TikTok Shop Expert: I Built a $21M TikTok Shop Empire (Steal My Strategy)

I had this woman come in. She was 78 years old, you know. She said, "I've never had a pair of jeans like this before. I'm interested. Can you show them to me?" I said, "Sure. Where'd you find us?" You know, I kind of always ask. She's like, "On TikTok." And I was like, "Oh, did someone show you Tik Tok video?" She's like, "Oh, no. I was on TikTok." I was like, "Really?" Overwhelmingly, new customers that come into my store over the age of 55 found me on Tik Tok. Yesterday and today, my videos have gone completely viral on Tik Tok, and they hadn't in 3 or 4 months. So, it's such an enormous up and down on Tik Tok. You have to be prepared for that. You know, you might have a million half dollar month, the next month is $400,000. How do you purchase inventory for that? Tik Tok's been successful for us, but we have to be very careful. Um, I've seen it put some people out of business. You're watching Marketing Misfits with Norm Ferrar and Kevin Kane. Mr. Ferrar, how you doing, man? Another another great uh day, another great uh Misfits podcast. And you know what's beautiful about it? It's 27 degrees in Canada. It's the first day I can say when you talking like some other language. This is I'm I'm sitting in America. What what tell me America? What's What's the What's the temperature in America? America. That would be close to 77 78 something like that. What's the rule? Double it and add 32 to get close. So 27 * 2 is 54. That's 86 roughly. probably more like 84 88 or something like that, but that's a rough estimate. Yeah. So, it's hot anyways. Yeah. That that that's that's a that's a mild day down here in Texas. That that's that's like a Mediterranean day for us. I got to acclimate down in America. You know, speaking speaking of America, have you ever bought anything on Tik Tok? Well, you don't have Tik Tok in Canada. I mean, no, no, we got Tik Tok in Canada. Yeah, but didn't they close down the offices or something? They kick everybody out. My wife 4 hours a day she's on Tik Tok. So, yes, it's here. And I don't know if she's bought anything. I haven't. You haven't? I' I've never I've bought quite a few things on Tik Tok. I think I had two deliveries today from uh from Tik Tok. I'm an Amazon guy. You're an Amazon guy. Well, you're missing the boat. You know, that's the that's the silver the hot thing right now for all the Amazon sellers is they're like, "We need to get on Tik Tok because we can like create all this demand and we can uh do all this social commerce and then there's a there's a residual effect on Tik Tok, the Halo effect. They see it on Tik Tok and then they don't trust Tik Tok shop or the the vendor. So, they go and they buy it on Amazon and you get all these this lift. Um, but you know, sometimes you don't even need that lift. Sometimes you can do millions of dollars and tens of millions of dollars. I think over maybe 21 million I think is the number our guest today said that she she did last year or maybe that's on track to do this year. What we'll find out uh just on Tik Tok. She says she's not on Amazon, not anywhere else. Just her own store. Yeah. And uh uh Tik Tok and I think she's got an app. But it's a fascinating uh story. I saw her speak at an event in Florida back in May and uh it's amazing. and she brought her whole team out, all of her her social media girls and her all of her whole team was there and they each had a little bit and they they told their story and I was like, "Oh, this is this is cool. People got to hear this. This will be uh it's really cool the way they're doing things." So, I'm super excited to have uh have Tiffany on today. Okay. Well, why don't I just do my job and hit the button and we'll bring on Tiffany. Tiffany Ivanoski. Yeah. Hello. How you doing, Tiffany? Doing really good. How are you guys? Good. Good. We're lucky cuz Norm hit the right button. Sometimes uh he hits the eject button and I I I I fly out as I kicked my dog in the face. I didn't even realize Dallas was right under my foot and got excited and kicked him. So, your story is a really interesting one. Uh uh you're a fellow Texan just down the road from me. Uh just out what? Northwest of Houston, right? Little northwest of Houston in Magnolia. So, just north of the woodlands. So, when people hear Magnolia, do they think of uh the place up by Waco, the the the TV show? Do they get all confused and every day? You know, they want to know if we know Chip and Joanna and everything else, and I'm like, you've got the wrong Magnolia. Yeah. Um, so you you uh have been you started with Tik Tok about what 20 six about nine years ago or so or started selling. Sorry, not Tik Tok. Yes. You opened your your you open like a little retail boutique store like a in a strip mall or something or what was No, we only did we only did retail about a year and a half ago. So, we actually started first on Facebook. We're still on Facebook, but started first on Facebook. Um, and then kind of transitioned to our own app. Of course, we have a website and then we've been on Tik Tok since they really just first started that beta with the shops, which is what is that two years ago? It's two years ago right now. Yeah. Yeah. About two years ago. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, wow. Okay. So, you did so you were doing comr like ads or just organic stuff on on Meta originally. So, we actually have not done any ads until the last two years. We built the entire thing just completely organically. The first seven years of this business. Uh didn't run any ads at all. Just built a big old community. Um and it's only been recently that we've really started running some ads. Oh, wow. So, what's your what's your background before this? So, we started um oh my goodness, kind of always been entrepreneurs and uh started blogging back in the day with the mommy bloggers and was blogging, you know, recipes and about my family and extreme couponing. We did a lot of the extreme couponing. We were on the extreme couponing show. Um and uh you know, it kind of just uh went from there. We did a lot of affiliate marketing on our our blog. So, I was kind of familiar with that world of, you know, pushing traffic somewhere, making a post, getting everybody excited about it. And then, um, I just randomly happened to hear about these leggings that everybody was so excited about and thought, "Hey, I can sell some leggings on Facebook and got involved in that." Had no idea it was an MLM or a crazy cult. Uh, went through the whole ringer with that and, um, kind of came out of that on the better side of it. But we then transitioned to kind of a more I would say traditional well not even traditional e-commerce but we were doing lives on Facebook kind of like a live QVC on Facebook. Um and literally writing customers names down and they're getting their email address and then manually sending them invoices and telling them they have to pay their invoice before the morning and then shipping their product to them. So we did that for a number of years and then went to our own app and then it's just kind of evolved since then to website and then now Tik Tok of course you know and all of it combined together. Wow. That that's that's awesome. You had a question, Norm? Yeah, my question was I I wanted to know I thought you'll get a question. That's it. That's it. All right. So not go ahead. I'm sorry. I'm I'm always bust busting his balls. So all right. Now, my question just happened to be, and I think you've answered it, but I want to know what you're selling. So, uh, we just met, and Kevin came up to me and said, "You got to meet this lady. Oh, she's fantastic. You won't believe it. She's selling $21 million on TikTok." But he forgot to tell me what you sold. I'm just women's clothing. It's all women's clothing. Yes. Predominantly jeans. We kind of call it like Tiffany's favorite things. Kind of like Oprah's favorite things. there's something I love, then I'll talk about it and sell it. But what we're selling on Tik Tok predominantly is women's jeans. Um, some, you know, shoes come in, you know, second, we've got a real popular style of shoes that we do, but mostly women's denim and a few accessories and jewelry and stuff too, right? But that's that's small. Correct. That's just kind of to complement everything else. You know, you if you're going to buy an outfit in jeans and shoes, I might as well have some tops and jewelry for you, too. And what makes your product stand out? I mean jeans. I think of jeans or jeans or jeans. Do you do something differently? So part of the interesting part of this too is some of it a little bit as our own brand, but we actually sell another brand out there. Um, and you know, we buy wholesale, we sell, you know, retail, but it's stretchy, it's comfortable, there's tummy control, there's buttlfting. I mean, all those things that I'm sure Norm, you love in your jeans. Um, absolutely. No, it's me that loves it. It's me that loves it. Not Not Norm. Oh yeah, he has it for me. I do that. I do that for Kevin, actually. Exactly. So, it's just comfortable, you know, denim. They're always launching new styles. Um, and it just, you know, it it kind of just at the right time just really took off. You know, women were tired of the 100% cotton, not stretchy jeans, and you know, they're comfortable. Wear them all day and don't feel like you have to change as soon as you get home. One one of the things that was really interesting is you're is a lot of times the jeans they go after a very specific avatar of a person like a body shape or body size. They're either for the skinny girls or for the in between or for the plus size. But you got you cover the whole range. And I remember you showed a video that I thought was brilliant um at when I first met you. You showed a video where you brought, we'll talk about that in a minute, where you brought a bunch of your influencers together down in in Houston, did a bunch of cool stuff, and then you had each one of them, you said it's like a music video, a popular song or something that's trending. And then each one of them walked up. They're all like in a in a line kind of against a wall, just kind of just moving around in the back. And then they all one by one walked up and they're all kinds of shapes and sizes and colors. And they like they tugged on their jeans. They did a 360 and like look how much they fit me. I was like, "That was brilliant freaking marketing cuz every woman's like, "That's me. That's me. Oh, that's she's not me. She's not me. Oh, that was that one's me. I'm buying." It was really cool. So, you cover the whole gamut, right? We sure do. Which is a lot of SKs. Yeah. Well, it is a lot of SKs. Um, and it's a lot of sizes, you know, size zero through size 24 uh in women. So, you know, we've got 13 different sizes in there. And, uh, you know, all different styles. So, you know, the crazy thing is for guys, you guys are so lucky. You literally have kind of one style of jean that you typically wear. If you go to the store, you buy kind of the same style. You're not buying a skinny jean, a flare, a boyfriend, a boot cut, you know, a straight leg. You guys are buying one kind. And you always are going to get the same waist size usually and the same inseam because you also only wear typically one shoe. Like you're going to wear a tennis shoe if like you're my husband, you're going to have a tennis shoe and then he has like a dress boot, you know? So he'll wear like his boots if he's going somewhere nice. Um and then a tennis shoe. So, but women, I mean, we're going to wear eight different styles of jeans. We're going to wear a sandal from a tennis shoe to a heel to a wedge. And so, we're wearing all of these different styles of jeans that we need different inseams for. So, it's kind of it's crazy. It's just an endless amount of SKs that you can carry um you know, to fit that style. I mean, I'm kind of jealous of guys. You know, you walk in, my husband's like, I'll take a 36 32. I mean, every single time. Um and they're always going to have it there for him. But, um, you know, that's kind of the kind of the difference and the magical part about it is that we're launching so many different styles all the time. Um, that there's if you don't see exactly what you want this month, they're going to sell out. They don't come back yet. So, that kind of gets you a little bit excited about getting something if you love is that we typically don't recut any of those styles. But, next month, we're going to have 20 new styles for you to try. So, you've kind of got to grab it right now. And if you don't see what you love right now, in a month or two, you know, we'll probably have it again. So, you talked about uh going on Facebook and starting there and then going over to Tik Tok. How did you get started in all this? I It's kind of crazy. So, um you know, from blogging, of course, you know, just built a really big community on Facebook and like I said, we were doing extreme couponing and so I would go to the grocery store, haul my kids all up to the store, show them, you know, this coupon matches up with these razors, you're going to get them for two bucks, stock up on them, uh kind of thing. and I started going live on Facebook in the very beginning. Again, we got pretty lucky and were able to beta test some of that first Facebook live stuff. So, I would go into the store and do little quick videos and show ladies how to save money. And then started, you know, selling these leggings. And I thought, you know, why don't I just unbox them and show my group what leggings came in today? And if they like them, they like them. And I just started doing that. And then I was like, people were like, well, how do I buy them? And we didn't have a website or anything. And I was like, "Well, I guess if you want them, just comment sold. Just say sold. You want those?" And then leave your email and I'll literally write your email down and then I'm going to go invoice you through, you know, a program all night long. And it just kind of took off and and they loved it and it was like this feeding frenzy of purchasing online like this in a live setting where I'm literally kind of your model. I'm your personal shopper. Um, and it kind of took off because, you know, a lot of women, they'd think, you know, I could never afford someone to personal shop for me or I could never afford someone to really show me these clothing or these clothing or maybe they're really rural or maybe for some of my ladies, they're overweight and they don't feel comfortable going into a store and it's not comfortable for them, but they want to see these styles. And so, I'll try stuff on or I'll talk about the fabric. I'll show them how it fits and they can just order right there live and it's like they have their own personal shopper. So, these were coming from Lula Lula row or these were so that's like uh Do you know what that is Norm? Have you seen the documentary? It's on what's it on Amazon? Uh Prime I think. Yes. It's like um I've seen part of it. I need to finish it and I'm probably will finish it tonight after this talk because I'm now even want to go finish it. But it's basically like you know Fry Festival, Norm, right? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's basically the same producers that produced Fry Festival actually did this documentary on this MLM is a Mormonbased group and they started this MLM of selling jeans, you know, like Avon or one of these, you know, kind of things where you sell the jeans and then it progressed into almost like Uber where the Uber guy all went to his head. you. Oh, no. No. We Work. The Wei Work guy. It all went to his head and he started doing these big festivals and these big concerts and this big crazy spending and then it got real religious and like he's the next coming of of Christ and all all this kind of stuff and it get over the top and it kind of they went to into billions of dollars of sales and then imploded. Uh that that was like 20 what about 2013 to 2020 or something like that. They're you know wildly they're still in business. It's completely crazy. Yeah. I mean, they have nothing like they used to. Um, but they're actually still in business, which is completely nuts. And so, were you getting the jeans through that or were you buying them wholesale directly? They actually it's it was it was really a lot like, you know, like a um those like a home party, like a Pampered Chef or something, you know, where you would buy the product, you'd go to someone's house, set it up, and they'd buy it, and then, you know, they'd get a discount and tell their friends, you know, it was really how it was. Um, and it was just leggings. There was no jeans involved at all. Just leggings and tops. And you had to order their product, you couldn't sell anything else but their product. And um, it just it took off from there. It was just it was very unique. It was very interesting. And had they not uh ruined it or had there not been as much nepotism and craziness, it was actually a very cool concept. Um, and there was a way if you, you know, for a lot of MLMs on there, it's like that, you know, that pyramid and only the people at the top make money. This one was interesting because you didn't have to have anyone signed up underneath you to make money. You could make money just by selling the product. So, that was interesting. The funny part about it is I didn't know I was signing up for an MLM when I signed up for it. And, you know, I just started this. I thought I'd sell some leggings on here. And then, a couple months in, I got this check and I thought it was for damages. And I was like, "Hey, I got this check." And then the next month, I got another check. My husband's like, "Why are you getting these checks?" And I was like, "Well, I think it's for my damages." And he's like, "I don't know. It didn't really add up." And so we kept trying to figure out what's going on. My husband's like, "Um," he's like, "I think you signed up for an MLM." And I was like, "What?" And he's like, "You literally have people signed up under you." I was like, "Are you kidding me right now?" But we were really good at doing the live sales. People were like, "I want to sign up with her cuz she clearly knows what she's doing." People were signing up under me. I didn't even know. And I'm like getting these checks. It was completely crazy land. Um, and it just exploded. It just took off and you know, women loved it and the the clothes were good at the beginning and then they went to total crap. Um, and the company just the owners would only hire their children and they were not qualified. They were the fastest growing company to a billion dollars in the United States and then they completely imploded. Wow. Now you said a documentary was called Lulu something. This has Lulu Rich. Yeah. Lul Lulu Rich. So, this has nothing to do with Lululemon. No, it does not. Okay. I just want to make that clear. Part is very confusing. Decent assist notice uh Norm uh on the podcast. Yeah, that's more than beeping you out sometimes. So, so you did that and then when did the the jeans part come into play? Was that at the same time or did you pivot? No, because we were not allowed uh to sell any other products with this. And then um things got completely crazy. There was a lot of FTC violations. My husband and I were top sellers in the company um and uh leaders in the company and realized they were doing a lot of things that were illegal, a lot of things that were violating, you know, stuff and we kept bringing it to their attention and they kept telling us to shut up, mind our own business and just put our heads down. Um and I just could not do it. I have a I just had a big mouth, couldn't shut up. kept talking and eventually we were terminated dramatically from the company. Um and uh in fact it was so dramatic that we didn't even know it was us that were terminated. They everyone's talking about it and they sent this mass email out and said a high-profile client or you know consultant got terminated. We were like who is it calling everybody trying to figure it out. I'm like I'm going to go find out in my Facebook group and I'm in there and I was like that's weird. I can't get into the Facebook group. Huh? Wonder what's going on. And then uh we had our assistant that said, "Hey, you guys might want to check your email." Uh I checked our email and found out after everybody else that it was us that was terminated. Um and uh you know, we had over a million dollars of inventory sitting in our house at the time. And you know, they said, you know, you're not allowed to sell it. And we were like, "It's ours. We own it. We're going to sell it." Um and uh you know, we sat there for a couple days just thinking, "What are we going to do?" You know, this was what we had employees. We had everything. And then we were like, "You know what? Screw it. we're gonna go to LA, go to the fashion district, find some stuff, go sell it. Um, and best thing that ever happened to us was we were terminated by them. Um, but um, you know, it was it was crazy experience. So, you were a whistleblower. Yes. And the company, they did not like that at all. Yeah. And how did that fall out? Like you you must have you must have had tons of friends in the company. And what happened? So, it was extremely dramatic. Um, we were out of the top 100 people in that company, 37 of them were directly on my team because I trained them to go live. We trained them how to, you know, sell stuff. Um, you know, I just loved doing it, loved training them, loved going live, loved selling things online, loved helping women feel good in clothing. Um, and so Lulao had me flying all over the country training people that weren't even on my team at my own expense, which they were supposed to reimburse me and never did. Um, and so when we were terminated, it kind of sent a signal to the entire company where the company said, "Hey, we know them. They trained us. We feel like something's wrong here. This is finally starting to make sense. We believe what they were saying." Um, and after that, we had one of the largest teams in the company. And once we were terminated, I think what they did not expect to happen was that the company just everybody was like, if they left, they saw that we were successful leaving. they could see that there was another side, that it wasn't scary, that they weren't going to lose everything. Um, and then once we left, my entire team just kind of was like, "We're none too," and they bailed, and then everybody else started leaving the company. Um, so it really backfired on them. That must have rattled you. Like, how how did you handle it? Uh, it must have been an overload to find out all of a sudden you're gone. Like, where was your head at? Like, what was your mindset? Well, you know, we were really concerned because not only were we in the company, I had um two sisters that were in the company. My husband's sister, our son was actually in the company selling and he was a 20-year-old kid and was very successful and um you know, we were really concerned about our family and our friends that had signed up for this and we did not want anything to happen to them and that's why we continued to bring things to their attention that said, you know, this whole company could get shut down if you don't fix this and they didn't care. Um, and so we were scared for them. We were scared for our business. And then once we were terminated, you know, we had people that counted on us. I mean, everybody counted on us. And so, you know, I mean, I definitely had probably about 12 hours where, you know, I sat there and thought, well, let's sell the house. Let's, you know, I said, I don't know what we'll do. I'll go back, you know, I'll go I'll start couponing. I know how to live on nothing. Um, but, you know, it was a little bit scary there. You know, for the first initial, you know, 12 hours. The second day, I was pissed. I went through every grief emotion there was. Uh the third day I'm like screw them. This is going to be better than what there was before. And then you know we were like getting on a flight to go to LA and I was like we know where to find clothing. You know we know what we can sell. I was like we have a great community. I built this community. They didn't. You know these are people are following us for us and not because of this company. Um and so we were like you know what go do what you have to do and keep people employed. How big was the community at that time that you had on your your your email list or your Facebook group or whatever it was? You know, probably between Well, and the funny part about this company, they were not they would not allow you to have a Facebook page. You could only have a group, which I fought like crazy. You couldn't do any advertising. You couldn't do any paid ads, anything like this. So, it was just really a closed group, which was insane. So, at the time, I probably had about 50,000 people in my group. Um, really no email list. you weren't I mean you had zero information basically from a lot of this and so um you know I kind of just immediately started collecting all that information and you know just trying to you know keep track of all my people keep them together and let them know where we were um and then of course quickly got a page up and going and you know just continue doing what we were doing. Hey Norm, you'll love this man. I talked to a seller the other day doing 50k a month, but when I asked them what their actual profit was, they just kind of stared at me. Are you serious? That's kind of like driving blindfolded. Exactly, man. I told them you got to check out Sellerboard. This cool profit tool that's built just for Amazon sellers. It tracks everything like fees, PPC, refunds, promos, even changing cogs during using FIFO. Aha. But does it do FBM shipping costs, too? Sure does. That way, you can keep your quarter four chaos totally under control and know your numbers because not only does it do that, but it makes your PPC bids, it forecasts inventory, it sends review requests, and even helps you get reimbursements from Amazon. Now, that's like having a CFO in your back pocket. You know what? It's just $15 a month, but you got to go to sellerboard.com/misfits. sellerboard.com/misfits. And if you do that, they'll even throw in a free two-month trial. So, you want me to say go to sellerboard.commisfits and get your number straight before your accountant loses it? Exactly. All right. What year was What year was this roughly? Gosh, this was 17. 2017. Okay. Okay. This was not where I was wanting to go during this podcast. I thought we'd be talking completely different, but I'm just uh curious. You had the success with your MLM. That whole line you did. Did you market any different other than the Facebook live? So the Facebook Live is something that you brought on, you started to teach, but were there any other differences in marketing that you were doing that you you brought into the uh the mix? Not really. It was really just that community part. It was just, you know, and not only was it, you know, the clothing and helping people, you know, feel confident and stuff, but you know, I have a big family. I have a lot of kids. Um, and uh, you know, I would just post personal stuff. I would post recipes. I would post, you know, stupid my husband did. Stupid stuff my kids did, things I screwed up. You know, I love cats. I would post my cat. I mean, I just posted stuff that people I think just obviously those ways we all know how to build a community. Um, but it was a lot more than just clothing. And I think that that's what was very important through the whole thing. And they saw the struggle that we had. They saw what happened to us, you know, in that MLM. They knew that it wasn't right. And you know, I think a lot of people were also just curious to see, you know, are we going to get sued by, you know, Lulao or, you know, all these things. So, I think there was a lot of curiosity, too, um, that kind of came along with that. But, um, you know, we didn't do anything different. I just kind of kept that going. I've really, you're going to just absolutely pass out right now. I've really never focused on an email list. I've collected hundreds of thousands of emails. Never done anything with it really. Just always had just this kind of organic, you know, hey, do this or these are these new jeans. You can find them on the app kind of thing. Um, and really kind of just kept that same just community, organic community going through the whole thing. So, I guess Kevin's got a couple things to talk to you about after the podcast. I almost fainted. I had to stop myself there. I was like, I saw that. I was doing a down, but I was like, I jerked back really really quick. But no, but but here's something that I think also is brilliant of what she she did is she I don't know when you developed this, but you have an app. You developed a custom app for your for your brand or for your community. Um and I remember you telling me like I don't have to depend on an algorithm. I don't have to depend on does an email go to junk or spam. If we have a new sale or we have a new launch, we just hit a button and it SMSes everybody and they see it and and then it's bringing them into this closed community that you're in 1,000% control of. Uh and there's no gatekeepers of Facebook showing it to just 20% of the audience and if they interact another 20% and and so on. And I think and you told me like I think you said out of 21 million like 10 million of it comes off the app or something like that. Correct. Yes. Yes. On the app. And now is this an app you download from the Apple store or from the So it's a standard app. It's not one of these little like HTML 5 apps. You got to go into a browser or do it. It's a a full just from the Apple store. Correct. Yes. So Emily's boutique and we know I go live as well. It br when I go live and turn on that live and I'm broadcasting that it's broadcast to the app and then it also goes directly to Facebook as well. Those comments are scraped off Facebook and automatically carted. Um and then you know same thing with the app as well. How when did you start that app? How how old is that? Oh, that is part of like well along with the um you know website and stuff that would have been so probably for the first um probably 2018 is when we really started doing that 2018 2019 um and uh you know originally you know trying to solve that you know literally someone hand recording comments on Facebook as we're live with hundreds of people on commenting like this it's crazy and someone would literally copy and paste those emails and whoever's name said I want this item. Um you know from that till it was scraping comments on there. Um part of the uh part of that too though is there is a website and there is the ability to do that through a company. Um and another boutique owner's husband created that where it would scrape the comments from Facebook. So that part of it I don't want to say that's not our part of it there. He came up with that. Um and it just worked really really well. then translated into an app because obviously you own that. I can send messages out to them. I go live in the app. I can, you know, post whatever I want to post, you know, collections, drop collections, all those kind of things. On the app right now, I think we have we have like a 100,000 customers that are original on there. I'm actually going to have to look and see how many there are. Sorry. You know, Tiffany, what I usually do when Kevin asks me questions like that, I just make it up. He just says, "Should I just make it up?" He just says, "It's none of your business." Ask. That's kind of what I said. 497,000 sounds like a really good number. I'm actually just myself super curious. And I feel like I just turned off my microphone. Is that okay? Yeah, you're good. Yep. Okay. You know what? I don't even I don't even know how many we have, but I'm now I'm super curious. So I'll I'm gonna find we have we have 150,000. There we go. There you go. 150. That that's that's So that when you did that in 2018, you didn't have this that was real money you had to spend to actually develop an app because now you can do this much cheaper and much faster, but you had to actually make an investment. Where did the idea for that was that your idea or was that So this does so this does go back to um the original for comment sold. So the owner of that, you know, she had a boutique as well. um her husband is the one that really came up with all of this um and uh you know so he helped tied that in. Really brilliant guy you know kind of made all this happen. So um at the beginning of that so there's been you know iterations of that since then but he was the original that kind of you know developed a lot of that and the idea that it could be possible to do that. That's really really smart. Yeah. People are just talking about it now getting off of a website and focusing on apps. So well ahead of its time, but you got to give them a reason to go to that. I mean, part of it is they're getting in deals or they get to see you, but do you have uh is there like a chat on there? Is there like a special like I don't know place where they go to get girl talk or advice and makeup or or is there other little What else is in the app besides, hey, here's the latest jeans and here's you live. Um there isn't, but there might be later on. Um but it's really uh it's really so they can watch you live. It's almost like just watching TV. And that's kind of what we've tried to do with the entire thing is not just make it, you know, where it's like, you know, QVC and it's not fun at all. Like we get on there, we listen to music and we're talking to them. We try to make it a show. Um, you know, and again, I'm their personal shopper and I've got usually an idea of what I'm going to show them that night. Um, and just try to make it a lot of fun. And so it feels more like they're, you know, watching a a TV show than they are just sitting there watching some girl, you know, take her clothes on and off. Uh, which my kids did actually say, someone said, "What does your mom do?" And one of my kids once said, "She takes her clothes on and off on TV." So, yeah. So, is it just you? Is it just you doing the selling or I mean, I know you have a lot of UGC people, but is it on the live on your channel? It's just me literally sometimes twice a day, sometimes lives as long as three hours, sometimes they're an hour. So, what about fulfillment? Are you doing it out of your garage? Do you have a fulfillment center? What's happening? No, we've got a warehouse, thank goodness. But gosh, forever. I sometimes I almost wish we were back in our garage without all the extra people and the cost and the overhead. You know, we 25,000 square foot warehouse. Yes. Wow. Yeah. It's a it's a serious operation. Um even even has like uh like CS for sleeping so that you cannot you know so if you you know work at 3 in the morning to pack these extra orders, you got a place to go take a nap. Sometimes it feels like it. Yeah. So, so back on what on selling I mean there's I saw some stat recently like there's 1.5 million people in the United States trying to make a living as a content creator or as a UGC creator. Most of very few of them make more than $10,000 a year in commissions or and whatever they're getting paid. Very few. But it's still the dream of every 13-year-old now. They don't want to be a movie star. They don't want to be a football player or whatever. they want to be um a content creator or an influencer and but I think the fundament some of them know how to get traffic or they know how to be personable u and they might they might take off but a lot of them don't know how to sell and there's a big big difference between being personable getting a big audience and actually knowing the psychology and the marketing of selling and I think you said you taught this with with the other outfit what is it that people are missing and that what makes you special other than that they identify with you and you the personality and the fun stuff, but what or maybe that's part of it, but what is it that takes it over that next gives you that next extra juice to like sell that other people are missing? Well, it's it's people are counting on you and it's a house payment is what it is. But, uh, no, they um, you know, back a long time ago, uh, I think a long time ago, 10 years ago, um, you know, I think people were embarrassed to ask for a sale. they, you know, they they were scared when they had a community that they didn't want to be too salesy or their community would maybe turn on them, you know, if they were selling something. And the cool thing about right now is it's way more acceptable, you know, it's way more acceptable for you to have a community and to sell something to your community. Sometimes they almost expect that now. And I think that that's kind of a cool thing that has changed. I definitely think it's changing. We knew that the shift was happening that people wanted to buy from somebody that they trusted. They wanted to buy from somebody that they feel like they know. They want that recommendation. They don't want to just go to a website that they've not heard of or hit an ad and go there without any kind of recommendation. So, a lot of things are changing. It's really cool. It's making it a lot easier for people to be influencers or, you know, a creator and selling things because it's just way more ex acceptable than it used to be. But, but still, even a lot of them like you and they they adore you, but they most people still don't know how to actually get them. It's not just asking for the buy. It's the way you do it and the way you set it up and the way you frame it. Is there a technique that you use or does it just come? There's a lot of different techniques. You teach it. Can you give share a couple of those maybe? Absolutely. I think some people are just a little bit more naturally a salesperson. Um I had no idea I was like that, but I I guess I I guess I am. It maybe comes from just being like a scrappy kid of a kid and a hundred siblings. Um you know, you kind of got to fight for everything. But um I so I think it's trust is a lot of things. Um if there's product that I do not like or if there's a shirt that doesn't fit well, I don't sell it to them. Um we'd rather give it away for free than for me to sell them something that's total crap. And so I think that there's a lot of trust in that. They trust me. They know that you know your stuff. I think it's a lot of confidence. I think it's knowing what you're selling and what you're talking about. Um, and a lot of I think it's just really it's it's confidence and it's trust are the biggest are the biggest things. Now, there's a lot of different things that go into that. It's the time of day on some things. I know at night on my app, I'm going to push a lot of things like food, comfy clothing, um, you know, uh, slippers, uh, comfy shoes. At night, I'm not going to be posting some high heels with a pointy toe because everybody's in their pajamas sitting in their bed and they're not thinking about that, right? in, you know, I know that they're sitting there thinking, gosh, it'd be nice if I had some comfy pajamas right now. So, some of it's just a little intuition to know what's happening. I know that at 3:00 every day, there's a ton of moms sitting in car lines on their phone waiting to pick up their kids. Great time to go live because they're sitting there with nothing else to do. Um, so there's a lot of different things that I think are a little like intuitive that you kind of can pick up on. I think a lot of it is thinking what am I doing right now? what I if I'm a customer, you know, am I interested in buying sweaters in May? I'm not at all, but I might be interested in a tank top. So, I mean, that seems pretty obvious, but there's a lot of things like that that um you know, I think people need to come back to. I tell them, think about what you would be doing right now. Are you on your phone? Are you on your phone Saturday mornings? A lot of people are cleaning their house. They're not necessarily on their phone. Um you know, on holiday weekends, a lot of people are traveling. They're sitting in their car. You're passenger princess on your phone. Your husband's driving. It's a great time to be live. So, you know, there's a lot of just thinking about what you're doing, what you're interested in, that trust part, and then the confidence. 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. That's right. Stack Influence pushes high volume external traffic sales straight to Amazon listings using micro influencers that you only have to pay with your products. They've helped upandcoming brands like Magic Spoon compete with Cheerios for top category positioning while also helping Fortune 500 brands like Unilver launch their new products. Right now is one of the best times to get started with Stack Influence. You can sign up at stackinfluence.com or click the link in this video down in the description notes below and mention misfits that's misfitts to get 10% off your first campaign. stackinfluence.com. I'd like to hear more about uh your Tik Tok shop experience. So, this is something that a lot of people are interested in. You were saying that you've been doing it for two years. Is that correct? So, how did you get involved with that and where is it going? Well, on Tik Tok, you know, I just had a regular account. I was having a lot of fun doing the same kind of stuff, posting, you know, about my cute cat, whatever it might be on there. And um, you know, we got contacted uh by our ad. So, we had just started doing some Facebook ads and the company that we were doing Facebook ads with said, "Hey, you know, you could also do some ads maybe on TikTok or something. why don't you create a Tik Tok shop? So, we created a Tik Tok shop, which, you know, kind of sucked because it you have to switch from more of a personal account to a business account, you know, and you can't you can't do all the fun things. You can't have the fun music. So, I was a little bummed about that in the beginning. Um, but you were able to add all your product in there. And since we were some of the first ones doing Tik Tok shop, man, we really we took a beating for everyone else. I just want to say everybody owes us a big thank you because we got every violation every day, you know. slapping us down with everything. We were locked out. I mean, we had to we really had to go through it. Like everything we did was wrong. Like, I mean, it would just, you know, you're constant violation after constant violation after, you know, shipping issues with them, not with us. Uh, going through all these crazy rules they had. Tik Tok shops is very customer- centered. It sometimes can be a little bit hard for the shops on there and people selling because we have so many rules that we have to follow, but it can be very worth it and very lucrative. Um, you just got to play, you know, the game. Follow the rules on there, I'm sure, like you do on Amazon. Um, and, you know, you'll you'll be fine. But you also have to, you know, hold tight to your margins. And, uh, you know, for us, a little bit of it is, you know, a lot of people on TikTok want to, you know, drop the price and be, you know, flea market. And we just had to decide in the very beginning, you know, we're proud of what we have to offer. Um, you know, we can help you find the perfect fit for your body. I'm your personal shopper and I don't have to have everything at a discounted price. And so we just kind of had held firm to, you know, what our standards are in our shop and, you know, you can still, you know, you can still be successful on there. So are your customers mostly the mom crowd like the 25 to 45 or do you have do you cater to the kids sizes and to uh senior women stuff uh as well? Well, since I just turned 50 the other day, I feel like I'm a senior woman now. No, that's not that's But even, you know, you would be extremely surprised. So, when we first were on TikTok, you know, I thought it was going to be this young crowd. I thought it was going to be 20 and 30 year olds. Like, I'm having my daughters on there. I'm buying all the distressed denim. Um, and then we quickly realized we you're really attracting some of the same crowd. Now, I have different customers on TikTok than I do Facebook. Um, but I I still have a really solid 35 to 55. And then what we started noticing that was completely insane is we opened our brick and mortar. Um, and I would post a lot about our store there. I would, you know, tag Magnolia Texas. And, you know, I was telling the story at the at the conference. I had this woman come in. She was 78 years old. She was buying her first, well, actually, my other woman was 92 in there buying her first pair of jeans. But my 78-year-old that was in there walked in and uh, you know, she said, "I've never had a pair of jeans like this before. I'm interested. Can you show them to me?" I said, "Sure. How'd you find us? You know, I kind of always ask. She's like, "On Tik Tok." And I was like, "Oh, did someone show you Tik Tok video?" She's like, "Oh, no. I was on Tik Tok." I was like, "Really?" So, I started asking everybody that comes into my store. Overwhelmingly, new customers that come into my store over the age of 55 found me on Tik Tok and I am mind just blows my mind. So, so you you just said an important thing that I think a lot of people don't realize is that your audience on Tik Tok is different than on meta. So, do you have to market differently? Do you have to say different things in the live? Do you have to treat it differently? Because a lot of people just they they use especially with AI tools now. They're like just split this up into 68 pieces and make the format for each thing and just push it out there. And you c you can you can do that because you never know what's going to take off. But I'm telling you, I'm I'm a Facebook girl because of you know, I've been on there forever, but I Tik Tok's so much more fun. Um I can say whatever I want to say and you know, I have a lot of fun on there and you know, people on there tend to be more fun, light-hearted. You know, I post something on Facebook and I've got every Betty, Donna, and Karen on there critiquing everything that I'm doing, telling me I'm total crap. They hate my hair. They hate this. They hate that. And I'm like, "Whatever." And then on Tik Tok, they're like, "Hell yeah, girl. Rock that short." You know, they're just so much more fun on Tik Tok. Um, you know, and you can do whatever you want to do. And stuff goes viral that you have no idea why. And I mean, it's just Tik Tok is definitely a ton more fun. Um, but you don't have the control that you have on Facebook. And so it's a little bit of the wild west still. You know, it's only two years old, but you still have that tremendous organic growth that you can experience on TikTok like you can't on Facebook, but you do get a lot less information on your customers than you do on Facebook. And so that's still important to kind of keep that in mind. Um, stuff still has I mean just yesterday and today my videos have gone completely viral on Tik Tok and they hadn't in three or four months. So, it's such an enormous up and down on Tik Tok. You have to be prepared for that. You know, you might have a million half dollar one month, the next month is $400,000. How do you purchase inventory for that? Those massive swings like that. You know, you could just completely run out of inventory or you could expect to have a few more months like that, put everything you had into buying inventory for it, and you you could have a $100,000 month. How do you handle that? It's uh it's stressful, but uh it's uh it's crazy. It's and I think um I think having owned our own business for such a long time and knowing that there's going to be these wild swings and everything is still being a little conservative, taking a few risks, you know, kind of pressing yourself a little bit. You know, always having a little more inventory than you think, but being prepared that should this not sell, what am I going to do? Um, and just kind of always having the little bit of that plan and you know and and being able to coupon and live on nothing if you have to, right? No. Um, but it's, you know, Tik Tok's been successful for us, but we have to be very careful. Um, I've seen it put some people out of business. What do you do if you have $400,000 worth of inventory and something goes viral, like something just you just said went viral and you could have sold $2 million worth? Do you do you put them on a wait list? you just stop but or do you I know you can't you can't take the sale on Tik Tok but can you say hey um because it's got to ship within you know whatever the rules are you say we have scan this QR code and uh we'll get put you on an email list and when they come back in stock in two months uh we'll we'll notify you or we'll notify you on that you really you can't in a video they'll take that down you know you'll get in trouble for that um you literally go in a room and sit down and cry and wish you had $2 million worth inventory um and try and hope that you know you you can you know reorder it in time and get here and cut the gene again. It's going to take you four months, but you could you can go back to those old videos like we just did. My videos that just took off the last couple days, of course, um was a product that went viral for us previously. Um and we was able to go back. What I'll do is go make some videos replying to comments on that, you know, video that says, "When are these going to be back in stock again?" I'll go reply, make new videos, and say, "Girl, they're here. We're back, baby. Let's go." And kind of those kind of things. Um, and try to get that going again. So, I mean, it's playing the stock market. There's a lot of people that, uh, are having problems with Tik Tok shop, one reason or another. Can you tell us a little about a bit about the dos and the don'ts? What should people do? What shouldn't they do? Um, so, uh, so for Tik Tok shock, especially if you're selling on there, um, you follow the follow the rules. You know, go on there, read everything, see how quickly you have to ship everything out. Make sure that you have the ability to ship it out. Um, and then get your stuff listed correctly. You know, photograph it like they're asking you to photograph it. Um, your descriptions like they're asking you to describe it. Uh, make sure it's a great product. And then, um, you know, just follow the rules and start making some videos. and you know see what happens. All right. How are the returns for you in clothing? I mean I I know I think Yeah. Yeah. What do what do you do with returns? Are you able to do you donate them? Do you resell them as uh gently used or what what do you do with the return? So it really depends just like any store would. You know if the return comes back in clearly it's brand new. All the tags are on it. There's no odor. Someone obviously has not worn it. Um you know you can resell that product just like a store. if it comes back in and it's damaged um you know then we have to file an appeal with Tik Tok to not refund that person because you know they should not have been allowed to return that. We donate a lot of stuff um on there. You know we we have a bucket of stuff people in the warehouse here can take home if they want to take it home. Um but you know it's kind of the same as any store would really do. But you know take returns suck for clothing. But the the benefit about the way that we do this though is I'm making a video. I'm putting the clothing on. If you, you know, between our good description, which we have, and between me verbally describing the product as I'm wearing it, as a like a personal shopper, you should have a better idea of how that product is going to fit you. Now, of course, we know nobody listens or reads crap. Um, and you know, they're like, I thought this was, you know, a capri, but it's, you know, a flare and I'm pissed. And you're like, well, if you'd read anything or watched the video or listened to me, you would know exactly what it was, but, you know, nobody does. So, you know, that's the hardest part about clothing. Clothing is a very high return item on there. You have to account for that. Um, and the better you are at photographing your product, doing your video, and your description, the better off, you know, the customers are going to be. I don't want people to have to return stuff. It's a hassle. I don't like to return anything. I want them to be happy the first time they get it. I wonder if you could integrate the new Google technology you just announced two weeks ago, the tryon technology into your app or something where you could through an API and actually let them I think that could cut the return in half probably. Yeah. No, absolutely. And the interesting thing about this is the cool part about what we do on our app and u my lives we have a less than 3% return rate for clothing on my app which is insane. Um, it's amazing because I, my customers listen, they watch the show, they know the sizing, we're good about explaining it to them. On Tik Tok, we have a 19 to 21% return rate. So, it's, you know, your customer is your customer. Um, you know, my app customers are my favorite people in the whole world because they know me, they listen, they know the fit, they pay attention, and, you know, they trust what I'm selling them because they know me. And so, that's why I love, you know, my app so much and those customers. Tik Tok, like I said, is the wild west. you know, you've got someone at work watching Tik Toks, not reading or watch, you know, listening to anything randomly ordering stuff on there. Um, you know, who don't who doesn't know me and doesn't understand sizing. And that's why we have such a high return rate for Tik Tok, but that's typical across the board for clothing. So, it's not, you know, that's I think Amazon has a very high return rate for clothing as well. Yeah, they do. You know, I've got to give a hats off to anybody who does live selling, any creator out there that's doing it live. But you're doing this on uh Facebook, you're doing this on Tik Tok. What are the the tools and the setup or again like we talked about it a little bit before even the mindset to go out there and just to do it live? Um it's a performance. So it's funny because my my husband and my kids, they call it, you know, live Tiffany or not live Tiffany. There's definitely a switch that goes on. You know, I can literally be like miserable, falling asleep, don't want to do this. I like it just don't. And I will turn that camera on and I'm like, "Hey, oh my gosh, how you guys doing tonight? Everybody jump on. Say hi, Norm. How are you?" Like, "What's the temperature there in Canada?" You know, just kind of that kind of thing. And you just go and you go and you go and you go and then you turn it off and it's like 11:30 at night and you're like, I'm wired. Like, I cannot go to like you're you just gave a whole performance. It's like you've got to come down off this high of performing before you go to bed. But um it is it's I I think it's I think it's just so much fun. I love it. But the setup's crazy. You know, I could I I mean show you about, you know, I have a TV. I broadcast to this TV so I can see the comments larger because I'm old now and I don't want to read them off the the computer. So I actually mirror it to a big large TV so I can see and control everything. I've got big ring lights. Um and it's really just my laptop. But you know what's crazy is, you know, we had a hurricane last year that came through. We didn't have power at our building for um three weeks. I still had to work. You know, we'd throw stuff in something, go drive out to where we could get some power. We've gone live from everywhere from hotel rooms when I go on vacation. I take a suitcase with me because all I need is my my phone. Literally, all I need is my phone to make money and go live. Um, my husband was in Time Square with my son, had seen the Conor McGregor fight and had a whole suitcase full of stuff in Times Square and went live and sold it. And now that was just kind of for like the fun factor of the whole thing. Um, but you know, they can expect kind of crazy stuff like that from us. And I think that that's why they love it too is, you know, I can be at my house or I can be up here at the warehouse. I can go live on vacation. I can I go to market and go live with vendors literally at market. Um, and uh, it's it's it's kind of a cool thing and you know, I think that's why people follow that because they love it. Now, a quick word from our sponsor, Lavanta. 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I mean, you're obviously having success with it, but you go to China, like 70 80% 70 to 80% of the they won't buy unless they've talked to a person or they've seen them live versus here, it's hard. QVC just opened up something on on Tik Tok shop where they're doing like 247 QVC now on Tik Tok shop and and there's a lot of people that tried it like on Amazon and there's a few success stories, but the vast majority it's just not working. Well, you know, and Tik Tok can't figure out either. And we try to tell them, but they don't listen. They can't they Tik Tok honestly can't figure it out either. And and truly, I wish they would a little bit listen to us cuz I feel like we we have we know we've been doing this for so long. People on Tik Tok are on there to scroll. They want short form video. Um they want to be entertained for a few seconds and then they want they're not going to sit there and watch lives. The reason why lives have taken off uh in a lot of other countries is because of access to everything. you know, in China, which my parents live there for 12 years, so we've been there quite often. Um, you know, there's so much that's rural. There's access to things and now it's opened up this whole world to people in other countries that they never had the ability to purchase these things. So, they're purchasing everything live because they can get it now. In the US, we're used to just all this independence. Um, you know, we um, you know, we jump in our car and we go to the store, we touch and feel everything. We have the ability to do that. We have the ability to drive somewhere and go get it. And we still love that independence. We're always going to shop online. We still get stuff online, but we aren't the online shoppers that people are everywhere else in the world. So, how do we counter that? I mean, what you're doing it, but how do how do how does someone listening to this like what what do they need to be doing? Uh, it needs to be personable. It needs to be why why purchase from from you? I can I mean if I can jump in my car and go get it at Target or I can get it wherever. Why do I want to sit in the comfort of my own home and on my phone go ahead and order it from you know Tiffany. Um and part of that is obviously that community it's going to be that I know you know it's going to fit you. I'm bringing stuff that you don't have access to. That's part of it. I can show you a whole world of you know different things that you can't go get at Target. It's got to be different. It's got to be unique. You have to give them a reason to purchase from you. Um and you know it they have to they have to trust that. So, China also um there's a lot of skepticism. People don't want to purchase from someone that it's not done correctly, that doesn't feel familiar. So, a lot of times you have a lot of Chinese sellers that try to sell to Americans and it's it's not right. Like people the wording is not right, the images aren't right, the it's it's wrong. And every and people feel that. They're like they don't trust it. Um, and so they can't quite figure out how to overcome that yet. Now, I guess part of what you're doing as well is keeping your energy high. I mean, it's I don't know, Kevin, but it looks like, you know, Tiffany has a little bit of energy. So, when you're out there and you're selling and you're selling yourself, you got this big community around you. What happens uh if one of those days you wake up and you just don't feel like you're burnt out, put it that way? I mean, it definitely happens. It happens a lot. You sure can. You should absolutely get burned out. Um and uh you know, but the other part of that, too, is just that responsibility um that this is this is my job and I have people who count on me and if I don't go to work every day, um they don't have anything to do. If I'm gone and take vacation for a week and I don't sell anything, what do the people in my warehouse have to pick and ship? So, there's a responsibility that's on me to make sure that these people have a have a job. Um, and I take that really seriously. And so, you know, I wake up every day thinking if I don't go to work today, people are unemployed. So, uh, you know, that's part of it. The other part of it is, you know, just having been through a lot with always being entrepreneurs in our own business. You know, we've been in places, like I said, when we've couponed that we went for a whole summer where I literally couldn't feed my kids anything but scrambled eggs cuz I didn't couldn't afford anything else. Um, and I hated that feeling. I hated it. It it it was it was so terrifying and so scary and we've you know we've been through so much like that that I don't ever want to feel that again. And so some of that is just a drive that um it's I I'm terrified that that could happen again or that to have that feeling again or not to be able to take care of my family or the people that work for me. Um and it also is just like I'm lucky that I get up and get to do something that I just love every single day. Now you're doing you're reselling other people's stuff now. Are you trying to make a move towards more of your own brand and leverage this audience and this community into your own brand where the margins are a little bit better and maybe you have a little bit more control and someone's not going to cut cut you off cuz they're like we're going to go direct now and you can't we're not going to sell to you anymore or Definitely. Yes. And we've done that in the past. We had our own clothing line for a little while there back in the very beginning when we got out of Lulao. Um, and you know, and and we're going to bring that back again. Um, but you know, part of the appeal for some my customers is that I'm launching 40 brand new products a day. I can't source all that. Um, or I can't produce all of that on my own. And so, you know, part of the appeal for our customers is that there's going to be something different constantly. You're never going to see the same thing. Um, but also with that, it means my margins aren't as great. um you know I'm I'm dependent on other people or you know always sourcing those new products and new and stuff all the time. So you know there's definitely a move to do that. I think for us the bal there's going to be a little bit of a balance where it's going to be our own stuff, but then also of course bringing in those other things so that I can have a big variety of things. And besides yourself, you have you have other creators that are out there posting videos and they're basically affiliated affiliating in um you have quite a few of those. Are they volunteers? Are they paid? Well, do you do you do something special for them? It's a program through Tik Tok. So, Tik Tok has their own affiliate program that you can um you know offer a commission on um that you can offer samples on. They can buy samples from you and then it's up to you to kind of nurture that program. Now, we got really lucky in the very beginning of that and when we were all trying to figure out Tik Tok, I mean, I managed our Tik Tok, you know, by myself and you, everybody can do their own shop by themselves. We just kind of started in the beginning of, you know, us sitting around a table getting violation after violation, screaming our heads off at Tik Tok trying to figure out what to do. And a couple of us just jumped in and we're like, "Okay, you you manage the inventory on Tik Tok and and signing up for like the campaigns, you know, you uh you know, to Skyler, how about you just kind of pay attention to the affiliates right now. I'm going to worry about the violations and let's see if we can figure out how to work this because it was brand new." Skyler um just took it upon herself to just really create this very cool affiliate program that we have um within Tik Tok and then we've made it our own. Anyone could do it. Um but Skyler has really nurtured it. You know, most brands don't spend the time that Skyler does personally texting the girls that post stuff for us or the ladies that post stuff for us, thanking them, you know, making sure they're getting the right sizes, you know, sending them thank yous, this kind of stuff. I think brands are they just they honestly I've heard horror stories of how they treat you know the people that want to be affiliates but I think as a blogger me being an affiliate and me being kind of an influencer back in the day you know I started in 200 2009 um you know as I I was an an influencer for Dole. I created recipes for them way back in the day where they'd pay me per post. So, I think having had that experience and actually being where the creators are um now, you know, and just kind of relaying that to Skyler, she's just done such a beautiful job of really nurturing that affiliate program for us and really creating that community within our affiliate program. So, if they have other people that they could work with, other people who sell the same thing as me, why do they want to post mine and not someone else? Well, because, you know, we actually care and we're going to send them the right size. Um, and we'll follow up with them and, you know, make sure that there's nothing else that they need. That's what I like. The community is not just your customers, it's that loyalty to those creators as well. So, your vendors. I do have a another question for you. This is completely outside of Tik Tok. So, I've got a couple of friends. I've got well I've got Kevin but but I do have some friends that did I think completely opposite of you uh and that is they've had retail outlets the bricks and mortar they started to sell online this is years ago and they're no longer um with bricks and mortar they just went all online. So, if I heard you correctly, you've done the online, now you've you're starting to build the bricks and mortar. Isn't that a money pit? We kind of do the opposite of everybody else. I think um so, you know, I never had a dream. You know, these girls have dreams of having this beautiful brick-andmortar store of a boutique. I never did. I don't like people in person. I like being online. I don't want to have to talk to anybody. Like, unless it's this, I'm cool with this. But if I have to talk to you in person, I'm so awkward and I always say the wrong thing and do the wrong thing and I would just prefer to be online. Um, but right there was a strip center, old one. They tore it down, built a new one. There was a store, you know, spot right there. We were like, hm, why not? I would love it if local people had a place. I didn't even care if it was cute or not. I was like, I would love it if they had a place to come in and try on denim. Um, so men might not experience this, but for women, buying denim online is terrifying. you never know how it's gonna fit. You don't know if your butt's gonna look big or not. You don't know if you're gonna look cute or not. So, you know, if you can try them on in person, uh it's such a better experience. So, I thought, you know what? I don't even care if I make any money at this. I just want a place where women can try on denim in person and then they'll be confident to know what size they wear and they'll want to purchase online. That is my whole goal is to get them to go on my app or to go on my website. Well, you know, we put the store in. I didn't never done retail. I didn't know that I built a huge massive store. I had no idea. I just thought that's what I thought the space was great. So, we ended up with this massive retail store. Um, and it's taken off and exploded and it's a fantastic business on its own. But, you know, we like to use it as a funnel a little bit. You know, we tell them we don't we can't put all of our denim in there. We can't put all of our shoes. Only about 3 to 5% of anything ever makes it over to the store. So, you know, if they want, you know, all of everything we have to offer and we launch everything first on the app, come on to the app. You can do local pickup. Um, but shop the app. I just want them to be confident in the size jeans that they need. They can try them on in the store and then when we launch something on the app or online, they're more confident purchasing it there. Um, and they have a wider variety. Oh, you have about 20,000 SKUs, right? Something like that. Is that what you told me? Active right now we have about nine 9,000 active just different things. And then you're doing with with these creators like what you were mentioning a minute ago, you're kind of lucky because a lot of people and that are product selling, especially from the Amazon world, they don't have these creators. They don't have a brand or something that people know. So they're you having to use software tools or companies that go out there and recruit for them versus you have a built-in audience that loves the product and so they're going into the Tik Tok creator center and like how can I do this product for myself? So that's a major advantage where they're coming a lot of them a lot more of them are coming to you probably than you going to them. It's overwhelming. And I will also say though I tried to tell everybody um it is Tik Tok is I mean it is all anyone wants to do is be a creator on there. So if you have a product on Tik Tok and you make a few good videos and they see your product, people will come to them. They don't have to use software. They don't have to use the company. you know, there's a ton of companies out there that want to charge you, you know, a ton of money to go find these affiliates for you, and you could do that for a little while. Um, or, you know, or check it out, but honestly, if you've got a decent product on there and you're making some decent videos, um, you know, there's going to be there's going to be people coming to you. Hey, Kevin King and Norm Ferrar here. If you've been enjoying this episode of Marketing Misfits, thanks for listening this far. Continue listening. We 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? Well, this is an old guy alert. Should I subscribe to my own podcast? Yeah, but what if you forget to show up one time? It's just me on here. You're not going to know what I say. I'll 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. Yikes. 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. Make sure you don't miss a single episode because you don't want to be like Norm. Uh, one thing I do like to tell people is I'm like, "Everybody's on Tik Tok. Your your spouse's friends are on TikTok. Your children's friends are on TikTok. They all want to be creators. Go make some videos. Have them make some videos or have them come be an affiliate for you. Have them sign up with you and have them post some videos. Get started that way. Kind of get the ball rolling with that. Um, and uh, you know, it's people will come to you on TikTok. All right. So, yeah. Go ahead. Nor. Well, I was just going to say we're coming up to the top of the hour and I was just wondering uh what's next for Tiffany and Emil. Oh my gosh. Um wow. Uh you know um some of our own products of course. Um and you know we've we've even talked about another brick and mortar. Um you know we have dabbled in having other people live sell for us. uh it's very difficult to train and have somebody do that and to find people. It's a very um you know not everybody wants to sell live you know and it's not it's not for a lot of people they're not interested. So you know we've we've tried for so long to really you know find other people. It's a little bit hard but we're really going to kind of dig in this year you know so that I get a little bit of a break um and you know train some people to do to do that as well and just kind of see how that goes. But, you know, really it's just kind of taking care of our customers, taking care of our affiliates, and um, you know, just seeing what this year kind of, you know, we're still we're up well this year, which I'm excited about. I'm very proud of this business that way because a lot of people are not um I know this has been a struggle this year for a lot of people and especially in the boutique world, it has. So, we are just very um we're very grateful the spot that we're in. Um, and that, you know, we're holding tight and growing when a lot of people aren't. So, it's, you know, we're just kind of taking that really seriously and just digging in and, you know, doing what we need to do. Awesome. Anything else, Kevin? No, this is Yeah, I could keep going and talking to Tiffany for a couple more hours. This is this is fun. This is this is fun stuff, but uh No, we um we'll have to bring her back. Uh we'll have to bring her back after she gets the uh the private label lineup and a few other things, and we'll we'll talk about how things are going then. That'll be fine. Thank you. And and the hundreds of thousands of emails that she's not using right now. Exactly. Exactly. All right, Tiffany. I've got one job, and that is to ask our guests if well, our misfits if they know any misfits, you know. Um, as far as another another business maybe that I really admire that I think is fantastic who uh bust her ass. Is that kind of the Is that what you're asking me, Norm? Sure. Um, you know, I have um somebody that I grew grew up with in the blogging world. Um, her name is Lori. She has passionate penny pincher. Um, I've really admired this woman. She's very very unique. Um, she has built an empire for women and helps so many people with her just daily tasks and things that you do at home like planners and menu plans and recipe books and things that just save you money, save you time, make your life easier. Um, I've watched her really admired her for so many years and she just everything this woman touched turns to gold in my opinion. Um, I just have always uh just really admired what she's what she does. Oh, that's great. So, we'll be reaching out to her and thank you so much. Her website is Emma Lou Boutique. Emil's Boutique. Yes. Awesome. Okay. Appreciate it, Tiffany. Thank you. All right. So, I'm just going to remove you for a sec and we'll be right back. There we go. Uh, that that was cool. Um, you know, that's Dragonfish, you know, the company that you and I are about to announce to everybody where we're combining marketplaces and AI and social commerce. And that's the future. I mean, what she's doing, uh, especially with live stuff. I think it I don't know if it'll ever be as big. I don't think it'll ever be as big as it is in China, in the US, for a lot of the reasons that she said, but it it's there's plenty of open wide open space in that. And I think uh the the merging of those three things is going to be something that everybody's got to be paying attention to and and setting themselves apart. Uh and it's uh it's really cool to hear her story. Yeah. Very unique. Lots of energy. Loved it. Yeah. Just imagine when you were done trying to do your little live experiment. If you had that energy, Norm, you might still be doing it. Oh, yeah. Right. Really? Yeah. For sure. What was that challenge you had? It was like you you set yourself 100 100,000 followers uh in a year. We got to 10,000 on one and it was just a lot of work. This is on Amazon mostly though, right? Amazon live. Um because you set up that whole little studio and this is like a just to prove it to yourself kind of thing, right? Like 30 years ago. And I think we could have achieved it, but it was so much work. I It's just it wasn't my full-time job. And uh we were trying to do something really different and unique. But um if you put your mindset to it, this is a field that it ju and just like Tiffany was talking about, you know, create some good videos, good content, be consistent, and you can you can make a living. You can definitely make a living doing it. And if you're good at it, it's a solid living. But all of a sudden, like take a look at what Tiffany did. She's going out there. She's buying product. She's reselling it like a wholesale model. Uh, that's pretty cool. What we do with cigars? What's that? You could do that with cigars. You just every night when you go out for an hour, you could do story time with Norm and you're smoking your cigar and you're like, "Oh, this is a really good uh padrome." Uh, you know, this is the anniversary edition. Uh, the link is right down below in my bio. Um, if you like this, it's got a little chocolatey flavor. Just imagine how much free cigars and how much free stuff you could get. Normally, maybe I should start doing that. You just did that. You just got to do it when it's 27°, not when it's -7. And that's Celsius, by the way. Uh, cool, man. Well, if you like uh this podcast, uh, feel free to share it. You know, if you like Tiffany's story or you think someone will inspire them or they get some good stuff, uh definitely hit that forward link or share this podcast with someone that uh might benefit or at a bare minimum, make sure you subscribe to this channel here on YouTube or on Apple Podcast or Spotify. You know, we're here every single Tuesday with a new episode. Uh so hopefully uh you'll be back with us next Tuesday. And you know what? There's about 55 or so 60 maybe episodes in the uh that we've done since we launched this a little over a year ago and there's some awesome guests uh in there. So, make sure you go back and you check that check that out as well. And if you know sometimes some of you are a little busy and you don't want to do an hour uh long podcast, you should, you know, but uh if you don't, we have a new shorts channel, right, Norm? What's right over on YouTube? It's um marketing misfits marketing misfits clips and those are three minute and under. These are just nuggets that we take out of every podcast. Awesome. Well, I think that's uh that's it uh for this week. Uh we'll see everybody I guess again uh next week, right, Nor? I hope so. I hope so. You you better be here. Better be here or we're sending Tiffany after you. All right. Okay. That's it for today. We will see you Tuesday. next Tuesday. Take care everybody. [Music]