How Melisa Vong Built Million-Dollar Brands (And How You Can Too) | Marketing Misfits | MMP #028

How Melisa Vong Built Million-Dollar Brands (And How You Can Too) | Marketing Misfits | MMP #028 Melisa Vong: And they were saying, if lottery tickets were free, how many would you take? An infinite number of them, right? Like the crazy thing is nowadays, lottery tickets are literally free because every time you post a video on social media or TikTok and, you know, you put the work into it, sure, that's your time, but it literally cost you zero dollars to upload that video. But that one video could change your life. Unknown Speaker: You're watching The Marketing Misfits with Norm Farrar and Kevin King. Kevin King: Look, it's two bald guys, one with a beard. How are you doing, Norm? Norm Farrar: I'm doing fine. And a little bit of hair. A little. Kevin King: A little bit of hair. Yeah, I just had to go get a haircut because this week we're recording a whole bunch of podcasts. I'm doing some webinars. So I was like, I had to run out before we did the last podcast, before this one, and like get a quick little shave. Like, I can't be laying down some tracks looking like fuck, you know? Norm Farrar: Is that where you were? Why did you not take me with you? Like we're in the same, I'm at Kevin's house right now. And why did you not take me? Did you not see? Kevin King: You were on the phone with somebody. And I had to go take care of a big shipment. Actually today, I moved 10,000 pounds. Literally, I just calculated 10,627 pounds of inventory 33 pounds at a time by myself because one of my other businesses I sell on Amazon as does Norm and so does our guest today. She's done quite well on Amazon. I had a problem with one of my listings that where I could not ship in inventory because of some settings and I had to get some outside help to fix the listing from our good friend Vanessa. I asked her at dinner. We were at AMZ Innovate in New York at dinner. I said, hey, I may need your help. I've never pulled a I don't like pulling that trump card with friends, but I was like, she's the one that would know. I was like, I need your help. She said, Kevin, of course, anything for you. I said, just send me access to your account. I couldn't do it until Friday. This is Monday of the previous week. I couldn't do it until Friday because we were busy. Immediately within 15 minutes, she has her whole team, her A-team on my account. About 15 minutes later, the complete thing was fixed. So not having that connection and not knowing someone, and she didn't charge me anything for it. She'll get a dinner or she'll get something, but she's a friend. But having that connection and having that is invaluable when it comes to anything in business or in life. One time I did Wagyu, took 20 people or something to Sushi Samba. For lunch, I don't know if you remember that you were there and I spent almost $6,000 of the tip on that meal out of my pocket. Nobody pitched in. But I did that because it gave people a good experience. Some of those people will say, thank you very much. I appreciate it. That was awesome. But some of them down the road, they're like, that was cool, Kevin. I'll help him out when he needs something because he was nice to us. So those kinds of things in business and in life, you got to pay attention to. It's not always about instant ROI or instant gratification or what's in this for me. Sometimes just being nice and good to people comes back in droves. Norm Farrar: I'm wondering, Kev. Kevin King: Except for you, except for you, you know, it doesn't come back. I don't, I don't, I don't get anything back from you. I just strategically sit on the left side of the taxi. Norm Farrar: Okay. Yes. That's a good point. Kevin King: Norm and I were just in Vegas at the cigar show, listening to one of the other episodes. You can hear our story about that at the Eagles concert at the Spear. There's like 18,000 people pouring out of the Spear and to get an Uber or taxi is next to impossible without 18,000 people pouring out of there. So there's these guys on the street. I have these SUVs. No line and they'll take you for a hundred bucks, but it's like the heck with it. We're not going to spend two hours here trying to get a taxi or an Uber, so we just jump in there. I paid that. Here's a hundred bucks. I just happened to have cash. Norm and I have a good relationship, so we pretty much trade off. Then the next three cab rides, we get into the cab and Norm gets in on the right-hand side in the backseat. That's where the meter, the credit card payers is, always on the right-hand side. I get in on the left-hand side. For three rides in a row, I just did that, no words said, and so Norm had to pay the taxi for the next three. I think, okay, it's all good. Norm Farrar: Obviously, you didn't see the room charges though. Kevin King: Oh, shoot. That's what that was. I was like, what are all these freaking snacks and $7 freaking bottles of soda? We got someone that's on the show today, a fellow Canadian for you. Norm Farrar: From the same city. Kevin King: That's right. From the same city. Oh, that's not good. She's one of the smartest people out there. She won my Billion Dollar Seller Summit contest last year in Hawaii. She's speaking at the next one in Iceland in April of this year. We've had her boyfriend or fiancé. I'm not sure. I think it's fiancé. If not, should be, on the show as well a couple of months ago. They're the guys that are doing the Katita for airfare. If you missed that episode, go back and check that out. She's super smart and has been very successful at building brands, exiting brands, a lot of cool marketing. I remember at one of her presentation in Hawaii, she showed like five really quick things. And one of them, I mean, she did some, she did a really good presentation. She did some interactivity. She did like a little joke in there. She was lighting matches and like money on fire. But one of the things that she showed was this video technique that's really working on like TikTok and social media to like put text over Take a video. It's just some random thing, almost like a video game. You're just randomly going through a city or going through a futuristic city or through the streets or whatever, and then you overlay text on top of it that people can read. That's the message. Combining those two really quickly in AI. What's funny is that right now for my newsletter is I'm actually doing heavy advertising on Facebook for my personal newsletter. And what the best performing ads is her technique. So she's someone that everybody needs to pay attention to and listen to. She's a brilliant marketer. Norm Farrar: What you're saying is that you're going to pay first class for her to come out to Iceland. Kevin King: I didn't say that. I didn't say that. I didn't say that. Norm Farrar: Melisa, I tried. Kevin King: She'll have a good room with the best bed in the place. I don't know if they have a hot tub in the room. She'll have the room with the hot tub. Norm Farrar: All right. There you go. So let's introduce Melisa. Let's bring her on, Melisa Vong. Oh, I got it. There we go. I did it. I actually did it. Kevin King: How are you doing? Melisa Vong: Hey guys, doing fabulous. How are you today? Kevin King: Good, good, good. Melisa Vong: What's this I hear about a hot tub? Kevin King: I don't know if they have one, but I'm going to find out. Norm Farrar: You heard him say it. Kevin King: We can edit that out. We'll just edit that out, Norm. We'll just edit that part out so no one will ever know. How you doing? Melisa Vong: It's good. It's good. I'm currently in Canada right now. Got back from Italy not too long ago. Actually going to be heading out to Turkey in two weeks for my big 3-0. I'm turning 30 this year and it's, you know, one of those years where like people always ask you, oh, like, do you feel any older this year? Do you feel any older this year? And this is actually one of those years where I'm like, I'm turning 30. I'm feeling it in my hips. Norm Farrar: They just ask me if I feel anything. I'm like more of a fossil than anything else. Kevin King: I just had a recent birthday too, but at least my hips are still working. And so I'm not really feeling any older, but when I look in the mirror, I'm like, ah, or I see somebody else. The thing is when I see it, somebody else, you know, you meet somebody at smoking cigars or you meet somebody and this person's 45 and they look really old. And I'm like 12 years older than them. Do I look that old? Damn, I'm looking that old. So I'm like comparing myself like to somebody else like, man, they're that old. Holy cow. They were not even in high school when I graduated college. But yeah, so but don't worry. 30 is still, you're just a baby still. 30 is a good one to celebrate. But I always say, what's this old saying? The 20s were for learning. And the 30s are for earning. So as successful as you've been, I think the 30s are going to be even more successful for you. Melisa Vong: Yeah, you basically get to do what you did in your 20s, but now you have expendable income to do the fun stuff. Kevin King: Exactly, exactly. You can work hard and play hard. Melisa Vong: 100%. Kevin King: Why Turkey for your birthday? Melisa Vong: So that's just one of the stops that we're making, but I don't know if you see it on TikTok. Another reason why TikTok is so amazing because you see all these really cool things that you can check out around the world. But there's a hospital called the Memorial Group Hospital, and they basically do a full body workup and scans. They scan for every cancer marker. They scan literally doing every single test that you can think of, everything to do with dental, optometry, even colonoscopies, pap smears, everything that you would need like literally years and years to get access to at least in North America. Like for me to get a dermatologist recommendation, it took over a year to get an appointment. Here I can just do literally everything in three days. They do have like a one day package, but we decided we're just going to do the full comprehensive three day. We're going to be there from nine to five for three days straight. And they're going to literally test every single possible thing. And just to get an idea on, you know, where the body's at and if there's anything that we can catch early on, that's great. If there's nothing that at least I have peace of mind. Norm Farrar: Send me that link. I would love to go. You know, I'm already falling apart. And you're in Canada, right? So I keep telling Americans, it's not like you're here. And that's a big marketing scam, you know, about how well the Canadian health care is. Melisa Vong: But if I'm waiting over a year to get an appointment, there's really no private health care here either. So if I wanted to pay for proper care, there's not really much access to that. Kevin King: I've heard about this. I think it's Manny Coates from Helium 10. I saw him, I had dinner with him a few weeks ago and he was talking about this same thing. It's like 10 or 15 grand, right? For this whole thing. Is this a different one that I'm thinking about? Melisa Vong: In Turkey, their one-day package is only 850 bucks, but then the three-day package is like 2,900 euros. Kevin King: He must be doing some next level where they take stem cells or something. I think it was 9,000. But still, it sounded for all the tests that you got, all the data that you got, sounded freaking amazing, like in a three-day. It's like a really good baseline to have that for going forward as well, whether you're going back to Turkey or you're having something done in Canada or the States or somewhere else. This is where I was when I was 30. This is where it was. That's really smart. That's really smart that you're doing that. Melisa Vong: Yeah, 100%. Information is so powerful. Kevin King: And now a word from one of our sponsors, one of Norm and I's favorite tools, Stack Influence. Norm Farrar: Are you looking to quickly boost new Amazon product launches or scale up existing listings to reach first page positioning? The influencer platform Stack Influence can help. Stack Influence pushes high-volume external traffic sales to Amazon listings using micro-influencers. And guess what? You only have to pay with your products. They've helped up-and-coming brands like Magic Spoon compete with Cheerios for top category positioning, while also helping Fortune 500 brands like Unilever launch their new products. Right now is the best time to get started with Stack Influence to crush it during this holiday season. Kevin King: That's right, Norm. Sign up today at stackinfluence.com or click the link in the video below and mention Misfits, that's right, Misfits, M-I-S-F-I-T-S to get 10% off your first campaign. Head over to stackinfluence.com right now. Istanbul, right? Melisa Vong: Yes, in Istanbul. Norm Farrar: And if you have any travel problems, you know exactly who to go to to get travel reimbursements. Melisa Vong: Exactly. I hope we don't get delayed, but if we do, then our trip is basically covered. So it's a win-win, I guess. Norm Farrar: And if you don't know what we're talking about, we had an episode with your fiancee. What is the name of the company again? Melisa Vong: It's called Air Fairness. Norm Farrar: Yeah. And it's incredible. In fact, I had somebody, uh, when I was in, um, at innovate, uh, just last week came up to me, no idea who they were said, I've been listening to your marketing misfits. It's awesome. My favorite episode was that one. And he had, he said he had no clue that you could get that kind of dollars back from your airfare if, if there's a delay. So if you haven't heard it, check it out. It's one of my favorite episodes as well. Kevin King: Until this one, of course. I mean, this is going to... Norm Farrar: You know, Melisa, top to the top. Melisa Vong: We're going to bring the fire or the ice. Kevin King: So where else in Turkey are you going to go while you're there? Just three days in and then out? Are you going to go see any of the others, Cappadocia or any of the other Ephesus or any of the other sites? Melisa Vong: Yeah, I'm going to do Cappadocia just for a day. Hopefully we get to see the hotter balloons and then going to Dubai. And then that's where we'll probably spend the majority of our time. Kevin King: Have you been to Dubai before? Melisa Vong: I have, but this is like five years ago. So it'll be nice to go back. Kevin King: It's one of my favorite. If I had to move to any other place in the world, I would choose Dubai right now. Melisa Vong: I mean, for the tax reasons alone. Kevin King: For the tax reasons, for the safety. I mean, they cut your finger off if you steal a piece of gum. I mean, I'm exaggerating a little bit, but not too much. But the crime is super low there. You got beaches, desert. You got the latest tech. You got a good airport that you can get almost anywhere in the world within reason. You got really good food, really good shopping, really good things to do. I've been there for the first time in 2007, and it was just starting to pop up. I went back two years ago right after the World Cup, so at the end of 2022, and it changed so much. It's been five years since you've been there. You're going to notice some big changes too, but that's awesome. Melisa Vong: Yeah, it's really cool that they really pushed the envelope on just innovation and being, you know, they always want to be the biggest of everything. So of course they have to have the biggest building in the world. They have to have the biggest, you know, infinity pool or it's absolutely insane. Norm Farrar: So let's talk about Dubai. Let's talk about the marketing of Dubai. And what they're doing differently than other cities, because Kevin, I've never been to Dubai. I've been all over, but I've never gone over there. You rant and rave about it. I hear your other videos. Unknown Speaker: I'm going to be there next year. Kevin King: There you go. Norm Farrar: But let's talk about how all of a sudden out of nowhere, really, if you could think 10 years ago, not anybody, not a lot of people were talking about Dubai. Now everybody's talking about Dubai. How did they do it? Kevin King: They did it with oil money, number one. Abu Dhabi is where actually most of the money comes from, not actually Dubai. But they did it with brilliant marketing where they took a desert And they said, we're going to map out this city, and we're going to make it paradise. And so they actually spent money building a complete infrastructure of roads and transportation systems. And like you said, they said, we're going to be the best at everything. They created three different groups of man-made islands, one called The World, where every island is in the shape of a country. They did another one called The Palms, where it shapes out like a palm tree. And then another one, I'm forgetting the name of it right now. They kind of abandoned that one halfway through, so it's not completely finished. But that was brilliant marketing. They said, well, we need attention. We're going to have the tallest building in the world. So the Burj Dubai is the tallest building in the world. So we're going to have that even though like the top half is pretty much empty, but it doesn't matter. You go all the way up. It's the tallest building or above the clouds. Then they like, we're going to bring the best in. We're going to make it so it's People want to live here. There's virtually no taxes. We'll make the money off of tourism. We're going to build this massive infrastructure. We're going to attract all this top talent from a lot of people from the UK, from Europe. That's the top destination for vacations. Oh, even over Spain. Norm Farrar: Really? Kevin King: It's starting to be now. Spain used to be number one for like the British. It's still up there. It's still up there. But Dubai is neck and neck with it. And then they brought in all its multicultural and then it's an Arabic country, but they said, look, we're going to kind of not be so Arabic. We're going to be Arabic. But we're going to allow alcohol in the hotels. We're going to allow this. Now they're allowing gaming when and some of the big casinos are going in just off the shore of Abu Dhabi and creating this whole nother Las Vegas. And it's controversial in the Arab world because gambling is illegal. But that's a really smart move as well. And then they brought in high tech. So it's, you know, Israel and the United States are known for their high tech. But Dubai is another big, huge high-tech center as well. And then they keep caps on the cost of living. They made sure there's virtually no crime. And then they just started marketing it and showing beautiful pictures and like, we're the best of everything and spending money to get that credibility. Everybody wants to go to the tallest building in the world. They want to go see this island made of palms. And like what she just said, what Melisa just said, there's a whole, one of the, SkyInfinityPools is on like the 56th floor or something like that, on the high rise, and it's an infinity pool. It's a badass club where you just get these day beds and you like sit in the water and you're looking out infinity over it and looking straight at the palms all spread out ahead of you. It's just so cool. And then they said, let's bring in the best restaurants. One of the top restaurants that I posted pictures about was there, where it's a total sensation, where they're rolling us around in the restaurant to different tables to eat and doing different animations around the walls and just all kinds of crazy stuff. So those kinds of things from marketing, people hear those stories, it's posted on social media, like, I got to check this out. And then they brought in all the, for the young generation, all the clubs, all the EDM stuff and all the big events. So it's just one thing after another. They're willing to spend money for the long term and to make it just as a destination. It's Las Vegas without the gambling, basically right now. Norm Farrar: Very good. Hold on a sec. So we got ahead of ourselves and I think it was because of my question, but we never even got to Melisa's bio. So Melisa, are you able to just give us a brief rundown of who you are? Melisa Vong: Yeah, I am a doer of things. I wear many hats like many business owners. I started in the Amazon space Now about eight years ago, which is crazy to think about. So when I was 21 years old, it was kind of when I got my feet wet in the whole Amazon selling space, jumped directly into private labeling. I kind of got my start by learning how to make e-commerce websites and back then Shopify wasn't really that big. I used to code websites and customize websites using WordPress and would make these websites for clients and then I kind of got to see the behind the scenes. So once they got their websites running or they switched everything over to their new website, they were selling like literally tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in like random products like turmeric and car parts, things like that. And I was like, this is crazy. You know, if they can do it, why can't I? So it kind of like opened my eyes to this whole other dimension of making money online. And back then I was, my background was in car sales and I had never seen anything like this before. Like, you know, I'm making maybe $500, $1,500 per car, sometimes less. You know, depending on the the commission split and I wasn't selling that many at BMW either because they're higher end cars. I was just getting started in the industry in a big city. I had no clientele. Everyone that was buying already had a sales rep there. So it was it was really really difficult to build it up from from basically zero. So I had to supplement my income somehow and learned how to make websites got clients that way. I was making more, you know, building out these websites and I was getting paid per car that I was selling. So I thought that was pretty neat and it really was really eye-opening. Learning that you can do all this online and sell virtually and not have to go into an office and, you know, make phone calls every single day and cold call people, people actually come to you. So I thought that was such a, you know, mind blowing concept that I just had to dive into it and, um, looked into Amazon. We decided to start a little passion project on the side and it ended up taking off and I left my job shortly after and haven't looked back since. Norm Farrar: Fantastic. Wow. Kevin King: What products were that that you launched with? Melisa Vong: So I started in the beauty space and I started with three products out of the gate. So there's a castor oil, We created a vitamin C serum and a retinol moisturizer and they were natural and organic products. So we actually got USDA certification for our castor oil, for example, and that kind of helped us set us apart because, you know, back when, you know, eight years ago, there wasn't really any organic options and we kind of just marketed it in a more, I guess, specific way for hair growth, but specifically lashes and eyebrow regrowth. Norm Farrar: So that's 2016? Yeah. Melisa Vong: Yeah, that would have been 2016. Kevin King: And you were able to build that and exit that company, right? Melisa Vong: Yeah. So in our first month of launching, we did about 30,000 in the first month. And that's when I kind of saw the opportunity and was like, this is how much I make. This is my salary for the whole year. What am I doing right now? So that's why I ended up leaving and then just went full force with this. And then in the first year, I did over a million in revenue and then within two and a half, three years ended up exiting that company and selling it. And the castor oil alone made me like a million in profit, which was kind of like one of our cash cows as well. And then decided to reinvest those profits and what I'd sold the company for into real estate and then also into starting new brands and moved into the supplement space. So after partnering with my business partner, Bryce, for the supplement brand, we actually ended up living together at one point and it was really, really cool building a company with one of your best friends and watching that grow and It was like our baby and then being able to sell that company also another two and a half, three years later. So kind of like a rinse and repeat and still in the supplement space. We're currently still selling supplements, mainly gummies and also pet supplements. And it's been a very fun and a big learning experience. Norm Farrar: Is it still fun? Melisa Vong: It is in its own way because we're always constantly learning and, you know, half the time I'm like banging my head on my keyboard and I'm like, Amazon, just ridiculous. Any day that I don't have to talk to stylist support is a good day. Norm Farrar: How are you dealing with, if you think 2016, then you sold and then you had your second company and you sold. Now it's 2024 and you've got, at least in the supplements end, so much black hat going on. So many just unethical sellers out there. How do you deal with all that and keep your sanity? Melisa Vong: Yeah, obviously it's tough because there's a lot of stuff that goes on in the supplement world in general. And like you mentioned, a lot of it is black hat and we don't like to participate in, you know, things that could get us permanently shut down. And we don't have the same liberties of being able to just like start up a new account here and there. Whereas like overseas in China, like they don't care really. They get one account shut down. They have 10 other ones that they're running and they can just switch them over fairly quickly or they can take over old listings that were shut down before. It's a completely different category and they somehow are able to switch it into a completely different product that has nothing to do with what the product was before and somehow keep all of the reviews and basically start a listing with thousands and thousands of reviews on it already. We don't have those same liberties, but What we do have is our brand and being able to build a strong brand is super important when it comes to supplements and just consumables in general and just being a brand that people really resonate with and are willing to purchase from because the also the unique thing about selling consumables is you have a larger or higher lifetime value of the customer. So you are able to spend more marketing dollars up front or spend to be able to keep them in the long term. And that is kind of what drives us in terms of like, for example, subscribe and save. For us, subscribe and save is one of those things where We really invest in and we do like steep discounts. So for the first subscribe and save order, we'll do like a 50% off and that really gets us traction really early on. And then we also end up having repeat customers even at full pop after that discount expires because we hook them. They like the product. They're going to continue ordering it even if the price is more because it works for them. And that's the other thing you have to sell things that Work and do what they claim. I know it's tough with the supplement space. There's so much wishy-washy marketing, people making these absurd claims. We obviously can't make absurd claims because FDA regulations, but also we have a team of pharmacists, people who are brilliant chemists that help us with our formulations so that they actually do work. So much that, you know, people like Dr. Oz are willing to put their name behind it. So it's super important that A, our formulations are top-notch. We don't just do the whole, you know, single ingredient formulations and launch like cookie cutter Private label products like that. Now we actually do a lot more custom formulations, which is really neat. And that's something that other people can't touch because we have the relationships with our manufacturers. One of the brands we have, we actually brought on our manufacturer as a partner in the company. So that way we get the best terms possible. We get priority. So if we need, you know, inventory ready within a certain period of time, like we're running out of stock, they're going to prioritize us. So we kind of have the upper hand and we end up having the best pricing when it comes to actually the manufacturing side and that way our competitors can't really touch us, right? So like people complain all the time. Oh, like my supplier overseas can undercut me at any point, you know, the manufacturer. So to solve that problem, why don't you partner with them? Why don't you bring them in, give them a piece of the pie and they're going to be a lifetime partner and that's going to help you get to a different level that you didn't think that you could get to. Kevin King: Is that how you differentiate? Because selling supplements is selling commodities. I mean a glucosamine is a glucosamine basically, but you just said there's three things I caught that you just said. You got a celebrity endorsement from Dr. Oz. You partnered with a factory to get preferential treatment and terms and price advantages and then you also have your own formulations and science, but when someone's looking at your brand, once you get going, it makes sense, but how do you get it going where people actually trust you in that marketplace where here's my new brand? For these pet supplements, how do you overcome that barrier? Like, you should trust us because we're legit. Is it from the celebrity endorsement? What's the one thing that puts you over the top? Was it the celebrity endorsement that gave you that instant credibility? Was it waiting to get 10,000 reviews or five stars? Or what was it that actually turned that corner from just being another supplement, even though you're doing all these things that you just said, to actually starting to take off? Melisa Vong: Right. I mean, if I were to start something from scratch and didn't have the connections I had or the resources I had, again, your packaging is probably super important. How are you going to differ from everyone else on page one? And then also the price point definitely does matter when you're first starting out. For us, losing money on the first couple of orders isn't going to break the bank, but that's going to help us at least enter and penetrate the market. So you kind of have to look at it as an investment. I know that when people launch products on Amazon, they're like, I want to at least break even. I'll at least want to make money. But if you look at the grand scheme of things, this is like a consumable product. You have the opportunity to not just make money on the first sale, but also every other sale after that for your customer. So it's just about one thing that I learned is, you know, getting your foot in the door and the initial sale. And then letting everything else speak for itself. So whether it's your customer service, you know, I'm always around the clock, like our team is around the clock. So our kind of KPI is we need to be able to respond to any customer complaints or messages within 10-15 minutes. Like that's kind of, you know, that's the standard that we set. Obviously, we want it to be sooner, but like no later than Should someone be receiving a response from us more than 15 minutes later, but it's just setting that standard. And then celebrity endorsements are great. People are getting smarter though, when it comes to endorsements and affiliate marketing and influencer marketing, we're becoming a lot smarter consumers. You know, people like us, we obviously get it. We know when we're being marketed. The average consumer is also now evolving. They're like, this person's just getting paid a check to say this. I don't know if I trust them yet. Right. So there's going to be. I believe you need to have at least seven points of exposure from a brand before you can build that trust with someone. So not only are you showing up with multiple people, like if you are doing influencer campaigns, working with one big influencer is not as effective as working with 10 smaller influencers that all have the same audience. Because if those 10 people have the same types of followers, Now people are not just seeing it from one of the influencers that they're following, but they're now seeing it from 10 of those influencers. So when we sell supplements, we work with UFC fighters, for example. Usually when someone follows Thug Nasty, they're going to follow this other UFC fighter. So then we actually go to direct the managers of those UFC fighters. And then we don't just work with one of them, we work with all of them. And then that way, when people see us on You know, it's like Nasty's page, but then they also see them on like the Lizard's page or you know, whoever is up and coming or whoever's got eyeballs on them at that moment and it kind of makes sense. Then that's how we we kind of infiltrate. I guess the masses. Kevin King: What kind of marketing do you do to your existing customers, whether it's in the human supplements or the pet supplements? Like in the pet supplements, do you send something on their birthday? Happy birthday Fido. If their pet passes away, do you send a condolence card or do you do any after the sale marketing or you just ride the wave of the subscribe and save type of mentality on Amazon and high cost of acquisition, then we'll make the money back in month three or four. Melisa Vong: So for the pet supplement, we haven't done stuff like that, but we have For the beauty products, for example, we actually figure out, okay, by day, you know, 55, we should send out something because we know that within the next week, someone's actually going to run out of their product, at least statistically, because if it's a 60-day cycle, you know, that people, it usually takes for them to use the vitamin C serum. We're going to send them a follow-up email, let them know like, hey, you know, let's keep that glow going. We're going to send you a, whether it's a discount, usually it's just like a discount code that we then opt them in to purchase another bottle or we try to get them to do the subscribe and save and we'll offer a steeper discount if they do the subscribe and save. Norm Farrar: I'm just looking at Kevin's expression. And when you said day 55, I'm going, all right, he's going to answer, he's going to jump in right there. Kevin, when would you be starting to market to the people? Kevin King: Five day, minimum of five, maximum of five days after they order. It depends on how long the supplement takes, but I would be planning C's starting probably about five days afterwards. And I wouldn't be doing a hard sell or making an offer 10% off your next order, but I would be leading it up. I'd provide more educational stuff, more tips and tricks, something. And then on day 55, if that's the magic number, then I would actually be, that's the hard sell. Hey, here's coupon for the next batch or We'll throw you in a free one of this new one. We just came out when you order again or whatever it may be. And that's that's how I would do it. And a lot of people, I mean, it's working for you, obviously, but but that's that's the misfit way is actually and I would be doing DSP. I don't know. Maybe you are. I would be retargeting them on that day 55 across channels like, hey, it's time to reorder this supplement and not just not just by email, too. But those I would be doing retention.com. I would be doing DazzUp. I'd be doing postcards because the beauty of what you sell is the recurring. It's not like selling a spatula where they need one. And they're done. But that recurring, you can keep those people for years. And so it's worth testing on money. That's where I think there's massive opportunity out there in the e-commerce space that you're doing some, but I think there's massive opportunity to blow that up even more. Melisa Vong: Yes, absolutely. And you're absolutely right. That's more of like the hard sell. But yes, leading up to it, we do other stuff like whenever someone purchases the product, we actually have e-books for every single one of our products that either we couple it with like a 30-day meal plan or like a fitness guide, stuff like that. And that's kind of like just added value bonus. And then, like you mentioned, you kind of have to prime them up to that point. It's like the jab, jab, jab, right hook that Gary Vee always says. Norm Farrar: Oh, I can tell you've been dealing with UFC. Melisa Vong: No kidding. There's actually a good book called Never Lose a Customer Again. I have it somewhere, but it's a really, really good book. And it talks a lot about those concepts, about how people focus on the initial sale, but never so much on the actual follow up and post sale, when that's where most of your marketing dollars should be. Norm Farrar: Now, a quick word from our sponsor, Lavanta. Hey, Kevin, tell us a little bit about it. Kevin King: That's right, Amazon sellers. Do you want to skyrocket your sales and boost your organic rankings? Meet Levanta, Norm and I's secret weapon for driving high-quality external traffic straight to our Amazon storefronts using affiliate marketing. That's right. It's achieved through direct partnerships with leading media outlets like CNN, Wirecutter, and BuzzFeed, just to name a few, as well as top affiliates, influencers, bloggers, and media buyers, all in Levanta's marketplace, which is home to over 5,000 different creators that you get to choose from. Norm Farrar: So are you ready to elevate your business? Visit get.levanta.io slash misfits. That's get.levanta.io slash misfits and book a call and you'll get up to 20% off Levanta's gold plan today. That's get.levanta.io slash misfits. I was just going to say, especially in the subscription recurring charges, and you can make so much up, but you have a really great brand and the wider you go, your customer base, oh my gosh, the average order value must be beautiful for you. Melisa Vong: It definitely adds up, especially once you kind of build out the catalog, because then now you can start doing bundles, you can start doing subscription boxes, things like that. Kevin King: Do you do subscription boxes? Melisa Vong: Yeah, we did for our previous brand when we sold it. We don't do it so much anymore. We do like more virtual bundles on Amazon, but we don't actually do like physical build your own bundles. It's more just like a set bundle. For example, we'll do like a detox bottle or detox bundle. So it's all the products that are complementary to each other. Norm Farrar: When you were setting up your marketing for supplements, were there certain areas that you were surprised you couldn't market to or you couldn't use that type of marketing strategy? I.e. like DSP, maybe you couldn't because you were a supplement. And I'm not sure if you can, but I do know in some areas you can't go in and market face or market supplements on different social media channels. Melisa Vong: Yeah, I mean, advertising is super tough in the supplement space just because any keyword can set off their bots and then you just get your account shut down and that's never fun trying to get it back. So we have, you know, been back and forth with TikTok, for example, with TikTok shop, just every time we post like a new video or a new post, when we were doing actual TikTok ads, it just kept getting shut down and then we have to get it back and then we lose the traction. So that's why we had to pivot and ended up doing, like Kevin was saying, the Minecraft parkour type videos, stuff that wasn't getting flagged. So that was organic. And not only that, but it was free for us to post. We didn't have to pay to boost it. It organically got traction. So it was kind of like a big win either way. And now we don't really spend much on actual PPC itself. We just focus on creating organic content and trying to figure out and push out our content that way. Kevin King: What role is AI playing in your marketing and in your business right now? Melisa Vong: AI is this Pandora's box of just so many tools. Like nowadays, it's so easy to launch a tool, but then you're going to get all this cookie cutter stuff as well. Obviously, it's getting better, and I think it will continue to get better. We do use it in our processes. It's not like the be-all, end-all. We kind of help us to streamline things, to buy back some time, you know, build out Content schedules, things like that to give us ideas on what we can put out. But at the end of the day, I just like doing the actual scrolling itself and then kind of priming my own timeline to show me things that are trending right now. Because yes, you can ask ChachiBT, like, oh, what is trending right now? Like, what videos should I make right now? But really, it's pulling old data. And the fact that, you know, TikTok's algorithm moves so quickly, like what was popular yesterday is not now not popular anymore. So you kind of have to be on the for you page yourself. So until ChatGPT can keep up with those significant changes, like literally overnight, we don't rely too, too much on AI other than some content creation to help us create the basis of the content, but not so much the finished product, if that makes sense. So yeah, at the end of the day, I literally have like a secondary ghost account that I use. Strictly for interacting with things that, you know, are marketing related. And then I get shown all of those things and my for you pages, you don't see a single person dancing. It's just like the cool trends that I should be doing for a brand. Kevin King: What's your marketing flow like on gathering testimonials? Because in supplements, testimonials can be one of the most powerful motivators to buy. Do you use something like Senja.io or some sort of tool and you do have a follow-up sequence that you have in place to actually get testimonials from your users? Melisa Vong: Yeah, so we actually use a tool. I'm just trying to pull it up here if I can remember what it's called. We use so many different tools, but basically it is a plugin that you add to your Shopify website and it allows you to follow up with your customers, but we actually offer, you know, We offer free product in exchange. So we kind of give them sort of an incentive. It's not to like leave a review on Amazon, so to speak, but the company itself that collects all of this for you actually will upload it as a video to your listing for you, which is pretty neat. So it doesn't actually end up converting as an Amazon review, because obviously that would be incentivized if you're offering free product in exchange for a video testimonial. But our main thing is You have to figure out what is your end goal for that and ours was just collect as much video content as possible that we can use for repurposing, for social media content, and also just to upload it onto the Amazon page but not so much add it as a legitimate review. But if you're wanting to harvest more reviews, That's, you know, it's a tricky space right now. We don't do anything too crazy only when we launch. Obviously, we do like a whole funnel when we launch, but now we kind of two-step it in a way where we get people to sign up for a email, sign up for the emails and opt in for the emails. We don't actually ask them for review until like maybe a couple emails in to the actual flow itself. That way it's not like, hey, leave us a review like right now and then possibly get flagged, right? Norm Farrar: What about your channels? You're not strictly on Amazon, right? You have a variety of different channels that you're selling on? Melisa Vong: Yeah. Also selling on Shopify. So like our own website, that's kind of Amazon is probably where 80% of our sales do come from though. And then We've been more recently doing a lot more wholesale and actual contracts with pharmacies and getting our products in through that way. So for example, we've partnered with a telehealth company and they will actually push our product in conjunction with other products. We have a product that helps people who are either diabetic or taking some sort of GLP-1 medication and are getting, you know, nauseous from taking these injections because now it actually got approved for weight loss. So a lot of people are taking, you know, Ozempic and We go via and stuff for weight loss, but also, you know, the original uses for diabetics. And we have a supplement that actually helps combat those symptoms when taking GLP-1 medication. So now we know that a lot of these telehealth companies, you can get access to these GLP-1 medication through them. So why not target them and try to offer Some sort of bundled deal. So we actually either will private label the product for them and we give them our formulation where they can actually provide that as an upsell to their customers who are already taking the GLP-1 medication or we can sell it as our own brand and then they just get a percentage. Kevin King: Do you do cold outreach on that just to get these people or do you have a connection that somebody introduces you or an agent or how are you doing that? Melisa Vong: Yeah, it's mainly cold outreach, but also because we have a board of people that are actual doctors or pharmacists and there's a lot more credibility there for sure. So when we do the outreach, we have, you know, A bunch of credible people that will stand behind the formulation and that at least gets us the meeting. Kevin King: How important is it to have a celebrity endorser? What difference did Dr. Oz make versus just a couple of random everyday people? Melisa Vong: So I probably shouldn't have mentioned it yet because we haven't fully launched out the campaign with him. So technically, I don't know when this is going to get published. Maybe it will. We just did some filming with him and then we will be pushing that out. So maybe on the next follow-up podcast, I'll let you know. Kevin King: Alright, fair enough, fair enough. Are you doing anything with creators or influencers or affiliates right now on the social medias? Melisa Vong: Not as much as we should. Now, the reason being is because I'm based in Canada. So I The whole TikTok shop thing has been very, very challenging for me because I don't have an SSN because I'm not a US citizen, obviously. So I did go through the process and now I have my ITIN. So now I can get approved. But before I was just using friends or people that would vouch for me or trusted me to be able to open up a shop under their account. Obviously, they get a kickback and things like that. That was kind of our workaround at one point, but TikTok, we just, it's just such a crazy platform that it's so untapped right now. I know people who sell on Amazon that solely just do TikTok shop now. And as a byproduct, Amazon is just their secondary source, which is crazy to see. So like the way that I look at it is if lottery tickets, you know, I saw this video actually And they were saying if lottery tickets were free, how many would you take? An infinite number of them, right? Like the crazy thing is nowadays lottery tickets are literally free because every time you post a video on social media or TikTok and you put the work into it, sure, that's your time, but it literally cost you zero dollars to upload that video. But that one video could change your life. It could change your business. It could change your sales for that day or for that month. And that's kind of And that kind of just like flipped a switch for me. And I was like, this is really powerful. Like, why aren't more people doing this? But like people get so in their head, they're like, I don't want to be in front of a camera. Well, good thing you don't have to be. You can use like, you know, parkour videos and put text over it and still have videos that blow up. Or people make so many excuses why they shouldn't do it. Oh, like I'm a boomer. I can't use technology. Well, you know, that's the thing with this business model is you really do have to adapt or you get left behind. And for me, I enjoy it. I look at it as like a game. So like if there's a new challenge, a new boss that I have to beat, I'm going to do everything in my power to, you know, figure out, OK, what are the nuances? How can I level up so I can beat that boss and, you know, get to the next level? Norm Farrar: When I first met you, we were at an event and you were doing a presentation about influencers or influencing. And you blew me away because, and this was all you, being able to go out there and grow your base and just getting to know people. And you set out to go and do that. So how did you do it? Like you've got pictures with you and Gary V and you, you know, all sorts of different power players in the industry. How's this lady from Canada go out there and just start to build that network? Melisa Vong: For sure. I think you guys also do a great job of it as well, just being connectors in the space. But for me, obviously building a personal brand is super important, but I by no means am an influencer or anything like that. I know people and people know me, but it's not just about that. Who is willing to put you in rooms with people because you can actually make a difference in either their business or their life or whatever it is. I like to think that I'm a positive person and when people are around me, I want to make them feel like they're capable of doing anything. If you have a problem, I want to be the one to help you solve that problem. Even if I can't do it personally, I'm going to know someone who can help you with that problem. And I think there's a lot of power in that. So for example, just being on like the top of mind of people's connection list is super important because I do it well, they're also going to keep me in mind at the top of their list. So like, for example, one of my friends, Sean Kelly, like he's an amazing connector. He's gotten like so many crazy people on his podcast. Like he got the Hawk Tua girl recently when she was, you know, popping off and going viral. He got Howie Mandel and all these people because he's so good at connecting people. And I kind of took a page out of that book. Like when I went to Gary Vaynerchuk's conference in Indianapolis, he saw that I was in Indianapolis and he's like, Hey, my friend Charlie is in Indianapolis right now. You guys should meet. So he puts us in a group chat and now we just end up connecting and it's like the craziest thing just because I happen to be in the same city as someone he knows. He's like, you have to meet. So it was like, moments like that and then just being able to do that for other people. So like if someone tells me that they have a problem, a legal problem, I know who to put them in contact with. If they have a marketing problem or they want to do something specific or they want to reach someone in particular, hope if I know someone I will make it happen. And it's just one of those things. And then also understanding that you know, people at the top are collaborating and not competing. So if you think about it from a An abundance mindset, like I'm not competing with anyone but myself, but I want to make sure that everyone's winning because if everyone's winning, then also as a byproduct, I'll be winning too. And that's kind of just how I've always operated. I think that it's so much more fun when your friends are also kicking ass and you can also meet each other around the world and go on these adventures because you're all doing really well. And I think that there's a lot of beauty in that. Norm Farrar: That is something in the Amazon space that I don't get. Kevin and I have talked about this a ton, and that's the sellers are always hiding something about their brand, about what they sell. They don't want to share it. And by sharing, they're just helping everybody out. You know, not only will people feed into them, They're not hiding anything, but all of a sudden you've got, you know, the people that, I don't know, if people are holding back on me, I can tell. I know when they are. And I just, you know, knock them down a notch or knock them down. I just, you know, you're not going to talk to them the same way. Hey, Kevin, I don't know if you remember this. Probably don't. Just a second or third time we met, you came over to Hawaii. You were having an event there and then you came over to my event. I'm the big island. And what did we do the first night? We didn't know each other very well, but we went out there, we had a cigar on the beach with a bunch of other people and we started talking. And one of the things we found out, we both sold bully sticks. Then we started talking about some marketing, listings, just a bunch of different things. We even got down to suppliers and we just held nothing back. And it's, I just don't see the point of it and I just think it makes it better for everybody if you do just share a bit more. Kevin King: It's because people are afraid. They don't have a big enough moat or they're not good enough at marketing and innovation. If you're good at marketing, all business is marketing and innovation. If you're weak at one of those or both of those, you have a problem. Norm Farrar: What happened to your think tank? Kevin King: The think tank we had, it's a perfect example of coming out and being honest. It's $130 million seller, another $75 million seller. They were open and honest, and we were able to actually give them help. If they hadn't have been that honest, we had that $130 million seller come in and say, we want to launch these products. They brought samples of them, passed them around. We need to know which tools to use, which this and that. By the end of that two and a half hours, we didn't address any of what they came in for. We told them zero tools. We told them, you shouldn't be launching any of these products. We, because they were open and honest, we got into what they needed and they left there going, this just changed our business for the next five years in a very good way. And that's by being open and honest and then having people that can actually help you. They've been there or been through it. And that was super powerful. That, that think tank, BDSS is a great event, but the Market Master's Think Tank, I think is my new favorite of them all. And I have, I had someone actually messaged me today say, can I please buy a ticket right now? I said, no, they go into sell in December. I was like, no, I want to buy a ticket right now. I'm like, wait till December 12th. And then we have experts, you know, like Melisa unfortunately couldn't come because she was in Italy. But hopefully she can make it out to the next one in February. And they were like, I feel bad because these experts are like, they're curated based on the needs of the sellers. To help them, you got eight or nine of them at the table, but I felt bad because they're volunteering their time there. I mean, I'm covering their cost to be there and all that food and all that kind of stuff, but they're volunteering their time to be there. But by the end of it, and so I didn't want to put them on a lot. There's 12 panels. I only wanted to put them on two or three, but by the second day, people were coming to me begging experts like, I don't know if you noticed, Norm, but we went from like six or seven people in the first panel to like eight or nine on all the second, third day because people are like, please put me on another one. Please put me as an expert on another one because I'm learning so much from this just by listening to the other experts around the table. It's amazing what you can get and that's a problem in our space. I 100% agree with you. I know you teach people, Melisa, as well. How do you deal with that? Melisa Vong: So I personally don't do like any sort of like one-on-one type mentorship or things like that because obviously time is limited and when you are running your own businesses, you know, I feel like the people that are doing things really well don't really have time but at the same time I do try to give back when I can, answer questions when I can. So the way that I was able to do it through I guess Founder Magazine, they actually reached out to me and they said Hey, we want you to be our instructor for this program. We'll take care of everything. We'll fly out to New York. We'll film it all for you. You just have to show up and do what you're good at. And then they market it. They do literally everything. It's their program. I just happen to be the face of it. But also, whenever things like this come up for me, like opportunities like this, I'm always quick to say, Hey, this person is amazing. He's super smart. I want to bring them in too. So that way, my friends are also benefiting from something like this. So I was able to bring in Kian. So he got to actually guest coach on my course. And then he ended up getting his own on product sourcing. So he got his own entire amazing, incredible sourcing program through Founder. And they pay for all the advertising. We just have to hop on live calls every so often, answer questions, you know, things like that. So that's one way that we can kind of do it at a larger scale. And then I also do bi-weekly huddles for Titan Network. And that's like my kind of like office hours, I guess, where people show up, they have questions, we go through their problems, we try to solve them right on the spot. People are also very open as well. Like you mentioned for the Think Tank, people will literally show us their listing. They want us to critique it. So we go in, we grill it, we give them feedback and hopefully by the next time we get on the next call, they have positive results and have taken action based on that. Kevin King: So what's one of the most, in your businesses, what's one of the most out-of-the-box, unusual, craziest marketing stunts or tactics or campaigns that you've done? Melisa Vong: Craziest marketing stunts, huh? We've done like we do a lot of scrappy marketing and when I say scrappy marketing is just like things that people wouldn't necessarily do. I'm trying to think from an e-commerce. I've been doing a lot more stuff with like our escape room because it's been giving me a lot of like creative freedom to do stuff because I kind of get to be the face of it because usually I'm more behind the scenes. Like I don't usually put my face behind a brand usually, you know, I even for customer service emails when I used to when I first started out with the companies, I changed my name to like Gabriella or you know, whatever. So it was never really comfortable being the face of the company, but now I've been doing a lot more stuff with our escape room and we had a bunch of videos just go viral of just having fun. So like, for example, we did like a, we actually got robbed. Kevin King: Like literally robbed, like really robbed. Melisa Vong: Literally robbed. Unknown Speaker: At the escape room. Melisa Vong: At the escape room, yeah. So when we got robbed, literally the morning of, I made a TikTok video that ended up going, like getting a lot of traction and got traction from all the local news outlets. And then they reached out to us and then we ended up getting on the news because of it. But basically I took like clips of the robber and then I continued it and added like a clip of me where I was like pretending to be the robber. And then I just said like. Robber gets stuck in escape room, basically. I pretended that I was like the robber stuck in the escape room and then that got a lot of attention. So it's like stuff like that thinking on the fly. Unknown Speaker: That's good. Melisa Vong: Yeah, so stuff like that. And then we ended up getting on the news and so many people had heard about us because of us getting broken into and we were able to turn a negative into a positive. Kevin King: Hey, Kevin King and Norm Farrar here. If you've been enjoying this episode of Marketing Misfits, thanks for listening this far. Continue listening. We've got some more valuable stuff coming up. Be sure to hit that subscribe button if you're listening to this on your favorite podcast player or if you're watching this on YouTube or Spotify, make sure you subscribe to our channel because you don't want to miss a single episode of The Marketing Misfits. Have you subscribed yet, Norm? Norm Farrar: Well, this is an old guy alert. Should I subscribe to my own podcast? Kevin King: Yeah, but what if you forget to show up one time and it's just me on here? You're not going to know what I say. Norm Farrar: I'll buy you a beard and you can sit in my chair too. We'll just, you can go back and forth with one another. Unknown Speaker: Yikes! Norm Farrar: But that being said, don't forget to subscribe, share it. Oh, and if you really like this content, somewhere up there, there's a banner. Click on it and you'll go to another episode of The Marketing Misfits. Kevin King: Make sure you don't miss a single episode because you don't want to be like Norm. Oh. So Han, why Escape Room? What led you to open a physical after being in e-commerce? Well, you were in car sales for a while, but then being in e-commerce, then what made you decide to go back physical? Is that just something you've always loved doing and you just wanted to own? Melisa Vong: Yeah, I personally just love Escape Room. So I don't know if you've ever done one, but I've done a couple. Kevin King: Yeah. Melisa Vong: Yeah. I feel like as business owners, we are really good problem solvers and we just I like solving fun problems and like this is a fun problem to solve when you're in an escape room and the level of camaraderie that comes out of, you know, completing one especially with friends of yours. So whenever I go to conferences, I always make it a habit of bringing, you know, some people that I just met or bringing people that I you know, I want to connect further with to an escape room. And then those end up being like some of the strongest relationships that I continue to have because we were all trapped in a room together and like we work towards a common goal and we had a good time and we solved it. And then I can also see how other people think and how they operate, which is really, really cool to see people like rise, rise into leadership positions and things like that. So I was like, you know what? I love escape rooms. I want to diversify a little bit because, you know, I had my eggs in Amazon for so long after selling my companies as well. You know, how you kind of have like an identity crisis. You're like, all I did was sell on Amazon. Like, I am just an Amazon seller. I'm that Amazon FBA girl. Like, I need, like, I need, there needs to be more substance here than just being just Amazon. So it's like, hey, I need to Do something for me, something that I really like, but also be able to create a vehicle that makes sense from a business standpoint. So yes, it makes money. Yes, it also provides jobs to local students so we can help them develop as human beings. And literally, it's like their first job, but fun jobs for a first job that you can have. And at the same time, have it as a vehicle to retire my mom and have her on the books. So to speak, so like she is an employee, but then I pay into her pension. So that way, even though she is technically retired, she's still getting a paycheck. So I pay her, you know, every single month. I also pay into her pension. So then by the time, you know, this is done, she can retire when she actually turned 65, like on paper and get the full benefits. Norm Farrar: We're coming to the end of the podcast. Just one question that I had. Do you have an action list or do you have a couple of steps that people can do that they're not doing right now that can help out with their marketing or their sales? Melisa Vong: Yeah, I mean one of the things they can do is look at obviously what their competitors are doing. That's probably the easiest way to start if you have no idea. You don't know what you don't know, right? So if you can take a look at what your top competitor is doing, obviously don't just copy and paste it, but there's this website called milled. And you can literally see every single email marketing blast out there, like the whole entire email. So rather than having to fill up your own inbox with subscribing to some of the top competitors in your space, Mild has a whole database of like literally tens of thousands of emails from all the top brands. And these are not just like, you know, Amazon brands, but legacy brands, like household names, things like that. So looking at stuff like that for your email marketing, Again, TikTok is such an... I know it's kind of wishy-washy because it might not be available in the States anymore. I have no idea what's going on with that. If TikTok ends up not being a thing anymore in the States, still, Instagram Reels. The amount of money Instagram is pouring into Reels right now, like that's untapped. And then also YouTube Shorts. So build a moat. Don't just look at TikTok, but you can repurpose most of your content for all the different platforms. If you're posting on TikTok, also post on YouTube Shorts, also post on Instagram Reels. So if TikTok goes down, it's not going to be the end of the world. Norm Farrar: It's funny that you said that because TikTok shop seems to be the only thing you hear about right now. When you start talking about Instagram or YouTube, you know, it's, you don't even hear that come up anymore, especially Instagram, Instagram reels. You don't hear that at all. I don't know about you guys, but when was the last time? I don't remember the last time I heard Instagram reels being said. It's been a long time. Melisa Vong: Our Reels actually are outperforming some of our TikToks. Kevin King: YouTube Shorts can actually outperform too. Reels, you want to be in four places. You want to be on TikTok. You want to be on Reels. You want to be on YouTube Shorts and you want to be on Facebook. Facebook video, whatever it's called. Those are the four main places you want to be when it comes to video content. Norm Farrar: Well, I think we're coming to the end of the podcast. This was awesome, Melisa. I didn't call you Michelle. Melisa, and usually at the end of every podcast, we ask our guest one thing, and if they know another misfit. Melisa Vong: Yeah, well, obviously it'd be awesome if you get Jeff Bezos, another fellow Baldi on here. Norm Farrar: We tried. Melisa Vong: Daddy Bezos. Another girl that's killing it in e-commerce and just the Amazon space, but not a private label sense, she does wholesale, is Katie Melissa. So just a completely different business model. I think she's amazing. She's really, really smart and good at what she does. She's also very good at marketing in terms of like building up her own personal brand. I think she does a great job too. She has a ton of engagement on her stuff. But yeah, you should definitely bring her in. Norm Farrar: Very good. Super. Kevin King: Wait, wait, before we go though Norm, I need you to speak something in Canadian to her. I need to hear Two Canadians speaking Canadian to each other. Norm Farrar: Well, I think we should start talking about going to the foyer. Okay, not the foyer. To the washroom. Yeah, there might be a washroom out on the foyer. And make sure you bring a couple serviettes with you. Oh, and You're Tim's. Where's your local Tim's? Melisa Vong: It's just down the street from my house. Norm Farrar: Very good. And the poutine? Melisa Vong: The poutine? Oh, fantastic. Norm Farrar: Kevin looked at it. Well, Kevin tried it when he was here and he didn't know what it was. So, he tried Canadian poutine, Quebecois poutine. Melisa Vong: I am lactose intolerant, but I will always splurge for a poutine. Norm Farrar: Oh my gosh. Yes. So there you go, Kev. Kevin King: All right. Perfect. Norm Farrar: All right. Well, I think before we go, Melisa, how do people get a hold of you? Melisa Vong: I am pretty active on Instagram, so just at Melisa with one S, M-E-L-I-S-A, or you can send me an email. Okay. Melisa at buzzandbrands.com. Norm Farrar: All right. So anything else, Kevin, before I remove Melisa? Kevin King: No. Thanks, Melisa, for coming on. It's been fun. Norm Farrar: Absolutely. Kevin King: I'm looking forward to seeing you in Iceland and who knows, maybe at the Think Tank in February. Melisa Vong: Thank you for having me, guys. Norm Farrar: I tried. I tried for the first class ticket and I'm going to continue to push, okay? Melisa Vong: The hot springs. As long as there's a hot springs outside my balcony, I'm fine with that. Kevin King: There's plenty of those. You're going to get to experience some good stuff. That's going to be cool. Norm Farrar: All right, Melisa. I'm going to remove you, put you in the green room for just a couple seconds and we'll be right back. All right, Mr. King, that went really well. Kevin King: No, it's always fun to talk to Melisa. She's always got good stuff to say and that mill.com, I got that in my notes right here. It's milled.com. Norm Farrar: I've got to put that in my notes. Kevin King: That's a good one that I didn't even know about. She's always got the little tips and tricks up her sleeve. Norm Farrar: You mean there's something that you didn't know? Kevin King: And there's well, there's like three things and that was so now I'm just looking. I'm in search of the other two now that knocked out one of them. So there's two more that I need to find. So hopefully if you join us next week on the next podcast, there'll be one more. Norm Farrar: There you go. There you go. Kevin King: How would someone actually listen to the podcast? Norm Farrar: I think the first thing that they have to do is they have to go to their favorite podcast platform or they can go to YouTube and I think if you really want to get the full effect of it, you should subscribe. Maybe even ring a bell because you want to be notified whenever there's a new podcast or YouTube video that comes out with the two of us, Marketing Misfits. Kevin King: That's right. We're The Marketing Misfits. That's Norm. I'm Kevin. We'll be back again next week with another episode of The Marketing Misfits on Tuesday. Thanks, everybody. Norm Farrar: All right. And by the way, if you want to go to their website, it's marketingmisfits.co. What is that, Kev? Kevin King: Dot C-O. No M. C-O. Norm Farrar: Very good. All right. See you later, everybody.