have your SOPs, processes, and your operations locked in on Amazon? Meaning, if you first got started in e-commerce on Amazon, if you think you're going to go pull the Tik Tok lever, that's great. It can be very impactful to your brand, but you need to be able to dedicate your full time and attention over to Tik Tok Shop to really make it work, especially today. Today is not as easy as it was when Tik Tok Shop first launched a couple years ago. So, what that means is if you're going to divert your attention from Amazon or whatever sales channel is currently working for you, you need to be able to have team members that are executing your current processes, your operations over on that sales channel. So, that would be my recommendation. If you have a team, if you have existing processes where genuinely like 80% of the business over there on Amazon can run on its own and a little bit of management uh and oversight on your part, then I would say yeah, you're you're ready for Tik Tok shop >> and is it significantly different? For example, if you've got a team and they already know how to execute on Amazon, would you say if they were to focus on Tik Tok shop, do they have to change something? for example, is the listing setup different? >> Yes. Uh so with that caveat, what I did is obviously there's very very few people out there on the market that have like Tik Tok shop experience, right? If you were to go to Upwork or something like that, you could find a million and one different people that have Amazon seller central experience, etc. Right? It's been we've been in that game for almost two decades at this point. So there's a lot of people. Whereas with Tik Tok shop, we're literally just a couple years into it. And so what we have done is like for my team, I took my best uh Amazon operations ads manager from Amazon and brought him over to Tik Tok to help figure it out and to begin creating our own internal processes for Tik Tok shop. How we're going to manage ads. The ad platform is completely different than what we're used to on Amazon. And even the way that we set up our titles and description, there's so many different things that we can play around with in regards to the images on Tik Tok shop that are super exciting that we cannot do on Amazon. So, are there similarities? Sure. But like the SOPs and processes are are vastly different in what we can do on each platform. >> And that makes sense because it's a completely different platform. So, with that, I'm going to pass the baton over to you and let you take over. >> All right, here we go. So, I'm going to be sharing with you guys the 40 viral videos that we created and the 4,000 5,000 creators that we now have on our platform that this is the exact playbook that we're operating to scale Tik Tok shop. So, my hope is that today you guys are able to walk away with like specific actionable items that you can apply into your own business. In January uh to June of 2024, this was one of the most turbulent times in my business. Our business was down over 25%. And again, as an eight figureure brand, like being down 25% year-over-year, like that's a significant number. It's not like we just pulled back a few thousand dollars or something like that. This was a significant challenge for us. And really what happened is we got to a point where I had zero money left in my bank account. That was the worst feeling as an entrepreneur because for me that felt like I had failed as a CEO and as a founder. And at that time it was January was in the beginning of the year and what had happened is we had had multiple product flops on Amazon and I had went way too aggressive in some of those new products. And so all of our money was basically tied up into inventory. And so I had nothing left in the bank account until my accounting controller said, "We don't have money to pay payroll this week. What would you like to do?" And it was an extremely challenging time because Amazon was no longer working the way that I once knew it was because we kept seeing overseas sellers just continue to rip us off. And the only way that they know how to compete in the industry is by lowering prices. And to me, it's like I just saw like a death spiral where it's like I'm not going to compete on a race to bottom pricing. So what I did is I prayed and that's what I did. And the story goes, I was playing hockey late at night and what I did is I would always put on a podcast what I would drive to hockey games on like a weekend night. So, Friday, Saturday night. Well, because I had had this weighing on my mind now for like an entire month. I had gone to this hockey game trying to figure out like what am I going to do? So, I turned on a podcast. Sure enough, it was a Helium 10 podcast I was listening to and it was Bradley interviewing somebody that was crushing it in the same niche that I'm in in the stationary niche um on Tik Tok shop and they had did did over six figures within the first few months and I was like, "Oh, that's cool. That's interesting." Well, the sad thing is I had previously tried Tik Tok Shop with an agency just a few months ago, which is also another reason that compounded to us having no money in the business. I had made these bets and this agency said, "Oh yeah, we can scale you. We we're we're figuring out this Tik Tok shop thing. It's so new, but we're going to crush it." Well, they came back to me and said, "Hey, I'm sorry, but there's nobody interested in your products. Nobody's even interested in a free sample. Sorry. And so from that like moment I was like, "Well, I guess Tik Tok shop's not for our brand." But when I listened to Bradley's interview again in that podcast, something clicked in my mind to where I was like, "Maybe you should consider doing this." And I thought, "Okay, yeah, like I always get those ideas. That's fine." Well, guess what happened? On the way home from that hockey game late at night, I turned on another podcast. This time, another random podcast I was just kind of thumbming through on my phone. And guess what? This podcast was yet again about another brand crushing it in on Tik Tok in the exact same niche. And I, you know, said thanks to God and uh took that as my sign to say, "Hey, it's time to pull on your put on your big boy pants and go figure out Tik Tok shop yourself." And so from that, just 30 days after me getting into Tik Tok shop myself, we went viral for the first time and have since been able to amass an affiliate army of over 5,000 creators. And that's what I'm going to be walking you guys through today. Since we went viral on Tik Tok shop, everything has changed in our business. We are up more than 100% year-over-year. We regained bestseller badges that we were previously losing to all of the overseas competitors. Those are now back and we are now kind of sitting at the top of the market. So, I'm going to be sharing with you guys the exact blueprint and the playbook that I've been executing to build what we've built thus far. This is how we did over 200k uh literally just last month and in July previously uh where which was our peak season. And I'm going to show you most importantly how we are making Amazon our most profitable sales channel right now. All right. So I shared with you that story. My encouragement to all of you is that if your back is up against a wall, if you're fighting a difficult time, I know that if you go to God, he will enlighten your mind and he will open up the right paths for you. He's done that for me time and time again in my business and he'll do the same for you. But first, many of you are asking, "All right, well, I do want to get on to Tik Tok shop. I want the same level of success." Well, where do I even begin? How do I find these content creators? How do I amass a an affiliate army that's 5,000 people wide? Okay, what should my commission rate be? Do I pay them a per video fee like Join Brands? Do I need do they need to have a large following? What level of GMV do they need to have? I'm going to answer all of those questions today. Here's the exact process we followed to generate over 40 viral videos with our creators and amass an affiliate army that has loyal brand ambassadors. So, many of you might have heard the strategies that I shared. Um, this goes back to the first time I ever shared anything related to Tik Tok was April of last year. And since then, obviously, these strategies have evolved. They've changed. So, what you're getting is like these strategies 2.0 0 what is actually working today. So, first and foremost, what you're going to need to do is sign up for a creator outreach software. Good news is Helium 10 has one of those. So, if you need to connect to a bunch of creators, they have bots that you can set up and work through. So, here's what you're going to do. First and foremost, you want to create a list of creators. So, how are you going to do this? Well, it's not just reaching out to a broad array of creators. The most important thing you can do is actually identify your target audience. So who is it that is actually buying your product which is again a very good like fundamental business practice in and of itself but it is so important that you focus on who your target demographic is. So in this case I'm going to put in the keyword of teachers. And guess what? I'm now going to generate a list of all the creators on Tik Tok that identify as a teacher. And the nice part is they don't have to have teacher in their bio. What's pretty cool about these tools is that they're going to scan all of the content to just say if they've ever talked about being a teacher in their content or anything like that, you're going to get all of them. Okay? Now, it's not just like, hey, you're not just putting in one keyword and finding one list. you're going to do with this with hundreds of keywords. And here's the good news. Because you are an Amazon seller, most likely you already know all the different keywords. And so what you can do is easily go to chat GPT and say who is t the typical like customer avatar that is searching for all these keyword phrases. So, if you have 500 plus keyword phrases, which we always do for each of our products, you can dump that into chat GPT, ask for a list of different like customer avatars and keywords that those avatars identify with on social media. And guess what? It's going to give you another list of a few hundred um like keywords that you can use. That's exactly what we do. Literally, we have had team members go in create lists for over 500 different like target audiences and segments. That is the key thing here. And the reason why I'm going to harp on this because is because most people don't get that specific on Tik Tok shop. They just think I'm going to go to this broad array of creators and somebody's going to pick me up. And that's where your failure point is. Like you're not being specific with the creators that you're trying to work with. So, your response rates are low and even when if somebody picks up your product and records a video of it, what if they're a beauty influencer, but you're selling a supplement? Okay. Well, Tik Tok shop is like basically like siloing creators now. So, if you're a beauty creator, it's going to be really hard to go viral for a supplement and vice versa. That's why identifying the customer avatar is so important. You're also going to do this inside of Tik Tok shop. So, yes, I will use the software tools available to me to go create those lists, but then I also want to use inside of Tik Tok shop to run the exact same thing. And guess what? You're able to download this on Tik Tok shop with like a CSV file. And then all of these platforms allow you to upload your lists as a CSV file as well. So, at the end of the day, what you're going to have is lots of different like lists of creators that you have. Again, it should be hundreds of not just creators, but like hundreds of different like targeted avatars of creators. That's the secret. Okay. So, who here is listening and would like to know like a pretty sweet secret hack? You can steal all of your competitors creators. You want to know how to do that? You can set the different time frames and find, hey, over the last 90 days, what creators have been generating all of the sales for product X, Y, and Z. So, if you have a competitor that is crushing it on Tik Tok shop, you can go ahead and go and pull this up and then guess what? You're going to see all of their creators. So, then download that list of creators and then I'm going to upload that again to my bot tool of choice. And then that is going to be another list of people that I'm going to go after. Obviously, they've proven themselves to do well with my competitors. Surely, they would do well with mine. Now, you may be asking like, Josh, why in the world would you share this with other people knowing that there may be a competitor of mine that is listening to this today? And here's what I would say. The way that I'm not worried about this is because the creators that work with us love our brand and our family and the vision and mission that we have for the brand and I'm going to be sharing more of these tactics, but like we have a personal connection with all of these creators. We text them, we jump on Zoom calls with them, they receive emails from us, they receive WhatsApp messages from us. This is not just a uh a simple exchange where we gave them a sample and they're just producing lots of videos for us. This is like they're part of our family. And so many of the overseas sellers, they cannot replicate these strategies because guess what? They don't know the cultural nuances. I can't tell you the number of creators that reach out to us that say, "We love working with you guys." Because most of them, most of the other brands, they're all overseas brands and they always start their messages with like, "Oh, hello dear. How was your weekend?" And it's they can just see right through the surface level kind of BS nonsense that all the overseas sellers use. And so again, if you are a US or a North American seller, that is your best advantage 100% because guess what? All of the creators, they're based out of North America. So, you know the cultures, you know the customs, you know the norms. That's how you're going to beat and dominate the overseas sellers. The only thing that they can do is focus on price. Whereas, you can focus on brand and building an intimate connection with these creators, and that's how you're going to crush them in the long run. So again, if anybody wants the list of my creators, you're welcome to go look. But good luck trying to get them to switch because they're going to see right through it and be like, "No, we we love working with this other brand and we're connected with them." So that's what you do. Like I said, you can get all of their creators. You upload that list to another file and then you've got that. So, now that we've got all of these lists, step number six is you want to set up a bot to go message all of these creators in these different lists. So, you're going to create a bot, one bot per list, and then you're going to let that bot just run. So, here's what we do. We we always send a message plus a targeted product collab. Okay? So in Tik Tok shop there are open collaborations, there are targeted collaborations. We want to send them a targeted collaboration. That means we're basically boosting their commission above the normal uh commission rates. And again, I'll answer what those commission rates are, but um that's that's the key thing. So then what we're going to do is you can name the bot. Okay. Select the products. We only we only choose like two or three products up front because we're trying to focus on like driving volume to one specific product and then we're going to send it to everybody. All right. Now, I'm going to instead of uh you'll see here while we configure our bot, one of the options is like do you want to automatically approve creators that request this or do you want to manually approve them? We are only manually approving people and I'll I'll tell you why that's so important. Okay, you've got your commission percentage we're going to set at 15% whereas our open plan collaboration percentage is at 12%. And then you want to set your shop ads commission percentage which means if you're spending money to go promote that video because you're paying money you should not be paying them the same commission. So, we give people 5% commission if we've been paying to run those ads. All right. So, then the next step here is we're going to customize our messages. And you can see from this uh screenshot here, and if you're not watching this, if you're just listening to this via audio, then make sure you come watch the visual version of this. Uh but we're going to have an initial message where we're just saying, "Hey, we love your content. We would be interested in collaborating with you. here's more details about our product and our brand and how we're different. And then we're going to set up some follow-up messages that go out every 3 days um if they have not replied to that first message. Because guess what? These creators that you're reaching out to get literally thousands of DMs a day from everybody else running bots. Like I'm I'm surprised Tik Tok shop allows people to use bots. I mean, we know that running bots on Amazon is frowned upon, but Tik Tok shop has like fully adopted it for whatever reason, which in my opinion has just diluted the messaging platform because you've got thousands and thousands of brands reaching out to creators every single day. So, they're just frankly swat swamped. And so, you're just trying to like follow up with them that hopefully you magically show up when they're magically on their phone at the exact same time and they're in their DMs. That's why we just want to continue reaching out time and time and time again. So, now that we've configured our bot, we're now going to send it to the specific list. So, we're going to choose one of those lists. Okay? And then we're going to just push the start button and let that list run and let the bot go. And you can see some of you may be asking like, well, what's your response rate? Well, my response rate, as you can see, is over 11%. Which means when we send a message out, over 11% of those people are messaging us back. That's really, really high. And the reason why it's really, really high is because we're not going after a 100,000 creators. We're going after just a few thousand creators at a time that are very targeted for our brand, for our niche, for our demographic. It It's the ideal creator profile. It's that ICP, right? It's not your ideal customer profile. It's your ideal creator profile that we're going after. All right, step number seven. So, now that we've been sending out this bot, what's going to happen? Well, creators are going to go do one of two things. Number one, they are going to automatically just click the hey request a sample button which in Tik Tok shop you will see that there is a whole feature okay in your affiliate dashboard that shows you here are all the sample requests and at this point we have thousands of sample requests per day but you should be getting to hundreds of sample requests coming in because of these bots and again nothing is automatically being approved and so I'm going to manually review those. And I'll show you how we're manually reviewing that. The other thing that people could do instead of requesting a sample, they may just message you back and say, "Oh, hey, yeah, thanks. I'd be certainly be interested. Tell me more." Okay, so here's what we do. If somebody requests a sample inside of Tik Tok shop, here's what we're going to do. We're going to click on their profile. We're going to message this creator. And then this is kind of like the message that we are sending to them. Hey, great. We would love to approve your sample, but and and here's what we do. We're going to tell them, hey, your sample's approved, and we're going to ship it to you. However, what I need is your email address and your phone number for the tracking information. Okay? Because what I'm going to do with this is like I want to move all of these creators off of Tik Tok shop. I don't want to be the only place for me to communicate with them on Tik Tok shop for all of the reasons that I just talked about where their DMs are just like their inbox is always flooded. Okay. So, why do we want their contact info? Okay. So, again, I'm saying that again, we're manually approving them. I'm sending an initial message to say, "Hey, you're approved." But technically, they're not yet approved because I have to wait for them to give me their contact information. And the reason why is for all of these reasons below. Number one, many creators never post after getting a sample. Well, if I have their contact info, I can certainly follow up with them. Number two, creators are getting spammed by bots all day long. I don't want to be in that same mix of trying to reach out to creators. Number three, Tik Tok does not share their personal information natively on their platform. So, you want to grab that on your own. Number four, I want to communicate with creators off of the platform. Number five, I want to double down with creators that create viral videos. Like, how much of a bummer would it be if somebody actually hits and goes viral and then you try to reach back out to them, but like they never see your messages again because like you can only communicate with them via the Tik Tok portal and they're just getting flooded all the time and they never even see it again. Like that's the miss that most people have right now. Most people are just relying on the platform. Somebody goes viral and it's like, "Oh, great. Well, guess what? You're not going to be able to work with that person again." Most likely they've moved on to other brands and products. Number six, you want to get their permission to reuse their videos. So, here's the secret. A great way to like spin up a Shopify storefront is use whatever goes viral on Tik Tok for your meta or your YouTube ads, whatever you're going to drive traffic to your Shopify storefront f from. Uh, use all of this UGC that's being created. Well, again, to be able to ask for usage rights, you need to have their contact info. And then last but not least, I'm going to create an email newsletter and contest to kind of keep these creators engaged. So that's why I want their phone numbers. I want their emails so that they get to hear from me literally every single day moving forward. All right. So, if we get that contact info from creators, we will ship them the samples and then we basically add them into an automated email flow where it just like continues to remind them like, "Hey, your sample's on the way. Here are some other recommended viral videos that we've seen. Start preparing for your content. And then, by the way, when you do get the video posted, would you mind sharing it with us?" Now again, we can always see whatever videos people tag us in on Tik Tok shop, but again, it's just that level of like I want them replying to me to be able to create that relationship with them. So, these are just some of the like the follow-up message flows um that we use for this. And as soon as they complete that form, they receive these automated emails until they post the content. So, the way that we're like stacking this content really is uh Gmail plus streak as like a CRM. It turns your Gmail account into a CRM where you can just like set up all of these automated sequences. But if you're not interested in doing that, if you just want to add people to an easy like email newsletter, Beehive is the tool of choice for that if you just want to add people into an easy email newsletter. All right. Now, many of you are asking questions and I'm sure like these FAQs that I'm going to go through right now are probably going to a answer many of the questions that many of you have. So, first, what should my commission rate be? Well, here's what we do. It's 12% for open collabs and it's 15% for targeted collabs. And guess what? I had Chase Chapel on my podcast just recently and and we talked about this in depth. When you're first starting out and need to get build some traction behind your brand, you're probably going to need to be much more aggressive with your commission rates. But guess what? As you mature as a brand, you could then begin dropping those commission rates down because you've got so much volume, you've got so many creators, but at the beginning, you need to build that traction. Okay? So sometimes 20 25 even 30% may be what you need to just get started. And again uh my encouragement to you guys is like honestly you need to be willing to invest at a minimum go at a loss of Tik Tok shop from $10 to $50,000 at a minimum. If you're not willing to invest that time and money into this platform to kind of figure it out and to build that momentum, you're probably not ready for Tik Tok. Um it it is challenging. Tik Tok is definitely becoming much more of like a pay-to-play um game on there. However, the upsides are massive to your overall business. But I just want everybody like going in with their eyes wide open. This is not hitting the easy button. Tik Tok is not like, oh man, everybody's going viral. And it's it's not that way. This takes like it's kind of like requires you to pivot your business model in a way and get really really good at creating an affiliate program and the affiliate program and building that is a different skill set than what it takes to just like go launch a product on Amazon. All right, question number two. Do I pay these creators a per video fee like join brands or something like that? And the answer to that is no. We do not pay any of these creators upfront and I would not recommend anybody do that. The only way these creators make money is if they actually make a sale, then they start making commission on your products. Uh, do these creators need to have a large following? No. Most of our creators that we've had go viral, we are their first viral hit. And it's because we keep working with them and we keep training them and we keep uh like inspiring them and motivating them to keep posting and keep posting and keep posting for us because it's not just their first video that hits. Okay. Audience size doesn't matter. So again, you can look at a lot of these videos that have gone viral and look at these creators like somebody had 6,000 uh 6,000 followers. Another one had just 31,000 followers. Like these aren't massive creators. These are like these are micro influencers so to speak. And then what level of GMV should they have before you approve the sample requests? So we do less like as we've matured as a brand, yeah, we want to work with more of the bigger creators at this point. But when we were first starting out, it was I was willing to give a sample to anybody. And that's what I would say is like that's your advantage when you're first starting out. It's going to be more challenging because it's kind of like finding a needle in a hay stack. But what's more important to you is looking at the quality of their videos which you can see. So go and take a look at their Tik Tok account. Go and look and see like it like here's I'll give you a couple funny stories. Number one, we started like the way we started like having to manually review their content is because I remember getting a few videos where like some guy requested our product. And the way his video started was him laying down on his couch and he was a heavier set dude and he had no shirt on and he was just like filming himself with like the, you know, like selfie style. I'm like, "This is so cringy." and he's like, "Hey guys, I just want to show you something that's been really cool." Long story short, he did not go viral, by the way. It's like an extremely like cringey video. And I was like, "Why in the world are we giving people like this a a sample?" If I would have just looked at his content, I never would have said like, "Oh yeah, this guy has a chance to go viral." So, what you're looking for is like people that just have good aesthetics, people that like are good like have catchy sayings or hooks at the beginning of their video. They show up well. They have good lighting. They have good like inonation with the tone of their voice. Like that's what you're looking for. And so they may not have gone viral, but you can be their first hit because you see potential in them. That is what I would say. That's that arbitrage is always going to exist because there's new creators coming on the Tik Tok platform every single day. And most of the bigger brands are overlooking those new creators because they would rather spend time with like the more proven creators. Well, if you're just starting out, you get to start out just alongside these creators. And guess what? You might be their first viral video. And guess what? If you're their first viral video, who do you think they're going to love and continue to work with? You. So, that's the advantage. And that's how we've basically been able to build our affiliate list. All right. Are you ready for a secret hack to get 30 videos out of just one sample? All right, I'm going to show you how that works. So, before approving samples, we require our creators to read the creative brief and agree to post 30 videos using the hooks in the brief. So again, after we get their contact information, we're going to come back and say, "Hey, by the way, here's a creative brief that goes through everything about uh our product." Okay? And these are all the viral hooks. We're literally spoon feeding feeding it to them. And then thanks for re and then so once they say, "Hey, yeah, great. I reviewed the brief. Great. Here's what I need you to do. Are you willing to post 30 plus videos?" because we have found it's after like video 20 or 30 is when most people go viral for the exact same product. And so while when we level set with that from the get-go, obviously you weed out a lot of people that just are like freebie suckers and they just want a free sample, now you're getting people that are actually committed and probably willing to invest more time and energy with your brand. So, what we do is we'll also provide them like a Google form just like this to agree to posting 30 videos. And sometimes you could even have it come in here to where you can get them to uh grant you usage rights right out of the gate, which makes your job so much easier. Um, so another question, do we still continue to use bots to reach out to creators? So, yes and no. Because we've kind of got this flywheel going. The good news is like you don't always have to just run the bot strategy. As soon as you go viral on Tik Tok, what happens is you've got other creators that are always looking at the viral products. As soon as something hits and as soon as something gets over a thousand sales, like you just start seeing creators begin to request samples on their own. Okay, so that's kind of like the beauty of this Tik Tok platform. It's similar to Amazon where it's this like flywheel. Once you get momentum going, it's hard to stop the momentum and that's the good news. Um, how do we fulfill our orders through Tik Tok shop? I believe Helium 10 has a connection as well to fulfill all of our Tik Tok orders from MCF. So, we're not even using FBT. Like, we have over 1,600 SKs. So, I'm certainly not shipping 1600 SKs and splitting my inventory between two different channels. We love utilizing MCF to just like get started. Yes. Is it a little bit more expensive than than FBT, Fulfilled by Tik Tok? It certainly is. But like the cost to ship inventory in and then like spread myself out with two different places where I'm locking up my inventory, like I would much rather be agile and nimble. And what if it doesn't pan out on Tik Tok shop? Well, doesn't matter because like it's still with all of my other inventory on Amazon. I don't have to recall the inventory from FBT. So, that's kind of like the way that we're structuring this. All right. So, part number two is where the real magic happens. We are going to take all of those creators that gave us their email address and we are going to put them into an email newsletter. And like I said, Beehive is what we're using. Okay. So, what I'm doing is I'm dumping them into this newsletter. And then every creator as soon as they join our list, they go through a welcome flow of seven emails. And guess what this welcome flow is all about? It is all about who we are, our brand, why you want to continue working with us, some of the fun things that we do. By the way, here are all of our creative briefs. Here are all of the like the viral videos that have gone that have done really well. We're trying to make the job of the creator as easy as possible. And guess what? Most brands are not willing to go this far, okay? They're just like, "Oh, creator, go go go take my sample and go post a video." And hopefully you just are so good at creating videos that you're going to go viral. It's like, guys, do 90% of the work for the creator upfront. A, they will love you for it, but B, you're going to get better results because of that. All right. So, we have a whole welcome flow. They get to know our family. They get to know my wife. Okay. They become attached to us as human beings and the vision and mission that we have for our brand. We also train the creators of how to create good videos, right? We talk them about the 3-second rule. You've got to hook the viewer. The most important aspect of the video is not the call to action at the end. It's the first three seconds of the video. What are you doing to stop the scroll? Okay. We encourage people to go join other courses and groups where they get trained on this because we're not we are not the only people that should be training these creators. We want them to feel like they're also part of a community where they're getting trained and learning the best practices. So this is what like our monthly newsletter content kind of looks like. So you can see here almost every single day of the week and now at this point it truly is like every single day of the week we are reaching out to new creators. So here are some of the examples um and what these emails look like. So as you can see are they very pretty? No. This is these were just built by me like just grabbing images off the internet again using AI. They're not fancy, but these are just like I'm I'm stringing these things together because what is more important to me is I know everybody talks about having like an email list of their customers, right? And you want to continue to email your customers, build that relationship, get them to buy again. Well, guess what? I care less about my email customer list. I care a 100% more about my kind of creator list and my newsletter that I have for them because this is the way I view each of my creators. Each creator represents 100 to a thousand new customers. Period. Right? Because it's like it's like multi-level marketing in the new age. Each of these creators has their own audience and friends and family that they can go sell to. So, who do you think is the most valuable? Where do I get the most leverage? Emailing my customers that could Yeah, sure. Great. I got a sale today because I emailed Sarah and she bought. Or I email Sarah, my creator, who posts a video, and then Sarah posts that video, and then 10 other people buy that day, a hundred people buy the next day, a thousand people buy over the course of a month, right? That's why this is so important. So like I hope people experience that mindset shift where like this is the power of working with all these creators. Literally the way I view this now is like this is the MLM model. Um it's like Mary Kay where or the Tupperware parties that moms would used to throw with their immediate friends, family, and neighbors in block parties. Well, guess what? This is the new Tupperware party. It's just called social media. And Tik Tok Shop has done the best job ever of being able to like track the commissions, track the sales, make sure the creators are happy and the brands are happy. It's this perfect joining of all of that. All right, so FAQs on this, we use Beehive. Um, these are like the types of emails that we're sending out, upcoming flash sales that we're running. As you know, every month Tik Tok has some big promotion that they're working on, so that's where we share that. We're spotlighting creators when they go viral. they get featured in these emails. We're sharing the scripts that are working and the hooks. Um, we also are announcing our monthly contests that we'll run to just kind of inspire people, motivate them, make it gamify it, so to speak. We're then going to announce the contest winners. We share leaderboard standings. We launch new products and announce them there. What do we do with our VIP creators? Well, we send them personal text messages. Like even when like my my youngest son was born, like we were sending text messages to our creators, this is the level of detail that no overseas competitor is ever going to be able to replicate because they can't. If they did, it would be weird. You're not going to be like most most North American creators are not going to want to get a a text message from some guy sitting overseas that like the culture and norms are just so different and they're not even going to be able to like relate to it. This is the magic. I can't emphasize this enough. This is the magic that sits behind it. Okay. What's been the best contest that we've ever ran? So, we do this. We do like these GMV stacking tiers. So like the creators are basically competing with themsel. The more GMV they produce, the bigger the bonuses that they can earn. So it just like aligns incentives for them. And then how do you incentivize creators to post every day? So here's a strategy that Josh Snow follows. Um he has the brand Snow Teeth whitening. This is what they're doing on Tik Tok shop. They take a small co cohort of 10 creators. They pay them $250 to $500 a monthly retainer. They require them to post one video per day and in order to stay in the program they have to produce over $5,000 in GMV every month. And so every month they're just adding a new group of 10 and a new group of 10. And the 10 the people that stick around like obviously snowballs and they keep producing 30 videos a month, 30 videos a month. And imagine as you continue to stack that a 100, 200, 300, a thousand creators, those videos compound really quickly. We personally aren't doing a whole lot with retainers. We lean more on like the commission model side, but like this is a great like if you have deeper pockets, this is a really great place to start. You will grow a lot faster and get a lot more content if you do a retainer model like this. But if you're more bootstrapped like we have been like then you're it you probably won't follow this model and you'll rely more on the commissions. So here's the ultimate question that most people are going to ask. This sounds like a lot of work. Is this really necessary? Here's the good news. The extra mile is never crowded. So if you want to be successful, go the extra mile. If you want to win in Tik Tok shop, if you want to win in social commerce 2.0 happening now, you've got to do these things. Don't miss the gold rush. This is my final slide for you all. Don't miss the gold rush. We are in a Tik Tok gold rush. Every single decade we have had like there's massive arbitrage that happens. In the 2010s, the arbitrage was the following two things. Amazon was super easy to launch new products on and then meta ads were extremely cheap and you could like almost sell anything and make a profit on meta ads. That has since been a lot more challenging on meta. Well, guess what? That's exactly what's going to happen with these creators. Creators are never going to be cheaper than they are to work with today. Okay? We're already seeing this. Creators are now beginning to say, "Yeah, this whole commission thing doesn't necessarily work for me. I want $1,000 to post and commission on top of it." Okay, that's where the puck's moving on TikTok. So, my biggest thing is like, how do I amass as many affiliates as I can now while they're cheap, quote unquote, or free to at least begin working with them so that wherever the future of social commerce goes, I can take this affiliate army wherever my brand pivots to. >> Amazing. Thank you so much. I learned a lot during your presentation as well. I've um you know, commonly heard people say, "I've been sending out samples. How do I get them to commit?" and you've really done a good job of nurturing the list that you have in making sure you've got all the touch points and you're creating cultivating a real relationship with your creators. I really like that. I like the creative brief and and how your approaches. There are a few questions. I know we're kind of hitting time, but I think most of you will want to stick around for just a few more. We've got this question here from Anna that says, "Do you create your own videos too or do you rely on only external creators?" >> Yeah, great question. So, right now, my wife does create some posts on Tik Tok shop, but when we first started, our entire first year, we maybe had a total of five videos that were even posted on our Tik Tok shop account. Um, our own internal content makes up like 5% of our monthly sales. So, it all comes from creators. >> That's awesome. I also saw a question that said, "Can I send stock from Amazon to Tik Tok?" The answer is yes. Helium 10 also has a fulfillment section for that. So guys, if you are selling on Tik Tok shop, what you can do is go to connections. It's going to be in the top right hand corner of your Dash. Just click your name, click connections, get that token connected so both interfaces can communicate. And then you can go into listing converter, bulk convert all your listings, and then go into inventory mapping, which will allow you to map those SKs and make sure that Tik Tok shop is able to pull from your Amazon inventory. >> My biggest thing is like I just want to deliver value to you guys because for me, as you heard my story, it was genuinely a Helium 10 podcast that I listened to on my way to hockey that ended up becoming the answer to my prayers. And I hope that, you know, for somebody there's a spark of enlightenment that has hit you today. Um, and that's the reason why I share this because I believe in putting that that good stuff back out into the universe. >> Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Josh, for your time and your expertise and for answering all these questions. Thank you to those of you who joined us today and watched and asked questions. We're so happy to have you and we're looking forward to the next time you join us. >> It's been a pleasure. Thanks, Shabbali.