0 (2s):
Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs On Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like I Digress. Today, we'll be breaking down how to build a multi-million dollar business by developing brand loyalty to drop these value bombs. I brought Andy Schreiber into EOFire studios. Andy is co-founder of Pure Vitamin Club, Pure Coffee Club, and NSNG Foods along with his business partner, Vinnie Tortorich, a multi-time guest on Entrepreneurs On Fire is Fire Nation favorites. And today, Fire Nation, we'll be talking about using social media to build your profile. When it's time to add products to your current offerings, how do you utilize Amazon and also how to spend money the right way and cost effectively on both Facebook and Google.

0 (53s):
When we get back from thanking our sponsors, if you're generating seven to eight figures, plus from your website and you're not doing conversion optimization, you're leaving tons of revenue on the table. Visit ConversionFanatics.com for a free proposal today and tell them EOF sent you because traffic without conversions is just sad. The My First Million podcast features famous guests, discusses how companies made their first million and brainstorm new business ideas based on the hottest trends and opportunities in the marketplace. One recent app was all about how venture capitalists make money. Listen to My First Million, wherever you get your podcasts. Andy say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming a successful that most people disagree with.

1 (1m 38s):
One thing about becoming successful is that that is not the goal. That is not the destination. That is for me. The journey in that being successful does not. It doesn't satisfy what I want to do with my business. It's it's the, you know, the by-product of working hard and trying to do good with whatever.

0 (2m 5s):
So Andy, I gave an introduction of who you are, of what you have going on. And one thing that I'm personally curious about, I know Fire Nation will be as well as the fact that you took $20,000 and you turned it into a multi-million dollar enterprise. Tell us that story.

1 (2m 24s):
My partner, Vinnie tartar tonight started this back in 2014. It was an idea to offer a completely unique product on the market and turn it into something bigger, you know, starting slowly and, and building on that. We were told by everybody that we are wasting our time that entering the supplements market was highly competitive and there was just no way to break in no way to break through. And we said, okay, yeah, w we, we get it and you know, we're going to do it. And w we celebrated every little success along the way.

1 (3m 8s):
I mean, when we first launched after the, the initial kind of, you know, couple of days, cause we use as I I'm sure, you know, I don't know if your audience knows that Vinnie has a rather well listened to well followed podcast. And that was really our own. Our only marketing was just promoting it through the podcast. And then, you know, we did some email blasts to his email list, but we, we had $0 for marketing zero every last penny of that 20,000 that we invested was in building the website and building the infrastructure and research into our first product and then making our first product in a very small manufacturing run.

1 (3m 52s):
It was all we could afford. So every little success we, we, we celebrate it. So after the first, you know, couple of days where we sold probably, you know, maybe 75, 80 units, and we were thrilled that, that, you know, went that well, the first couple of days for the first like year, we had a thing where, you know, we'd get on the phone with each other and say, oh my God, it was a double digit day. We sold 10 units. We couldn't believe. And so we would completely celebrate if we sold 10 units in one day and we said, look, we're going to take this slowly. We're not going to take on any debt because we don't know if we take on debt, how we're going to pay it back.

1 (4m 36s):
So we're going to build this thing, you know, super, super slowly, which is, which is what we did. And we waited a year and a half before we even added a second product, because that's when we could afford to do it. We continued to market just with Vinnie's podcast and, you know, occasional email and some social media, which is, you know, basically,

0 (5m 5s):
Well, let's hone in on that now because the podcast was the obvious go-to, but then you guys were able to use social media effectively. Talk about how you did use social media to build your profile.

1 (5m 16s):
The important part of that is we, when we went to social media, we weren't always just hammering away at, you know, what seemed like pitching, you know, we didn't want to always be pitching, pitching, pitching. So we used social media to establish some brand loyalty by giving out information. Some of it might've seemed, you know, directly related to our product and some of it wasn't. So we would put out posts and, and videos and, you know, just text or pictures with tips about specific vitamins.

1 (5m 56s):
Here's some information, maybe something you didn't know about vitamin B12, here's something you didn't know about magnesium, but then also, you know, did you know that if you do this kind of an exercise, you can help with this situation. So we tried to become a place that people would come to our social media feeds for information rather than, oh, there they are. Again, you know, pitching me, pitching me, pitching me. Cause people get very weary of that very quickly. They want to see that there is some value coming to your social media, that you're not just always there with your handout. No

0 (6m 29s):
One thing that you've done very effectively is you knew when it was time to add a products to your current offerings. Like a lot of people either wait too long or they do it too soon. How do we know when it's the right time? When we have something that's working in this clicking, you know, people are loving it on the podcast. They're digging it in social media because you're adding value. And you're like, you know what? Now it's time to add a product extension. How do you figure that out?

1 (6m 55s):
First of all, when can I afford to do this without jeopardizing my ongoing business? So if it's going to take me, you know, X, thousands of dollars, it's going to take me $25,000, 50,000, whatever it is to develop and order and you know, manufacturer and label and market and come up with all the things that go into an, a launch of a, of a product, doing the label, doing the advertising. Can I afford to do that on the assumption that I won't sell a single unit of it? And until you can do that, we didn't, we never did it. We always assumed we'll never make this money back.

1 (7m 37s):
You know, we never intended that to happen, but we had to do it in such a way that, you know, taking the leap to a new product, wasn't going to damage us financially. That's number one. Number two is we listen to our customers. If somebody likes one of your products to begin with, they will inevitably start asking, you know, do you have any plans for this related product? You have a multivitamin, do you have plans for a vitamin seed? Do you have a plans for a vitamin D a for a magnesium? So you listen to them, you look at the market in general, what are the best selling kind of brand extensions does, you know, does a calcium sell as well as the magnesium?

1 (8m 24s):
What is, what is the market looking for? And then finally, what can you bring to a specific product that nobody else can, how do you, if you're deciding that your next product, like our second product was a magnesium. And we said, look, there are a lot of magnesium products out there. How do, how do we come up with a magnesium that we can tell people is the best on the market and, and pull them away from whatever brand magnesium they are using. So until feel confident that we can put out a product that is unique, that is marketable. That is what people want, that we don't do it.

0 (9m 3s):
Fire Nation. I always say, when you're the number one solution to a real problem in this world, people will beat a path to your doorstep when you're the number one solution to a real problem that they have, and they will ignore the second best solution through infinity. People want the best. They want the best solution to their real problem. So you need to sit down and say, what are the things that I can become the number one best solution to in go all in on that. And we have a lot more to talk about when we get back from thanking our sponsors, the new year is here. And my guess is that you have big goals set for you in your sales team. Over the coming months from new projects to bringing in more leads a new year can often feel like a totally new start, but let's not forget the most important part, arming your team with the best tools so they can focus on giving your customers the best experience possible.

0 (9m 56s):
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0 (10m 38s):
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0 (11m 19s):
So you can get more customers scale up your traffic faster and see an increase in revenue. Best part is they make it super easy. They handle everything. Go to ConversionFanatics.com for a free proposal today and tell them EOS sent you because traffic without conversions is just sad. That's ConversionFanatics.com. Andy we're back. And I want to talk about Amazon for a second here because a lot of people think Amazon is just the obvious go-to because they're so big. They have so many clients, so many customers, they have this like really great logistical warehouse system, all this jazz and there's pros and cons to Amazon. Like there isn't everything in life, but how can we build our business on Amazon?

0 (12m 1s):
Should we build our business on Amazon? Talk to us about this.

1 (12m 5s):
First of all. Yes, absolutely. You should. I have to confess that when we first started our business, we had no intention of going on Amazon. We didn't think a that it would be good for our brand or B, that it, that we would be able to succeed and break through. There. It's such, it's so competitive there everybody is on Amazon, but we were approached very early in our business. I don't think we were, we were about six months in, from our launch date. When we were approached by a company, they were a fairly young company, still who specialized in setting up people on Amazon, you know, getting you positioning all of that. And they came to us with a very appealing offer for how they could do it for us with no initial investment, they would cover the costs of, of all the initial listing and developing, and then take a portion of our, of our proceeds.

1 (12m 59s):
And we thought that there's zero to lose there. And it worked out extraordinarily well. We didn't expect anything we thought, okay, we'll sell a few units here and there, but we're not going to break through. We've now, you know, literally made millions of dollars off of Amazon and it's on an annual basis that accounts for about 25% of our overall revenue, the way we've done, that is a couple of things we have worked. I am not an expert on how to market in inside of Amazon. I couldn't do this and I wouldn't have been successful. We wouldn't have been successful on this without using an expert.

1 (13m 41s):
So that's number one. If you can find somebody who can, you know, who knows how to work Amazon and can work with you for a percentage of your revenue. And you've got enough of a margin that you can afford, that that's a great investment, because they will know how to use the, you know, the, the workings of Amazon to your advantage, to build the brand. And that's more than anything. What that exercise has been for us, even though, as I said, it's, you know, it's a big portion of our revenue at about 25%. It's even more valuable to us as a brand awareness builder.

1 (14m 23s):
So brand registry, if you can get enough traction in Amazon to get brand registered, it's gonna help your success tremendously because a you're going to prevent the kind of people who go in and somehow get ahold of your product at a discount and then sell it at a jacked up price, which, you know, makes it very difficult for people to find you properly, you know, within the Amazon universe. And when you're brand registered, you can short circuit, a lot of that stuff cause you, you know, nobody else can put anything on with your brand. That's number one. Number two is it enables you to use some of the, the tools within Amazon to build that kind of brand loyalty and cross promote from one product to another.

1 (15m 11s):
Our intention from the get go with Amazon, which has actually born out is that people come to, will find us on Amazon. You know, that we're going to reach people that we would never, ever reach on our own because people will search within Amazon. You know, we, we did all the kinds of tricks to build up our reviews, which is an important thing. So we get more, more people will find us more easily. The more reviews we have, they will get used to us. They'll try our products. They will like them. We're confident enough in our product that we know people will love them when they have them. And then they'll do what I always do when I find something on Amazon that I like, if I got, I really like this product, I wonder if I can get this direct somewhere for less.

1 (15m 58s):
So we actually price our product a little higher on Amazon than we do on our own website, because we want people don't listen to Amazon. We want people finding us there and then figuring out, oh, I really like this product. And if I go and subscribe on the, you know, the 90 day plans that we have on Pure Vitamin Club.com, we can get this cheaper and we can set it up. And, you know, yes, we have, there's a subscription module on Amazon too, but it's more expensive and they have less control when they're dealing with us directly. They can call us and email us directly and we can handle the customer service in a way that Amazon's really not equipped to

0 (16m 39s):
Good stuff there. Fire Nation. You need to take that applied to your business, your situation, and figure out is this the path for me? And if it is, hopefully you can be to follow some of this great advice. Now it is easy Andy to spend a lot of money when it comes to paid advertising and to, to just see that money waste away. So how can we use advertising on Facebook in Google cost effectively

1 (17m 4s):
Pay-per-click is a wonderful thing because you're really, you're not paying anything until people actually look at your listings. And that doesn't mean that everybody that looks at is going to buy, and you have to figure out who your target is, who you're trying to reach through Facebook and, and Google and how best to reach them. So what our, you know, and again, this is a situation where I personally do not have the expertise nor do I have the time to invest in, you know, figuring out all of that, who our targets are and what the messages are.

1 (17m 46s):
So I use a marketing consultant and that's why we didn't do any of any Facebook advertising or Google advertising for the first few years, because we didn't have the means really to do what we had to do it through, you know, promoting our brand loyalty through social media, the podcast, everything else, pimping ourselves out, pardon the expression to other people's blogs and other people's podcasts, but basically getting as much kind of free advertising, free promotion as we could, until we could afford to pay somebody to handle these, these things for us in a way that would be much more effective than what we could do once we could.

1 (18m 29s):
The secrets to that have been figuring out exactly how to fine tune our targets. For example, we have one of our products that we introduced a couple of years ago is a children's multivitamin that we introduced. And we're probably still the only one on the market. That's, that's not some sort of a sugary delivery system. It's not a gummy or a chewable or anything. We've done very, very small capsules that children can swallow or, you know, open up and sprinkle in their yogurt or applesauce or whatever. So we, we developed a message for that.

1 (19m 10s):
And our marketing team looked at how are we going to, who are we going to market this to? So we do a couple of different things. We look at what's called lookalike audiences. So we look for people who buy similar products and we can do that, you know, rather narrowly and, and, and get a very good hone in on those people. So that those are people that we're, we're looking at and, and making sure that our message comes in front of, then we go like really specific, for example, with the children's we looked at, we, we selected several different targets of people that, that follow specific cartoon characters, you know, like Peppa Pig versus Sesame Street versus that one versus the other one.

1 (20m 5s):
And, you know, we found that for whatever reason, the most responsive audience that we reached were those who follow Peppa Pig. We don't have kids and you might not know this, but that's just a cartoon character. There are a lot of merchandising around a lot of cartoons. And for some reason, the Peppa Pig audience loves our, our product. Then within that, we try a couple different messages, you know, a couple of different versions of the ad, different backgrounds, different texts, sometimes a little video, sometimes a little gifts. And we start very, very small to do like some split testing. So you know, it now we've tried these three, four different audiences.

1 (20m 49s):
Let's try with each one of those audiences, these two or three different messages, let's see which one brings back the best response rate and the lowest, you know, cost per sale. What's the best return. Once we find the best returns, we, you know, maybe even split test a little bit more to refine it. Once we find something that works a message that works within a target audience that works, then we scale it up. So if we know that if we use, you know, version a of our ad and we're targeting the Peppa Pig audience, and we know that on average, for every $2 that we spend on, on clicks, we're going to make back enough money to cover not only the cost of the clicks, but the cost of goods, right?

1 (21m 48s):
So that if we sell 50 units based on that ad the cost of the advertising, plus the cost of the goods and the cost of the shipping, everything else that goes into that, we're still in the black, because once I know that that is working, that we're in the black on, by average using this advertising message to this audience, I'll ramp that up as quickly as I can, because I know that the more I do that, the more I'll make, if it's underperforming a little bit and for every, you know, hundred dollars that I make in revenue, it's costing me between, you know, what I'm paying for the paper clicks and cost of goods. It's costing me $120.

1 (22m 30s):
Then I've got the wrong message or the wrong audience, because, you know, I can scale that up all I want, and it's just going to cost me more money. It's not going to be advantageous at all

0 (22m 39s):
Fire Nation, a lot of takeaways there, a lot of things to say, you know what? This would make sense in my business if I applied it in this specific manner. So Andy, a lot of value bombs, you drop let's really bring it home for our, our audience here today. What do you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from our entire conversation that we had here today? Then give us the best way that we can connect with you in the call to action you have for our listeners. And then we'll say,

1 (23m 6s):
Build brand loyalty, do that by offering value above and beyond your, whatever your product or services, make sure that people look to you as a resource for information, people are very, very hungry for information. Then build your brand slowly without incurring unnecessary debt or risk. That's been very key to our business model. We've not that we're, you know, so-called risk averse, but we're, you know, we're risk intelligent. I would say risk cautious. We never put ourselves in jeopardy as a company.

1 (23m 46s):
Number three, be creative about your brand extensions. You know, we took Pure Vitamin Club and shortly after we decided that we could exploit that our success and our, our, the loyalty of our customers into some completely different areas. So that's when we, couple of years after we started Pure Vitamin Club, we started Pure Coffee Club with the same model. And then just last year we started NSNG Foods where we're doing a completely different product. It's a food product. They were a little pouches of a nut butter mixture that fits well with the lifestyle of people who follow our vitamin business because it's, it's, you know, low carb.

1 (24m 33s):
It includes electrolytes. It's a great healthy product. We knew that our customers would go for that. So that's enabled us to go in a completely different direction and grow the business horizontally as well as you know, the years we've spent vertically building it, they can connect with me at andy@purevitaminclub.com. I'm happy to answer anybody's questions or any of that. And, you know, call to action. Check us out at purevitaminclub.com, atpurecoffeeclub.com and at NSNG Foods.

Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And you've been hanging out with AS and JLD today. So keep up the heat and head over to EOFire.com, just type Andy in the search bar. The show notes page will pop up with everything that we've been talking about here today. And Andy, thank you for sharing your truth, knowledge value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute your brother and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey, Fire Nation today's value bomb content was brought to you by Andy and Fire Nation. Are you ready to rock your very own podcast? Check out our free podcasting course, where I will teach you how to create and launch your podcast for, for free. freepodcastcourse.com. freepodcastcourse.com.

0 (25m 51s):
I'll catch you there, or I'll catch you on the flip side. If you're generating seven to eight figures, plus from your website and you're not doing conversion optimization, you're leaving tons of revenue on the table. Visit ConversionFanatics.com for a free proposal today and tell them EOF sent you because traffic without conversions is just sad. The My First Million podcast features famous guests, discusses how companies made their first million and brainstorm new business ideas based on the hottest trends and opportunities in the marketplace. One recent app was all about how venture capitalists make money. Listen to My First Million, wherever you get your podcasts.