Transcription

• Speaker #0

  I have yet to see a playbook that's not coming from some of the top brands on how to consistently scale your TikTok shop growth. And really the way I see it is most of it revolves around building greater relationships and community, which is a playbook that's existed for a long time. Like I've very rarely seen a proper experience where the brand gives the creator a reason to post again. The way I look at TikTok shop in terms of your overall business is very complimentary. Like if you're spending $10,000 to find the best creative you're going to run on a meta partnership ad that spends $10,000 a day in a 3X ROAS, wouldn't you be comfortable at least spending like 15% of the budget to find that so that budget can spend even better?

• Speaker #1

  Don't even say it.

• Speaker #2

  I don't,

• Speaker #1

  I don't want to hear it. I'm sitting here looking at Google Maps, and it says, over where you live, and you know, Toronto, I thought it was Ontario. Hey,

• Speaker #2

  that's the name of the province.

• Speaker #1

  The lake here, I'm looking, literally on the screenshot it says, Lake America. What's going on? What happened to Ontario? Did they just, they changed the name of it? I really want to get in one of those. People come in and say, hey, why don't you just take the knife out of my back now? Oh, man. Oh, the influence, the influences of what one person can do is crazy.

• Speaker #2

  Absolutely. It can change perception just like that.

• Speaker #1

  Isn't that what people are doing on TikTok? Where you have these big creators and these big influencers that are like. putting something out there whether it's true or not and that's where most people are getting their news they're getting their information they're discovering new products i don't know how many things i've bought off tiktok that i would have never bought if it hadn't come across my feet you're just at my house and i was like you give me a cigar mister for my breath i guess it was bad well that came from tiktok and i will have never gone looking for that i will have never actually probably even bought that but because somehow my tiktok knows i like cigars or my phone's listening to me or whatever i fit the profile boom here comes uh i think it's 100 bucks for two of those things they weren't cheap uh that i actually and i bought it and that's not the first thing i bought on tiktok i bought other things you know what's the other thing one time you're here and i gave you a little box you're like oh cool thanks uh give me some some candy and you open a box and a spider comes out. It's a fake spider on a little string. and it jumps out at you and you have people don't know you have a phobia of spiders that little prank toy came off of tiktok uh on my feed so the power of actually getting someone to promote you on tiktok and sell your products has

• Speaker #2

  the potential to be lucrative and get you out there doesn't it i'll never give me another spider as long as you have never I feel like you're the gummies under there.

• Speaker #1

  You're going to rip it open and have spiders jump out. Don't hear a loud scream from the guest room of a spider jumping out. But I mean, speaking of someone jumping out, our guest today has been jumping out for like 15 years. If you're looking at social media or looking at TikTok, this is someone that's been under the hood. and see how... and seen how the sausage is made. So I think we're going to have some pretty good insights and tactics today. I think this will be interesting. You know this guy, too. You met him at Market Master, right? No,

• Speaker #2

  I'm not that another just subtle plug. Market Master. All right, let's bring him in.

• Speaker #1

  Salute.

• Speaker #2

  Hey.

• Speaker #1

  Salute.

• Speaker #2

  Salute, my friend.

• Speaker #1

  Salute. Salute.

• Speaker #2

  All right, let's bring him in.

• Speaker #0

  Hey, Sohan. What's going on? How's it going, guys?

• Speaker #1

  What's up?

• Speaker #0

  How are you? Good. Great to be on here. I wish I brought a Coke Zero,

• Speaker #1

  but I have this generic water bottle. That's all right. That's all right. Water's good. Yeah, that's what they say. All hers are good for you. So what's going on, man? Since last time we chatted, we saw your Market Masters last year. You missed the most recent one, but I know you've been... doing some different stuff still in the tiktok space right but now you got your own company going and uh you're out there you're in a conference or meetings or something right now so so what's the story man let's fill this yeah yeah i think last time we chatted it was at nashville um so that was cool we were talking about ai use cases uh for tiktok shop so recently started my own gig in

• Speaker #0

  the last couple of months um got the founder itch you know i was like employee number one at the last couple of tech startups I worked at around TikTok shop. And I was like with Claude Code coming out. I saw the opportunity where every marketer would become like a marketing engineer and really start getting into it. And I figured that that moment when you learn cloud code and you're like, oh, like this or Codex, and you know that you can start building your own apps and building your own software and hyper-personalizing all your marketing processes. When I felt that magic, I was like, everyone's going to feel it too. So I wanted to like get into that wave and like help other TikTok shop sellers and marketers, you know, learn how to do that.

• Speaker #1

  So what's that mean that Means instead of using a $500 a month tool, you're helping people build your own tools? Or what does that mean exactly?

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, so all these different tools that exist, I look at them as essentially like data repositories where it has all your TikTok shop affiliate information, your sales data, all the marketing angles you've used. These tools together all plug into different data sources. They help you get data from TikTok, TikTok shop. Instagram, they allow you to watch videos. And individually, they're all super complex. But usually marketers only want one to two things from each tool. And they have to string them together to create a hack or a process or things like that. So I really look at it as more of like tool orchestration, or like taking the different components of each tool, and kind of queuing them up in a way to do exactly what you wish one magic tool would do.

• Speaker #1

  And so this is all for TikTok shop or for selling in general e-commerce?

• Speaker #0

  This is just for TikTok shop. I felt like there was so much meat to chew on just for TikTok shop with coming up with new angles to give affiliates, measuring performance, forecasting growth, scoring your program. There's so much to do in there that I feel like I myself am still scratching the surface.

• Speaker #1

  So that's not enterprise level stuff And if you're using Codex or Cloud Code, that's good for a... personal like individual seller basis to kind of do run the system if they're smaller but it's not going to work if you're bigger enterprise level because that takes real coding and real engineering yeah and the enterprises aren't even allowed to use anthropic usually they have to like use gemini and

• Speaker #0

  things like that because of all the regulations so it's very easy to start a business nowadays you just need a cloud code subscription and the ability to convince someone that you know you might be able to deliver on your promise that's the way i look at it

• Speaker #1

  I know you worked at, you're doing some stuff with Yuka for a while. You're doing some stuff with Reacher, which are two of the software tools in the TikTok space. But before that, what you've been doing, selling in e-commerce and online stuff and coding, engineering stuff for a while. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

• Speaker #0

  Yeah. So my background is actually mainly in marketing. My first job ever was in like door-to-door sales, but then I went into like paid media. I did a lot of Facebook media buying, Google ads. and then started getting into creator commerce at a nine figure marketing agency I worked at. So I was doing a lot of, um, you know, creating UGC for meta ads that drove to Amazon with like, you know, the carbon six, like pixel media and like things like that back in the day, um, was doing a lot of traditional influencer affiliate with, um, LaVonta, Refersion, um, Impact, those guys are working a lot with creators there. And then TikTok shop came around and about, um, I think it was like early 2023. And they needed someone who understood how to work with creators to just pick it up and try it out. And so that was me. I was that person within the organization. So back then was working with a portfolio, about 15 brands, built out a team, SOPs. Failed a lot in the earlier days because it was definitely so hard to do and there was no playbook on it. But throughout that process, managed to build up a scaled service. Then got poached to be Yuka's head of growth, where I worked there on the software side. And for those who aren't familiar, Yuka is essentially a TikTok affiliate management tool that helps you find affiliates, nurture relationships, and gamify those relationships. So I was brought in to essentially help more users discover the benefits of that platform and use it correctly to grow their TikTok shop. And Reacher is another competitor to that, so doing similar things.

• Speaker #2

  I guess that playbook is constantly changing, isn't it?

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, 100%.

• Speaker #2

  Yeah. How often? Do you ever get to sit down and relax or are you constantly changing it?

• Speaker #0

  I honestly feel like the playbook, you know, there's like people say like, oh, I launched this course or there's this playbook. I think that playbook that they created had like an expiration date of like two months. You know, I feel like stuff is still getting really, really stable. I have yet to see a playbook that's not coming from some of the top brands on how to consistently scale your TikTok shop. growth. And really the way I see it is most of it revolves around building greater relationships and community. which is a playbook that's existed for a long time. But I think a lot of sellers, they want to like hack their way through. They want to use AI and automation to avoid the hard work of like sitting down with affiliates and teaching them what makes a successful piece of TikTok shop content. Because that's the only playbook that I see working. And there's no way around really automating that core job. You can automate everything around it, but that core job of just helping a creator learn how to create a very compelling sales-focused piece of content. That is the only playbook for TikTok shop, in my opinion.

• Speaker #1

  Hey, Norm, I've got a quick question for you. I'm trying to manage all my affiliate and creator programs from Amazon, from Shopify, from Walmart, but it's just a freaking mess. I mean, I've got reporting coming from here and there. There's all these different Slack messages. Do you know if there's like a unified dashboard where I can do this all in one place?

• Speaker #2

  Yeah, absolutely. And you're right. It is a mess. A lot of brands are complaining about that. But there is a place that has a solution. It's called Levanta. And they let brands recruit partners, track performance, manage payouts, send product samples, and even run creator programs across every major marketplace all in one place. And guess what? Brands can spend less time on tools and more time making profit.

• Speaker #1

  Is that the one that you sent me a link for, like a 10% off coupon, their gold or enterprise plan a few days ago?

• Speaker #2

  You got it.

• Speaker #1

  Oh, cool, man. I think I've got that link here. Was it levanta.io slash misfits?

• Speaker #2

  Yep, you got it.

• Speaker #1

  L-E-V-A-N-T-A dot I-O forward slash misfits. Awesome. I'm going to go hit them up right now and get that 10% off.

• Speaker #2

  Perfect. Me too. so what's the what's the formula small brand i'm talking about a small brand maybe a medium-sized brand they want to get on the tiktok shop is there a formula that they can use to at least help them to optimize whatever they're selling yeah yeah so i think it it

• Speaker #0

  begins on like selecting you know the right product Right. So you want to have a product that has decently good margin because you're going to be paying a lot out of your variable costs for creator commissions, commissions to the platform. You're going to be spending on ads. You might have to discount. So you have to have margin left over to play around with those incentives or growth levers. And then you have to be able to.

• Speaker #1

  What's a good number, a good margin number? I mean, it's not like you said, not all products are suited for TikTok. There's some other rules. We'll talk about that. But on the margins, it's... 70%? 80% after cost of goods sold? What kind of margin do you really need?

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, if it's cost of goods sold, not landed, as in not included shipping, I think like 80%. Maybe 75% is good, but I would say 80, 85. And with traditional affiliate categories, you see health and beauty always doing really, really well because those have the best margins there. So anything around that I think is really good. And then after that... You know, you basically want to make sure you have margin and that product is demonstrable on camera. So with TikTok, it's a very like visually coded, not as aesthetically coded as Instagram, but you want to be able to like walk your viewer through how the product looks. And even with the algorithm, what they're doing is they're spending more behind, you know, their ads mechanisms on products that are clearly shown on camera. So you don't want to have things where like the product is like highly edited and it's like altered with these effects and things like that. And if you're going to show the product very pure on camera, that product needs to be a natural fit. And you can think about things where in beauty, you have these creators putting like different tones of like, you know, mascara or like blush on there to like really show what it looks like and like blending it in. And you're able to see the magic of that product firsthand. So you don't want to like alter and hide that product. And if it's not something that's easily demonstrable on camera in at least a couple of minutes, that's also not a good fit. So selecting that right product is the real sauce.

• Speaker #2

  What about consistency? So what are you seeing? What's making it? What's not making it? You know, once a day, going for longer periods of time.

• Speaker #0

  In terms of the amount you post or how often?

• Speaker #2

  Getting the content out there. Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah. Yeah. So for me, this is a really, really big goal, but I like to tell people to work backwards from 10,000 videos a month. And like I did a correlation study with another, you know, TikTok shop creator app guy. And we found that when you post at least 5000 videos a month, that's where you're starting to hit $1 million in GMV a month. But it's like an exponential curve.

• Speaker #1

  That's between all the creators, right? Yes. So that's not 5,000 you making 5,000 videos. That's all your creators posting collectively 5,000. Yes, collectively all your creators posting 5,000.

• Speaker #0

  And like the top creators are usually posting on a single product if they really, really like it between like 15 to 21 times a week. Like they're really hitting it hard and they're invested because there's so many software elements you need to test. Like I have a friend who's a top 100 affiliate for window fans and he has one account out of his like six affiliate accounts where he just posts a window fan with a different gradient of lighting. And he's like A-B testing window fan lighting on one account where he's posting three different lighting gradients a day just to get the right lighting component of his script. And then you have your lighting, your hook, your audio. There's so many other things that go into it. But that's what the top affiliates are doing. They're A-B testing all the components. They're creating their own software with cloud code to track the other top 100 affiliates. And they're actually breaking down what works in their content and putting it into this content testing pipeline where they're going through each test and the best results of their subtests on each account. And then they're methodically going 15 to 21 times a week to vary the content at different posting times, different lighting, different audio, different selling points, right? They're doing these like micro sales angles in each piece of content to get to those high performing videos and get picked up. by the TikTok shop ads mechanism that the seller's using.

• Speaker #1

  So that's like an L7.

• Speaker #0

  Yes. Yeah. He has a bunch of accounts. He's doing like a million a year, I think in commissions for himself. So he's selling a ton.

• Speaker #1

  But that's a lot of freaking work. So how many creators are actually doing that level of work and actually understand the psychology of split testing and selling? to do that because a lot of them i've been to like the youtube show and and uh dallas uh and you know you get some up on the stage it's like yeah i'm doing seven million dollars and people ask a question well how many times you post oh i don't know well what'd you do uh you know i don't know i just did it and just was there um so so i'm looking i'm like you freaking just lucky person um but what what what what is it how many people actually go to that level on the creator side to do that level of what you just said, because 21 different videos, even doing those hooks. And a lot of these creators are editing this stuff themselves. That's hours and hours of work with not knowing what they're going to get paid for anything.

• Speaker #0

  So the way I like to look at it and like, you know, think about it with yourself, with your dream 100, right? Anyone who's like a top level entrepreneur has like their own little bit of spice, their own little bit of sauce, you know, they're all like doing things a little bit differently. And this guy's... The way this guy got into the top 100 is he's very technically proficient. Like this is a very analytical affiliate. For a typical creative, you're not necessarily thinking about all these analytical components or like building a scraping infrastructure to go and target the other affiliates and then putting that into a database. And then like not many affiliates are actually doing that. So that's just like one way of doing it. But other top affiliates I've talked to are L7 plus. They do have a team of like editors and other people helping them post. You know, they're not just doing TikTok shop, they're doing multiple channels and they have their career as an influencer. So their job is to turn the camera on and just create as much content as possible. And they're going to have a team behind them that goes and edits that, chops it up, posts it to their channel. So they might honestly be the wrong people to talk to for those kinds of insights. I would be very curious to talk to their editing teams, their executive assistants, their chief of staffs who are really putting in the plan, ingesting the data and helping guide that creator. on like what to do next.

• Speaker #2

  You know, we were talking about margins a little earlier and I like to go through it and kind of drill down. So new seller coming into TikTok shop, you've got 75%, 80% margins, like we were just talking about. Where does that get eaten up? Where are the fees?

• Speaker #0

  Yeah. So you have 80, let's just, let's start at like 80% gross margin, right? You have commission.

• Speaker #1

  So that's the price minus the cost of goods. Yes. Paying for private. So I just want to explain that for the audience. So if it's a $10 item and it costs you $2 to get that thing made, that's 80%. $8 is left. That's 80% of 10. So just to make sure the math makes sense to the people listening. Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  Any direct variable costs associated with creating that product is like how I'm defining cost of goods sold in this case. And then you have your commission, which can range. Most people don't know, like they're always asking, what's the magic commission number? But when you enroll your product in TikTok shop, TikTok actually gives you a range of what other similar products are offering to the general public. So you'll see that range. And if you're a newer product, you want to price, you know, premium or give more commissions to enter the market. You don't want to be the lowest offer out of better selling products because that's not an attractive offer for an affiliate. So you want to price a little more competitive. Let's say you're at 20% because you want to leave some room for the best affiliates and creating a VIP tier of commissions where you can go up to 30%. So commission. can be variable 20 to 30% off of that 80% gross margin. So you're looking at between 50 to 60% remaining. And then after that, you have a 6% referral fee on TikTok shop. And so the platform takes 6% of every sale. So now you're at about 46 to 56% margin. And then you have your GMV max fee. So this is something that people really forget to calculate. TikTok shop ads works on an ROI calculation, not a ROAS, which is return on ad spend. They're actually blending in your ads costs with your other variable costs of selling on the platform to calculate a return. So to put this into perspective, if you have a Facebook ads campaign and you're targeting a 3x ROAS, but if you're on TikTok shop running ads, you target a 3x ROI, this is a 3x return on every single piece of dollar, like every single dollar you spend on the platform, you're gonna get $3 back, not every single dollar you spend on ad spend. So you need to be careful, you need to think about like, okay, like, you know, if I'm spending like this much, and I'm getting this much in sales, what's my like net ROI and blend it into every unit. So that could be anywhere from like 20 to 25%. Usually when sellers are getting onto the platform. They set an ROI target that's very aggressive, like a 1.5 or sometimes even a 1 or like a 1.8 because the goal isn't to make money here. It's to move through volume because like TikTok rewards week over week performance. So you're going through that margin calculation, right? You're around like, let's say we're around like 56% minus another, you know, 26% for GMV max. We're at like 30% now. Our margins already shaved down like so much. And if you want to add a promotion or a coupon. for 10% off, now you're looking at about a 20% margin. So you can see how it gets shaved down from there. And then what the best brands are doing is they're offering cash bonuses, rewards and perks for people who hit certain milestones. Like if you sell $500, you get $100 bonus or something like that. But then you have to blend that into your unit economics where it's like, you know, that's like, you know, $1 for every $5 in sales. So like, maybe that's like, could even be another 20%. of the creators who actually make that right so those are your costs associated with that it's like your ads your promotion your referral fee of selling in platform your uh commission rates you're giving to creators any sort of incentive or budget there so how does how does tiktok decide what to show so if there's three you know in the beginning here we were talking about uh this breath thing for cigars a little spray thing for cigars

• Speaker #1

  What if there's five different people selling that product or similar product or five different influencers even? It could be five different influencers doing the same product or five different brands doing the same product. You know, when I go to Amazon, it's an auction system. I'm auctioning and I'm willing to pay this much in PPC to outbid my competition. With GME Max, it's kind of optimizing itself. So how does that work to where... If I'm an advertiser putting something behind it, I can like, hey, I'm willing to spend a little bit more than what you're than the next guy. Or does it just randomly rotate through people? Or is it look at this video is actually getting this much more engagement. So we're not going to show the other one. We're going to show this one. Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  So I'll dive into the GMV Max component first, just so it makes sense. So GMV Max spends on creative that convert at least one unit sold. There's like a different phases where it's like in there's like. you know, testing or like learning or in queue, deliver, delivering, right? So you have different phases earlier where GMV Max is testing every single creative you post in the week. It's not like in, you know, old school Facebook ads where you select the creative and you let it learn on it. It's going and testing every single creative with a product link and seeing which one's most likely to convert. So it'll find the ones that are the most likely to convert and then optimize spend on them to help you hit your ROI target. So this is a little bit different than traditional media buying because you might want to put more spend behind creatives that don't convert for top of funnel awareness goals or for new customer acquisition over just complete sell-through. But GMV Max will hit your warmest audience, most likely to convert and prioritize spend behind that unit. So if you have a creative that is converting really well, all your GMV max dollars are going to go into there. And that's what's going to be served to your customers.

• Speaker #2

  So we hear about TikTok shop. It was all the rage and it still is all the time. All these brands, they want to get onto TikTok shop. A lot don't get onto it. What are these brands doing wrong? Why are they so nervous about getting onto TikTok shop?

• Speaker #0

  I think it's because it's a lot of cash up front. And I think this is something that most smaller sellers, typically on the Amazon side, I see a lot of discomfort around this too, because people are used to just like cranking the PPC, or it's like, I get a dollar, I get $2.5 to $3 back, and I'm comfortable putting something into a slot machine where that happens. It's predictable, it's stable. With TikTok shop, you don't know what that equation is going to be. Product can go incredibly viral. And you might have horrible lead times with your supplier. And then all of a sudden you like run out of everything, you overorder. And then you can't sell it through later because all the affiliates left because you went viral. And now you're sitting on all this stock. Like that's a scary thing for sellers to do. But to even get to that point where you have that problem, you need to seed out hundreds of samples and expect no money back. Like you need to light, like if you have like a $7, you know, or let's say like $5, you're sending out 500 samples. $2,500 in sampling costs a month, right? And you might not even make a break-even return on that. Like that's a scary idea for a lot of Amazon sellers specifically. I feel like in the D2C crowd, they're more okay with doing these stunts with PR and like influencers and branding where they're essentially marketing and they're not expecting a direct ROI. So they're less scared to enter the channel. But for other people, they're scared because they don't have a direct ROI. They're concerned about like if products go viral, how much inventory do I set aside for TikTok shop and things like that.

• Speaker #1

  Is TikTok still capping? I know there's a girl that I knew from the 10 days that is doing really well on TikTok shop a couple of years ago. And they were actually shutting her off. Like she's doing so well by noon. She said there's like they told her you can't take any more orders, even though she had the inventory. They're like, nope, you fit the maximum. It's like some sort of security thing, you know, I guess preventing fraud or something like that. Does that type of stuff still happen or is that pretty much just was the early days and now they've got it figured out?

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, that might have been earlier days. I personally haven't heard about much stuff like that. You know, I'd be very curious to see if it was more on the seller side or the platform side.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah. It was a platform side that was actually shutting off sales because she would hit the target by like 10 a.m. and then nothing else the rest of the day. Then the next day it would reset. She did. She did. Eight figures on TikTok's shop. So I think it could have been a fraud prevention thing. This is like 2024, I think, early days, 2024. So I'm sure something has probably changed there. What about, you know her, she was into BDSS Puerto Rico, BDSS. She went to Iceland, but she was at several of the BDSS events. What about people that I hear these stats about? It's very... Like you said, a lot of people don't realize how much money it takes, but very few sellers succeed on TikTok. I saw something like 60%. I think it's 60% of all TikTok shop sales are accounted for by 1% of the sellers. It was something very, if I would have that off, it's very close to that. So that means what that tells you is that 1% are crushing and doing that. There's TikTok this year will do in the US somewhere close to $30 billion. So they're crushing and the rest of the people are just twiddling their thumbs and either having no success or just a small amount of success. So what you've audited 2000 or something that counts, I think you've said, what are you seeing in there that's a consistent theme or a consistent pattern that's both?

• Speaker #0

  Maybe good and bad.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, yeah. I feel like the reason and like a lot of these accounts are like people, like I would caveat that data. I think there's a lot of people who create TikTok accounts, send out 200 samples, try to test the demand, but don't really go like full force into it. And they might fail and like quit. I've like seen that a ton.

• Speaker #0

  So that I agree that might inflate the data a bit. Yeah, I agree.

• Speaker #1

  I think what I've seen really work. for brands that do it really well is they're aggressively trying to form relationships with their creators. Across like every account that doesn't make it past 100k, almost no one talks to their creators. And it's really weird because whenever someone onboards a new employee into their business, they spend about 90 days waiting for them to get useful and onboarding and running them through training, shadowing them and everything. But then when a creator onboards into their program, which is expected to drive all the revenue, they don't even sit down with that creator for a week. They don't even get on calls with that creator. And that's like the main thing I've seen missing. It's like, oh, I expect this creator to be sent a product and magically understand how to sell millions of units or hundreds of thousands of units of my products into the platform. And no, most of these brands that are failing, they're not doing anything to bridge that gap. And I think that gap can be bridged with pure time. If you just spend enough time talking to your creators, asking for feedback, asking them what they need to succeed. And then just delivering that and iterating on what you deliver. If you spend enough time, you can coach your creators to make sales. Because the numbers support it. TikTok shop's growing 118% year over year from like 15 billion pacing to like, you know, over 30 billion this year. Like the platform is growing. A lot of people I know are like purchasing on TikTok shop so much they're trying to like stop. Like there's innate demand in the ecosystem. But I think the newer creators that are coming on just don't understand how to do this. And the brands aren't giving enough support. to help them get there.

• Speaker #0

  There's creators that know how to sell and there's creators that just think it's a, they just haven't found and want the notoriety and want the attention. And there's a big difference between that. So how do you weed out creators that can actually work? I mean, it used to be, you look at their followers and their engagement on their posts, but that's not so much the metric anymore as it is going in and looking at the GMB. that they generated, but how do you know if that GMV is real? Because there's tools like Celico that can inflate that or fake that. So what's the process that you recommend when I'm going to go out and send me sending out 200 samples, like you said, in this example and then throwing up my hand saying this don't work. What's the process I should be prepared to do and how do I evaluate them?

• Speaker #1

  Yeah. So what I would do is work with a TikTok shop partnered app. Like, you know, Celico is, it's great for, for a lot of things, like the help you get. reviews and earlier creators and pieces of content. But what I would do for this case is work with a tool like most of our clients are on Kruva. We have some on Yuka, some on Reacher, but most of them are on Kruva. And what these tools are doing is they're integrated directly in the TikTok shops API. And they're syncing with the real statuses of these creators every three hours. What differentiates these tools from being accurate on the GMV count is how well they can scrape and update data. like attributes, demographics. They have very granular searches if you want to find the exact creator, like a pregnant mom who is using makeup, who is dark skinned. If you want to find that exact creator, you use one of these platforms and you can find out how many of those creators have done over $1,000 in the last 30 days. So get on one of these platforms, try using things like an AI search where you're going in very deep or just filtering for the creator persona you want, and then just filtering by GMV. And I find that it is... updated pretty accurately, but there is like a discrepancy where it depends on how often they refresh the data. So in between refresh windows, this is getting super technical, but in between refresh windows, if they refresh on a rolling seven day or daily or weekly basis and TikTok's recording that on a 30 day basis, there may be times where a creator did $500 in GMB last month, but they're only doing 250 to date. And then you're filtering for $500 GMB creators. But if you're looking at the trailing 30-day, they don't meet $500 in GMV. Or they have a stale 500 GMV classification. So those are areas where you want to work with a tool that's constantly refreshing those creator data points to make sure that that's being pulled through properly.

• Speaker #0

  Well, the creators can also submit to you, right? Because we just had at MarketMasters, we had someone... Someone pulled up some stats, I'm not sure from which tool, that showed they had 230, I think, creators that said, yes, we want to work with you, and they just ignored them. They didn't even realize that that was there. Like just people saying, yes, I want to work with you. And they didn't even realize that was there. So they can actually reach out to you as well, right? Yeah,

• Speaker #1

  so there's like two methods of creator prospecting. One is called like open collaboration. So TikTok has like a creator marketplace. Think of it kind of like Upwork. You can go and filter for the exact job and type and, you know, rate that you want, which one is the best selling and things like that. So creators can go into this marketplace. TikTok is curated. filter for the best-selling products with reviews over five stars in food and beverage, and they'll be able to see these job postings where they can go in and click to apply to work with this brand. And they can request a sample and add the product to showcase, which means they have the commission listed for that product. So that's a way for a creator to essentially outbound to you. And that's how creators can reach out to these brands and actually request a sample that the brand then has to approve. The other way is called targeted collaboration. That's where you essentially go into one of these tools or through TikTok directly to filter for the exact creator you want by sales, by persona and other information. And then you make them an offer. And then if they accept, they'll request a sample back. So those are the two ways that you can essentially have creators reach out and express interest to collaborate with you.

• Speaker #2

  So with option one is other than the commission structure, is there any way to optimize that to get more creators to apply?

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, I think the people who apply through option one are usually not the creators you want to work with. Like usually what most people are trying to do is optimize option two.

• Speaker #0

  New people.

• Speaker #1

  Sorry, what was that?

• Speaker #0

  More the new people that need to establish themselves, right?

• Speaker #1

  Yes. Okay, that's for newer people. Commission is really only the lever you have. Like if you're not reaching out to that affiliate and saying, hey, I'm going to pay your retainer or we're going to run this deal on this date. some sort of information that can't be publicly put on like a listing for that product, right? It's hard to convince them with anything other than commission. And creators can see the direct number of units sold on that product. Those are the two buying factors to get them to request to work with you.

• Speaker #0

  Man, things are getting tough out there. Hard dues are getting squeezed. Things are changing. AI is playing a big role in what's going on in the e-commerce world. And there's a lot of people that are pretty worried. What should they consider doing?

• Speaker #2

  Well, I think one of the best things they could probably do is go to an expert that understands the market sentiment right now. The first one that comes to mind is Quietlight Brokerage. And here's why. They're going to build you up. They're going to understand your company. And at the end of the day, you're going to know how to maximize your valuation. So the very first thing you need to do is go and get your free confidential valuation at Quietlight.com. And then, you know, let the games begin.

• Speaker #3

  Awesome. What was that website again?

• Speaker #2

  It's quietlight.com.

• Speaker #3

  Awesome. I'm going to head over there.

• Speaker #2

  So we've talked to a lot of people around the TikTok shop industry. And this is a question that we like to ask anyways. And that's roughly about. the reason why creators seem to ghost a lot of brands just after one post. You never hear from them again. What's the reason for that?

• Speaker #1

  Well, the brands aren't doing anything to help them post more. Like there's no like, like I've very rarely seen a proper experience where the brand gives the creator a reason to post again. And like, I'm not saying just, hey, ask, like asking the creator to post again. When you look for a certain trigger to check if they posted. I mean like, hey, thanks for posting. I'm going to help you make $1,000 in the next 30 days following our exact course that has helped creators go from $100 to $1,000. You're going to get assigned a creator coach. We're going to give you opportunities to enroll in contests, training around editing, like a clear path to success.

• Speaker #0

  I could really go after those creators.

• Speaker #2

  So that's your 1% people that do that, right? Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  I mean, I think if people... Thank you. Take it seriously. I mean, it's a job. I mean, the guy that's doing all the testing and everything, it's a job. And the people that take it serious, some people just think it's a field of dreams and they're just going to get rich off a viral video. And there's a mentality shift there, I think. But I think we're in, I was telling the people over at Titan that, you know, back in... 2013, 2012, 2014, amazing.com came along and. taught people how to source something on Alibaba, stick your name on it and put it on Amazon and make money. And that's evolved now. I think we're in that same stage with creators where there's a lot of creators that know how to do A-B testing, that know how to do all this stuff, but the vast majority don't. And some of these creators are building brand recognition off of their name. And those are ones that might actually, now the algorithm doesn't really reward the followers anymore, but it's more the... the content, but they can build their own products as well. And like Mr. Beast has done this, you know, with his Feastables and a few others have done this. But I think there's massive opportunity for some of these creators to not only help sell other people's stuff, but to start building their own brand and their own stuff. And I think there's a room for someone to come in and help train them and help them do that.

• Speaker #2

  Kevin, Afolabi and I, back in about a year or two ago, no, probably three years ago, four years ago, I'll keep going back, did exactly that. We had hundreds of influencers, high-level influencers come to us, and we did the sourcing. We got it all planned out. But we found that a lot of the creators just didn't understand the business side of it. So when you were sourcing it and when you had to come out down to the economics and understanding margins, they didn't think it was like they didn't understand. It's not just like that. It's a process. And they're so, a lot of them just wanted it instantly. And they don't know that this is going to take six months or eight months to build up this brand. So I think, I mean, you're absolutely right. If the creator has a coach or somebody, yeah, the influencer creator has a coach or somebody to help them along. that would be great. But managing those expectations, it was crazy.

• Speaker #0

  No, I can see that. That's what I was saying. They feel like it's a field of dreams.

• Speaker #1

  You know, one of the crew of founders we recently interviewed, and on different podcasts, we interviewed the head of TikTok shop for Javi Coffee. And he brought their program from about 300k a month to a million a month in three months. Like he did that. And one of the special sauces that they had was they were just all in on community management. Like what he did was he got every creator to post 30 times as soon as they entered Discord. And they had over 15 community managers managing their Discord. And they upgraded their top creators into creator coaches. They did three creator coaching calls a week. And they had like 80 to 100 people attending these coaching calls, which was like absolutely insane. And they recruited over like...

• Speaker #0

  What are they coaching on the calls? Alec.

• Speaker #1

  teaching themselves techniques psychology lighting um positioning angles what are they all the above and i mean you think about think about what these brands that have a lot of skews there's a lot of like there's a lot of product selling points there's a lot of business acumen you need to translate through and like these creators need full context on the business like some brands are even going as far as to share their marketing analytics what's converting well on facebook motion analytics the best ads that are working what's going on in gmv max What is GMV Max spending behind and what do they identify as the top performing creator content? Like that sort of gap needs to be bridged from brand to creator. And a lot of brands aren't sharing those insights. And to your other points, yes, even things are on editing. There's a concept, and I was talking to the same Top 100 affiliate about, me and him were going really deep on this concept of like neuromarketing, where there's a certain thing with like the lighting, the audio, the taste of the video where. You'll notice it too, where you're scrolling past videos on TikTok. And if something doesn't like hit something in your eye the right way that triggers the right dopamine receptor, you'll scroll past it. But it could have the most amazing hook. It could be the most informative educational video that you were looking for. But if it doesn't hit that taste receptor, it goes off. So there's a lot of education, testing and editing and, you know, creator acumen that needs to be distilled on concepts like those during these creator coaching sessions as well.

• Speaker #0

  Do they take that well? I find, you know, you were in Nashville and we had 80-something creators there. And I found a lot of them were immature, naive, young. You know, how do I get from the airport to the hotel? What do I do with my bags if I can't check in? And then quite a lot of ego. A lot of these creators have a big ego. So do they take this training well or this coaching or these communities well? But also I was seeing we had a WhatsApp group. I think you were actually in that. just for the creators. And one creator would come in and everybody would go gaga. It was kind of a culture shock and kind of an eye opener to me about this whole community. Can you address or talk about that a little bit? Yeah. I think it's the same on the seller side. You have these guys like

• Speaker #1

  Jay Hunter, Greg Lovecchia. If they walk into... They joined a WhatsApp group chat, they joined the Market Masters group chat. So it's the same thing. There are these top one percenters who are just so good at their craft where like, Those guys may not need advice. You know, I think a lot of those younger creators that were there at that event were like L7, L6 affiliates who like really, really knew what they were doing. So yeah, they might have had a little bit of an ego, but I think a lot of them had sales data to back that up. But I would say for the broader populace of affiliates, you know, really only like 1.6% are making over like, what is it like $100 in the last 30 days and pull up numbers. for you guys later. But like, it's really such a small percent that like 90% plus are not making any sort of money where they can turn this into their full time career. So yeah, I think well deserved if you're in like the top couple percent, like you should have an ego because you're doing some really cool stuff. And maybe these sellers can't teach you as much. But I would say for those affiliates to they're still interfacing with a brand directly. I have a very hard time believing they're not in the top 1% where they're not getting data on what's working in ads manager. They're not getting analytics. They're not getting information on the new products that they're launching. You know, even if they do have an ego, I'm sure they religiously plan out their content, script, edit, and post and stay really close in touch. And they're probably texted one-on-one by a community manager or someone like the founder from the brand instead of going to these bulk calls with like 100 other affiliates.

• Speaker #0

  So there's TikTok and its algorithm. It used to be followers. So I could build a... get 500,000 followers. And then I know if I put a video out, a lot of those people are going to actually see it versus now that doesn't matter. So if I, if I, am I, I'm a creator and I create a really good video and it does well, it makes the brand a hundred thousand dollars in sales. Does, does TikTok then put a little feather in my cap and said, they're in a certain system. Hey, this guy kind of did all right. So his next video gets kind of priority treatment, or is it just, I'm just throwing enough stuff against the wall that. eventually if I'm doing 15 videos a day, one of them is going to, hopefully one of them will stick and the other 14 just suck wind. Or what is, how does TikTok, you know, it's not necessarily, I'm not saying they go viral every time, but how, how are they figuring that out? I mean, some of it I think is what you said where you're analyzing other videos are successful and like emulating them in your own way. But what is the process there to actually Make a living off of this.

• Speaker #1

  I think it is throwing a lot of stuff at the wall. I've seen these top creators who do like over $100,000 in the last 30 days. If you actually click into their account, you'll see like 90 pieces of TikTok shop posted, like TikTok shop content posted in the last 30 days. And you'll see some of them are like averaging like 300 to 400 video views. Like if you look at the average video views on these like affiliates who are grossing that much in sales, like it's actually not that high. It's a lot of just throwing stuff at the wall and just tweaking. and tweaking and tweaking. And you know, what we found is that the algorithms are becoming a lot more interest based, you know, this is working for like ads algorithms to and social media algorithms becoming a lot more interest based and follower count, especially for TikTok doesn't matter as much anymore. I think there was like a agency like Power Digital, but a year and a half ago, they published this like state of the economy report. And in that report, it was saying almost 80% of users on TikTok spend most of their time on the Discover page. you know, supporting this thesis of like, hey, influencer affiliates who are just a thousand followers or 5,000 followers. Like these are the guys that, you know, have just as much of a chance of crushing it as these like mega influencers with a million followers.

• Speaker #2

  Can brands, is there something brands can do other than commission to get the creator interested in working with them? Like I know that there's some incentive programs, but Is there anything creative, any new model that we could talk about?

• Speaker #1

  I mean, there's retainers, there's flat fees, there's all kinds of contest types, like there's like sweepstakes, there's like bingo challenges, or like some creators really love that. I think a lot of it goes down into, have you heard of a, like, like what a lot of people are doing is they're running creator content into like meta ads. So a lot of people are also incentivizing creators. on a percentage of meta ad spend or meta ad revenue. So another creative model is like, you know, your commission rate might decrease on months two and three, but we're going to give you a percentage of our meta ad revenue because we know that creative is just going to spend so much more. and the way we want it to there. And that's where a lot of creators are making real money. And that's a real perk that goes beyond just like TikTok shop platform commission. That's really getting creators excited now.

• Speaker #2

  So let's go to the other side. We talked about the brand, but what if I'm a creator and there's so many, how many, I'm not even sure it's in the millions, but if I wanted to become a creator, what's the best way to even start out nowadays?

• Speaker #1

  Yeah. I mean, you could just look up how to become a TikTok shop affiliate. There's a website you apply through it. They make it pretty easy to do that there. If you don't want to go through the process of like, you know, getting a thousand followers, like I would just go on to Reddit and be like, I want to buy a TikTok shop affiliate account. I bought one through there and like used it to see what the other side looks like. And then just connect your banking information and start pushing content. Like that's the easiest way to get started. And if you look on YouTube, Google search and most of these platforms, most of the information is actually affiliate focused rather than seller focused. There's like a deficit of seller focused information on how to succeed on TikTok shop. And there's a lot of YouTubers being like, oh, here's how I made $500,000 on TikTok shop as an affiliate or like here's a cloud code automation on how to create automated faceless accounts that print me money for TikTok shop. So there's a lot of resources onto there. What I What I would also do is go and join the communities at the top brands of goalie. NeuroGum, Snap Supplements, all those guys, and just sit in all their coaching calls. Collect all the transcripts, collect all their hooks. Like really just start building a repository of best practices there. And then just putting your camera down and just like filming 15 to 21 pieces of content a week. That's all it takes. And then just talk to other affiliates. Be like, hey, what'd you like about this? What did you not like about this? Why do you think this one sold well? Talk to the brand directly. The best brands have community managers who will give feedback on every single one of your videos. So it really is like never been easier to become a creator. And I think we are in the age of like, you know, creators having the power in this economy. But it does take a lot of work and a lot of failure and a lot of, you know, just pretty much eating, you know, for the first 90 days of you doing it.

• Speaker #0

  What should I pay a creator? People are often times like, well, I don't want to give them more than 10%. But if I'm launching a new product, I'm going to give them a freaking 100%. That's what you're giving a search find buy company or something. Give them 100% of the sale or set up something that, okay, for this one week, we're going to do this big promotion. Everybody launch at the same time and everybody gets 100%. There's some sort of prize at the end. Why do people, so many sellers seem to be so stingy on what they're willing to give away?

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, I think a lot of sellers are focused on like optimizing for in-channel profitability. The way I look at. TikTok shop in terms of your overall business is very complimentary. Like if you're spending $10,000 to find the best creative you're going to run on a meta partnership ad that spends $10,000 a day at a 3x ROAS, wouldn't you be comfortable at least spending like, you know, 15% of the budget to find that so that budget can spend even better? Like it, for me, it's just like, okay, if you're generating 100,000 views that reduces your blended CPM across your channel. wouldn't you rather spend that money there than like short-term PPC? I think a lot of it is just losing context on like what marketing levers you can pull to keep increasing more leverage for your business. And I think this is what we see a lot for brands going from like that eight to nine figure mark is like there's literally not enough cash left in the business to just spend on PPC to grow to 3x ROAS at the growth rate you want. Like you have to go for like a 10x growth lever and you have to like risk some money doing that you can't be scared Because like, sure, I could grow like a 3x ROAS from doing 10 to 15 million a year. Like I'm not going to hit 100 million a year within the next four to five years because CPMs are going to go up like people want to diversify. There's like so many other reasons, right? So you have to like take those like 10x risks and like have context that like this will help your business in the long run. And if you look too much in terms of one channel, you're going to get tunnel vision and lose sight of that.

• Speaker #0

  Isn't there a halo effect too? That's, it's very difficult to actually track that and reward the creators for that. So if I'm a creator and I got a good video, does anybody say, hey, if our Amazon sales go up 10%, you know, we don't know if that's all from you or not, but we're going to give you a little Scooby Snack bonus or something. Is there anything along those lines? Because typically, you know, not everybody's buying on TikTok shop. I don't know what the exact number is now, but a good healthy number of 30, 40, 50% are going over to Amazon and buying over there.

• Speaker #1

  I haven't seen any brands reward creators on like a halo effect basis because it's just too hard to track. There's so many intangibles and confounding variables there. Like it's too hard. That's why I think creators love this. percentage of meta ad spend and percentage of meta ad revenue. Because they know that brands are testing creators of TikTok, taking the winners and repurposing the meta. Like that is the one of the key things they're doing in platform. And so if they get compensated off of the efforts of repurposing on other channels, that helps them feel like very integrated across the channels. But for Amazon, like I haven't seen people do that. The closest thing I've seen is they do like CPM-based payouts. where if you generate a certain amount of views at a certain CPM or just some sort of payout per views goal, then they will pay the creators a bonus on that. So they could reward for top of funnel awareness, but whether that awareness helps them hit their goals on other channels, it's hard to justify that. An example could be justifying a halo effect into retail where they're launching in Target in Texas. How can you prove that that affiliate who did a million views helped increase the retail scan data of this target to sell more units. It's like not possible. Like you can get closer by being like, oh, like we had this affiliate go and create content about how this brand is open in target. Then like we could get closer to that and say that. But even then it's like, it's too many confounding variables. It's too complicated.

• Speaker #2

  So I've got a question. I'll just start it off with, you know, how long is a piece of string? Because you'll answer that. Along with this question, when should an agency or when should a brand start looking for an agency? How long is a piece of string?

• Speaker #1

  How long is a piece of string? No idea. But when a brand should be looking for an agency, I mean, it's so hard to find good in-house TikTok shop talent now. And the salaries are ridiculous. Like, I... I helped someone place for an affiliate manager for a 350k comp role. It's like absolutely insane. 150k to 200k plus OT to 350k for a TikTok shop affiliate manager. Like that is what it takes to become the best. And like any... Kevin's going to go take five affiliate manager jobs, printing millions a year. You know, it's just like anyone worth their salt is going to go and start an agency. and take on a bunch of clients as freelance. The easiest thing to do if you're a good TikTok shop affiliate manager, and if you can sell decently well, that's the harder part. But if you can sell, you just take on four clients for 5K a month, and you're making 240K a year. And it's just like, okay, if I'm not at least willing to give up that opportunity cost to come work in-house for you, then why don't I just go off on my own? That's the problem I'm seeing with the hiring in-house thing where it's like, you have to be like... You have to give them real upside that goes beyond that. And maybe I'm making it sound too easy. Maybe I'm biased. But I think that a lot of the good talent are doing that and starting their own agencies. So I think brands should try to work with an agency first, try to learn from playbooks that are working right now before going in-house. For other scenarios where the talent market has settled down a bit, you can hire someone in-house for maybe like $70,000 to $100,000 for like a... lower mid-level role, you know, plus some sort of bonus, then it could make sense. Because then the context plus ramp up, plus recruiting fees, plus hiring costs are worth taking a little bit longer to get to your goals. But I would say agency first for a bit. And if you learn a ton along the way and you're like, hey, you know, this agency helped me learn TikTok shop in seven to eight months. I now feel like I have a comfortable process to incubate and graduate interns into TikTok shop managers. then that could work. But really, you can't have that cheap talent if you don't have clear definitions and the SOPs and processes that make TikTok shop work. You're paying like that ignorance tax for a 240K TikTok shop hire. That's just my opinion. I know there are like people who could do it for a lot less, but I find that those are not like the best of the best people.

• Speaker #2

  Yeah, it's like Amazon, right? It's a big beast, you know, and the best thing to do is probably go with a consultant or an agency.

• Speaker #1

  Yes, yes. I think there's been a huge rise in people wanting consultants too, which is like funny because it's like very similar to like agency, except you don't do the work. But yeah, consultants have been big. Yeah, I'm not sure. I always get, even today I had a couple people ask me, do you know any good affiliate managers? And I'm just like, dude, what's your like comp range? And like, I don't even want to have this discussion with them because I know I'm going to say a ridiculous number. I'm going to go ask in my network. My network's going to give me back this number. And I'm just like not even going to make this match work. It's just not even worth discussing. So I'm like go with an agency.

• Speaker #0

  Hey, Kevin King and Norm Farrar here. If you've been enjoying this episode of Marketing Misfits, thanks for listening this far. Continue listening. We've got some more valuable stuff coming up. Be sure to hit that subscribe button if you're listening to this on your favorite podcast player. Or if you're watching this on YouTube or Spotify, make sure you subscribe to our channel because you don't want to miss a single episode of the Marketing Misfits. Have you subscribed yet, Norm?

• Speaker #1

  Well, this is an old guy alert. Should I subscribe to my own podcast?

• Speaker #0

  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.

• Speaker #1

  I'll buy you a beard and you can sit in my chair too. And 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.

• Speaker #2

  make sure you don't miss a single episode because you don't want to be like norm oh i think one of the best stories i've heard in a while we just had it at market masters uh the guys at rhino usa they're the number one uh seller on tiktok shop in the automotive category eight figures a year and automotive on tiktok shop alone 140 plus million total annual sales Started in 2015 with $7,500 from two kids. And dad got involved after they kind of got in over their head. They've grown it now with BlackRock as one of the VC investors. And what they've done to get influencers is they've just bought 189 acres out by the F1 track in Austin. They're turning into a Jurassic Park for off-roading. So they call it Rhino World. And they're putting in a clubhouse with a speakeasy. putting a retail warehouse and they got a hundred cigar of course you know scarlet barbecue pit and then and they're putting in a hundred uh trails like some of this natural stuff going through creeks but they're going on four wheelers and all this stuff because their products are like hitches and straps to get you pull you out of the mud and all that and they brought their first influencers out there about three months ago it's not quite finished yet And they just wanted to do a test run. And they went nuts because they got to go play and use the equipment and stuff. And so they deliberately made the track hard so they get stuck. So they have to use the equipment and they're shooting video the whole time. And so they're going to make this one of the perks for their group of influencers. Like you get to come if you're good enough or do meet certain criteria or whatever. You get to come out. We fly you out to Austin. You get to spend a weekend having fun with our products and shooting video. And what they did is we. Well, I had him come out and do a little quick interview at Market Masters and tell the story. And then we flew people by helicopter from the Gatsby Mansion over there. We flew three people over there. And he built a landing pad three weeks ago just for the helicopter. It cleared some trees and stuff just so the helicopter could land. So that's where you're taking it to the next level. And you're becoming a true brand and a true... really playing deep into the influencer marketing game that most people just can't touch but it's a it's a pretty cool story that's like the sickest story you're interviewing thomas right thomas nielsen ted had oh we're talking about it guys this area thomas works on the tiktok shop side okay yeah i love rhino dude they're sick they're a sick brand like they've gotten so many awards to you like they're really crushing it they're doing amazing yeah they're doing they're doing amazing so if someone listening to this wants to to look into it look into it and what it was There was somebody else, someone that sat on the hot seat. You know how Market Masters works, that right after that talk, she was next up on the hot seat. And she does motorcycle stuff, kind of similar category. She started at the exact same time as Rhino USA, and they're at $140 million. She's at $2 million. And so it was a little tough situation for her, a little emotional, to see where they've gone and where she's at right now. great lady and doing good stuff, but it's just to see the different trajectories and how social media and doing social media right and correctly has really played into that growth. And that's a great case study that a lot of people need to take a look at that they might be able to get some inspiration from.

• Speaker #1

  All right, guys, we're at the top of the hour.

• Speaker #2

  Top of the hour already. Well, Sohun, you got this new company going on. I see it there on the screen. What the heck does it do? And how do we reach out to her? How do I learn about it? Yeah,

• Speaker #3

  you can look me up on LinkedIn, Sohan Sanka. There's not that many Sohans either, so you can type in Sohan. I might pop up. And Clankers is essentially a TikTok shop AI outfit where we'll audit your business. We'll figure out where to implement AI into your entire affiliate process. We'll build out custom automations for you and then teach your entire team how to run them and use AI to scale your TikTok shop. And I'm all in on AI. Like I was saying earlier with Kevin and Norm, you can hyper-personalize the exact TikTok shop workflow you want, however you like it, by just speaking English into a box. And that is the most valuable skill that's going to help marketers scale the next $100 million brand.

• Speaker #1

  All right.

• Speaker #2

  Awesome. Clanker.com or Clanker.io?

• Speaker #3

  Clankersapp.com. I couldn't get Clankers.io or Clankers.com. The domain just wasn't available. Kind of bumped.

• Speaker #2

  What is a clanker? Is that someone beating on a drum? Like clanking on the bells? Like, come to me?

• Speaker #3

  It's a funny word for a robot, you know, like robots and agents and AI and stuff like that. You know, I was just having a little fun with the name because I was like, what am I going to name this? Like Sohan Ventures? You know, like some stupid stuff like that. I'm like, let me just name the company Clankers and just get it started, you know?

• Speaker #1

  And first thing that comes to mind is Clackers, you know? Do you remember that, Kevin? Yeah. I don't know how many times I... my hand and elbow and couldn't couldn't put that out nowadays but uh all right so at the end of every podcast we always ask our misfit if they know a misfit yeah the misfit that i would recommend you guys bring on is sebastian nelson founder

• Speaker #3

  of cruva they built an amazing you know tiktok shop solution and you know we work very closely together on a ton of our brands and would highly recommend you guys sit down with him and pick his brain I mean, On similar questions you asked me, I'd be very curious to see what he thinks from his perspective on the software side versus me more on like the seller software, like hybrid side.

• Speaker #1

  All right. Very good. Thank you for coming on the show today.

• Speaker #3

  Thanks for having me.

• Speaker #2

  Yeah, appreciate it. Thanks for coming on and making some time. This is awesome. All right,

• Speaker #1

  Saad. We'll see you later. Gonna remove you now. There we go. I have the power to remove anybody.

• Speaker #2

  You have the power to remove anybody. Don't remove me.

• Speaker #1

  It happened when you pissed me off at the end of podcasts. Or even Jerome podcasts. I've done that a few times.

• Speaker #2

  I never pissed you off. I just like to pick on you like your older brother bully you never had.

• Speaker #1

  You are older.

• Speaker #2

  I don't know about that one.

• Speaker #1

  But you like to think.

• Speaker #2

  Well, if I'm older, does that mean I'm wiser?

• Speaker #1

  That was a quick no.

• Speaker #2

  That was a quick no. But if you want to get wiser, how do you get wiser? All right.

• Speaker #1

  We've got a couple different places. First of all, head over to YouTube and check out Marketing Misfits Podcast. If you're looking for just the shorter versions, three minutes or less, you can go over to Marketing Misfits Clips. And we also... are on the as kevin says the talker tickers we have a channel over there and it's under marketing misfits is it talker tickers or the tickers i'm old try finding that try finding one person on tiktok that does cigars like it's almost impossible to find yeah but instagram right there's some people that's in there the instagram cigar girl that that

• Speaker #2

  That guy at the lounge that was telling us about? Kevin.

• Speaker #1

  Cigar Vixen. Yeah. $750,000. Cigar Vixen.

• Speaker #2

  Yeah. So you follow her.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah.

• Speaker #2

  Oh, you do. Okay.

• Speaker #1

  Don't tell Connie.

• Speaker #2

  Well, you... I didn't say nothing. So, yeah. So, you know, if you want to follow something else, you should follow the Misfits newsletter. Misfits.news. Every Wednesday, we put out an edition of the newsletter written for them. So you always watch the podcast, new editions every Tuesday for the last almost three years. But the newsletter is started earlier this year and it's really good. People are getting good feedback on it. So it's got summaries of the podcast plus some additional information, quick nugget size, easy to skim. So check that out at nis.com. And we are buying news.

• Speaker #1

  Oh, that's good. That's good. Come on. Yeah.

• Speaker #2

  It's good. It's really good. It's even better when we cut your picture out of the bottom. When we're like, it's just, it cuts your little picture out.

• Speaker #1

  That's like Connie with Brian Adams.

• Speaker #2

  We get a higher open rate.

• Speaker #1

  I believe it. All right, everybody.

• Speaker #2

  We'll see you next week. Take care.