This 1 Strategy Grew Her Water Bottle Brand To 10M+ With Alicia Reynoso

we had at that time like an email list of like 70 000 people legitimately our business had like two phases Amazon and then 2019 turned on Facebook ads that was when our email list went from like 10 000 to 70. Welcome to the my wife quarter job podcast today I'm really happy to have Alicia Reynoso on the show now Alicia is the founder of live infinitely which is a brand that sells water bottles and outdoor gear online which she grew to eight figures before selling it selling water bottles is a tough business it's a commodity tons of companies that sell them but Alicia succeeded by building communities and these communities gave her exposure and loyalty from her customer list which allowed her to charge premium pricing for her products so in this episode Alicia is going to teach us exactly how she built up Ray figure water bottle business and with that welcome the show yeah and thanks so much for having me it's so funny that uh you say that because my boyfriend was actually the one that um was like we should sell water bottles and I was like are you crazy so competitive we had started off with like like a cooling towel or something like that that didn't work out and then he's like let's do water bottles and I was like you want to compete against Nalgene and Nike and um so it's just funny you mentioned that because it was it's it's it's a silly competitive market to enter for your first product for sure well there's like four or five big Brands just right off the top of my head yeah yeah so I'm very curious I mean well okay let's let's start with that like why did you choose water bottles are you a boyfriend yeah so well we got started back when it was just like Amazon FBA that was like um what year was that 2014-15 14 is when the cooling Town launched it was a failure 15 is when we um picked the water bottle so really 15 was like the birth of it all um but we were like trying in 2014 too but it was 2015 we did like the amazing course um and everything like that and we were just looking at the seller ranks and I knew from the very beginning like live infinitely was my brand and I knew from the very beginning I wanted to create a brand I didn't want to just like pick products and sure and sell them so I wanted my brand to stand for like live infinitely the name means to live your life with infinite possibilities like you could do or achieve anything um so that was a message that I wanted to share through my brand so I wanted it to be like something like Fitness Outdoors like getting out there like being healthy living your best life type thing um and so he just like was going through you know the whole process uh back then best seller Rank and saw fruit infuser water bottles and like water bottles are super Broad and competitive but like sure through water bottles was like a little bit like like niching down into it um and that's what we decided to go with as our first product and because it was a little bit different we were actually able to be successful out of the gate on Amazon because it was just like a normal water bottles um so let's start there were you brand registered on Amazon for that first product um yes but it took a while like for the first few years like we were just kind of no we weren't I think honestly you didn't get brand registered probably until 2016 or something actually back in the day it was super it was much easier on Amazon yeah 10 15. okay so you made some money off of that first initial water bottle mm-hmm yeah did you have your own website at that time too or um the first year no it was just all on Amazon Amazon just like really got us out of the gate and then um that's when we joined um Blue Ribbon with uh Ezra Firestone and and we're like we should get on Shopify diversify our Revenue because we knew eventually that we wanted to sell the business too um and so that's when like probably 2018 or so we built out the website to try to like diversify that um but originally it's just on Amazon we were just trying to pick any products that kind of fit under that branding that we were going for but really made no sense like we had like hammocks backpacks uh water bottles like it was kind of all over the place um originally on Amazon to get us out of you know just get us started was it profitable though profitable and much easier okay when I was in our website um as soon as we like launched our website so worth it and I love it and now that's what I geek out over my boyfriend eventually just took over Amazon and like ran our pay-per-click and um everything like that and I just went full on into Shopify and I learned the email marketing and Facebook ads and everything like that that we needed to learn for that side of the business um but then I just also just required so much more work in learning all of those differences yeah so basically you've validated that these water bottles were were a thing on Amazon and then do you remember at what point you needed to decide to start your website was it because of the Mastermind that you you went there or was that always in the plan it was kind of because of the um and just just not being able to sleep at night knowing that like all dogs were in one basket yeah you know right you would take out like half a million dollar loans for uh to fund Amazon and you're like if something happens you know like you're like if because Amazon they just they do it all the time they pull your listing because all of a sudden it's categorized for synthetic urine and you're like how did that really happen yeah that happened to one of our products once yeah you're like how is this synthetic urine and um and so you just like you're always at the mercy of Amazon and so that was when like it was kind of The Mastermind but also just because we wanted to sleep better knowing that like if Amazon if anything happened we'd always have like our website and kind of control of our Revenue as well so when you start your own website there you have to drive your own traffic so what was your strategy there yeah at first we didn't know we're like okay we just had like Google set up and um we had like kind of the halo effect honestly from Amazon of people knew us at that point you know we'd been around for a few years and we had people searching for us and going to our website and stuff and then is in 2019 um that I took the time to learn Facebook ads myself and that was when um we were able to change our revenue from like 99 Amazon to eventually 50 50 um of our Revenue was around that time 2019 when I learned Facebook ads can we talk about Facebook ads real quick for water bottles specifically like what were your ads like what were your highest converting ads and what what was the return on ad spend yeah so honestly a lot of the challenge like when we go into a little bit more that was like the biggest thing for me when it came to my creatives and my copy for my ads was because like we never ran ads like ads initially when we first started was like look at this cool water bottle it's BPA free it's 32 ounces like it's so cool and then like nobody cares um and then eventually like when we had our community and like our differentiator of like what Our Brands stood for and what we were there to help you achieve in your life like all of our ads became that you know like our our copy was like um like uh one of them was like this water bottle changed my life and that was like the headline and it's like a water bottle and then people start reading um and most of our like creatives were of women holding the water bottles or like sharing their experiences and stuff like that so most 99 of our ads besides like our retargeting and uh bottom of the funnel campaigns were focused on the transformation that our business you know helped you achieve over again product so the community came first before the successful Facebook ads um actually no that's a good question um I had some good success mainly because honestly Ezra being in that Mastermind I learned a lot of just um using native content and so we already had some pretty good reviews and testimonials and I used those initially at the gate for because we didn't launch our community and challenge until 2020. okay and so all of 2019 I just used like previous customers and their experiences and stuff like that as our ads and so just testimonials and that sort of thing yeah yeah mainly and then um it was a combination of we always laughed that we were a water bottle company that made money on straw Lids because we we sold like water bottles but then we like that's where we lost money um to acquire the customer but we would make money because we could upsell them on products like a straw lid or brush set a carrying case like all these things that like that's what turned us profitable um from our ads and so we always just laughed at we're a water bottle company that makes money on straws so anyway interesting so the water bottle like the straw lit is literally what it is it's like it's a lid with a hole for a straw or yeah it looks just I mean it looks just like this one um this is one of our oldest oldest water bottles um and like we'd sell this thing um to our like plastic versions or whatever and like they were like 70 cents or a dollar and we sell them for seven dollars interesting that's huge and that's where we like making money that sounds funny so the water bottles were actually not not profitable but then you would upsell them on a bunch of accessories that would make it profitable yeah Okay cool so what was the return of AD spend then uh before the communities and that sort of thing was it just yeah it was profitable um and Ezra always said like if you're Break Even you're winning and um we were stoked because we were um really profitable um for us we needed like a one point uh five to six return on ad spend to break even and we were usually like two two to two point five return on ad spend uh okay just top of the funnel cold traffic was usually what we were and then when the community came around started leveraging that as like a lead acquisition I didn't know this when I was writing my business because um we were kind of getting close to selling and I was just so busy but like analyzing those campaigns a little bit more um we ran a few and those ones were like four to seven return announcements uh for that did the upselling happen in your email list after they purchased or did you do it during the purchase like as an upsell on the listing yeah okay yeah on the listing we had the upsell options and then also post purchase like right as they we used uh simplify one click one click up sound yeah so post purchase and then also my email flows um I might I set up my clavio account eventually that was like 40 of our revenue and a lot of it was um after they purchased then we took them through a customer Journey as well nice nice okay so let's just jump right to the community part then uh how does one build a community yeah so that was the biggest thing so I kind of explained a little bit earlier like how I would was all over the place or we were all over the place with our products like hammocks backpacks like um we just thought we thought we knew our customer I was kind of making the products around me you know of like I am this outdoorsy girl that like loves to be healthy but then once we like really kind of started started getting to know our customers like that wasn't who we were actually selling to at all and I realized like we kind of hit this pivotal point that we were like okay we want to sell our business but we're kind of plateauing like every year we were growing like really rapidly and then like 2019 18 we were like stalling around then that's when I like I listened to this one podcast I kind of talked a lot about the relationships of your customers and like and that's exactly what I wanted to do was like provide you know my brand was built from day one to like help people like remind them that they can do these things and Achieve you know become whatever they wanted to become but I was like poorly conveying that poorly helping people um I thought I was doing a good job but I wasn't so I spent a lot of time like near the end 19 like just mapping out our customer and their customer journey of like okay this is our customer this is their before say after State and the objections that are standing in their way from achieving that and and then I was like what can I do to help them get from the before state to be after State without them even having to pay us so you know like just bring them into our world and just help them and and get them there without even having to pay us and that's when I was like okay I could come up with ebooks uh videos like all these things like healthy recipes all these things that I love to do anyways but I just like couldn't because I was like in charge about marketing or like emails clavio web design all that kind of stuff so there's no way I could do it all I kind of thought of bundling into a challenge so the whole concept of that was our customer wanted to be healthy happy loved like they want to be seen heard appreciated and so I thought of like a 60-day hydration challenge where I could get them in of course like like drinking water and stuff is like the the core or concept of it but I broke it down into like many weekly challenges to focus on all those other things as well that they wanted to achieve Like Loving themselves being you know healthy eating moving their bodies gratitude all the things Beyond just being healthy because in the long term like people would come to us for a water bottle but that's not exactly that's not really what they're trying to achieve yeah they're trying to achieve those deeper those deeper things like that so um that was kind of the concept of the challenge and so uh so let's back up before we get into the challenge I I want to know that you were selling a bunch of products and you were targeting people like yourself how did you even figure out that you were targeting the wrong audience um it was mainly we had this like these like few customers that had been around like I feel like from the beginning of the days um even on Amazon they've emailed us and just said how grateful they were and and I just like looked at that and I was like I'm kind of I kind of feel like I've been making this about me and where I'm like these are our customers and kind of that first year of running ads on Facebook in 2019 we started getting more customers that weren't me you know like my email lists were growing it was growing with like these older women and that's kind of like how I realized this whole time we were just scared you know how did you know they were older like did you hop on the phone with them were you sending out surveys family surveys and feedback yeah um like we would do we would try to do a lot of fun things like on our Instagram or or Facebook or try to get them involved and communicate as much as we could it was very little um like our our social media engagement stuff like that was was really little comparatively to like now but I was kind of like the initial feedback we would try to get and and then when we try to like send out a hammock email or and also that's exactly it our email marketing was the biggest indicator of what was working and what wasn't I send out like an email about like being outdoors and here's a hammock and stuff and like those always had like the poorest response um to our audience like um and then I send out an email about gratitude and stuff like that and um those always had like a lot more response and when we set up our blog uh we finally set up a blog post for our website and those were the blogs that would get comments and people like engaging with and stuff like that so we could see the interest in what people were doing and that's when we decided to like delete half of our products and just get rid of them interesting which ones did you delete like that The Hammocks and that sort of thing yeah okay yeah like all of our outdoor stuff we just got rid of that and just kind of focused in on you know this woman that wants to be healthy and not like that interesting okay so it started out as like an outdoors brand and then you just kind of focused in you found out there were older women I don't know where definition of old is because I'm old but let's just call it uh over the age of 50 60 maybe I don't know well you're right like the older one sure okay I suppose so again and like their kids are growing up and um but we'd even still have like 30 year olds and and stuff like that but like are in that like next phase of adulthood okay and and it sounds like those other products probably weren't selling that well regardless so it wasn't really uh hitting your your top line by removing those uh products no no right they were they were profitable and we loved them and I had such emotional attachments to them but when it came down to it like if we could take that that cash and invest it into the products that were selling faster and um that was just smarter all around to sometimes spread ourselves in okay so let's let's jump to challenges now in order to run a challenge you need to have people to join it so how do you get people on it in the first place yeah so for us we um we had at that time like an email list of like 70 000 people so okay yeah because because of 2019 legitimately our business had like two phases of like Amazon and then 2018 turned on Facebook ads and that was when our email list went from like 10 000 to 70 000 just one year um but then in 2020 we used that list to launch the challenge and um we had like four or 500 people sign up for that first round and then it was just a snowball effect from there of just like getting people enrolled to the concept it was a completely free challenge um so a lot of my clients that I help now are starting from zero with no email list um and we just like run Facebook ads to you know get them to join the free challenge um and and the whole concept of it being free is you want as much like you want the right people not as many people but the right people in that group to uh know like and trust you and go through this experience with you as a brand and then ultimately they become like loyal customers for life but that was initially how we we got ours off the ground okay so to run Facebook ads to join a challenge sounds really expensive for a free challenge like I I run my own and I know the niche really depends on what it is but we're talking like maybe four to six dollars per lead at least in my industry which is which is kind of like e-commerce I'm kind of curious uh with your clients that are starting from zero how much are they paying per lead right now we're getting around three dollars is three dollars than the average yeah I think that's kind of the average three to four dollars for four e-commerce um products and then like my what I tell them is you want at least 100 members because you have it's like a game of percentages I tell them sure of like you have the percentage of people that are lurkers the percentage people that engage the percentage of people that just like forget you know that they either yeah so you like at least 100 gives you a good like base to test the concept and see if that's if it's really what your audience wants so if you're running these for an e-commerce product and then the challenge is is related to the product that you sell but it might not directly convert into products right away right so you're kind of taking this leap of faith then let's say you're paying it sounds like 300 bucks to run this challenge right right for 100 people let's say so the goal is to just build up your email list and your your nurture list right right and then can you just walk me through maybe one of your challenges like what does one of your ads look like to get them to join the challenge yeah so um for ours initially it was it was just a like a customer kind of sharing her experience with using our water bottles and our products and you know that being a customer of living with me was much more than just you know getting hydrated and kind of just sharing her whole stress converting ads is like just sharing her story they go from that ad to the landing page that we build um and then opt-in and that was the biggest thing that I like kind of kick myself in a butt for his is I didn't realize that these were profitable it is a much longer customer journey and so that's why when I was running our business and um doing these ads I didn't just throw a budget at it because we were like getting ready to sell and I just didn't realize that but um my cold traffic campaigns would confer within seven days to a two return ad spend right and so I knew it was profitable I could scale it but these ones you put money at it and it takes like 30 60 sometimes 90 days for that full return on ad spend to like come to fruition but at that point for us it was like between like four and five return on ads then I know now um the new owners have even seen seven percent or seven return on ad spend with using the challenge as a lead acquisition so it was much longer so it's like it's kind of that risk of getting them okay I'm looking forward to sign getting people into your community yeah all right so so walk me through it so the ad is literally just a story uh where a water bottle changed their life they click on that takes them to a landing page what's on the landing page uh just the benefits of the challenge essentially like like we're doing an outdoors workout Outdoors challenge for one of my clients and um you just go to the landing page and it's just like welcome and you talk about the philosophy of the company try to get people try to get people that share your same values of like not just a fitness company or a water bottle company but we're a company that helps you live your life with infinite possibilities or we're a company that's like all about being wild outside you know like sharing your the philosophy of who you are that's different from you know the water bottles or a fitness company type thing um and then like here's the challenge like it's free to join you know here's we like kind of we make challenge packets uh so when they register they get this packet that has like the pledge card like a physical packet uh just a PDF all right yeah okay a downloadable PDF for them got it okay yeah um so they'll get that that has like their pledge card calendar all the information um so they register for free get that packet then we walk them through the steps of you know step one join a Facebook group step two make your pledge like introduce yourself to the community um step three buy our products you know like we usually we're usually at the end of those steps would uh try to get them to convert as well and a lot of them would initially but it's just like step one step two step three this product would help you it's not mandatory like obviously our water bottles were helpful in a 60-day hydration challenge and like for our workout Outdoors challenge we have products that help you work out Outdoors um and then like different challenges that we do um or like we have a pet company and we sell the pet products that help you have a better like Bond and relationship with your pets so a lot of times it's not the highest conversion from like the top of the funnel sure code traffic campaign to product listing but you can get some right then and then they go through the whole customer journey and that's when it cleans up the rest okay so let me just kind of break down what you just said so landing page you tell them the benefits of the challenge and then they sign up you you launch a Facebook group private Facebook group it sounds like you have them introduce themselves what's this pledge like I promise to take part in this Challenge and fulfill the what not uh yeah yeah okay essentially my thought with that is just like an icebreaker like sometimes people join they don't know what to say so it's just like here's your first post written for you got it okay and if they don't do it do you encourage them to do it later or yeah yeah but it's not like mandatory um sure I can still participate and win prizes and everything but the whole like idea behind it is is that like some they join it's like what do I say you know you know you're just like here's what you say introduce yourself yeah right oh I like that I like that okay and then you say uh you know for this hydration challenge using your example uh you need a water bottle here's ours you don't have to use it but you know if you still need one buy this one essentially okay and then after that the challenge begins presumably right right okay walk me through running the challenge let's use your hydration one since you've probably run it a million times yeah so so what's day one like so day one we have like a whole kickoff party um every week so bird's eye view real quick we have weekly challenges with weekly live videos and then on the day-to-day basis um that was the best part for me is I was just too busy to like post and do things every single day I always wanted a super engaged Facebook group but I was like I just don't have the time so for me and my like requirements was pretty was just to show up once a week for the live video it was like and then like one post to like ask them like a roll call to like submit their calendars to show that they were participating um but but day one we'd have a kickoff party um and like we'd have is scheduled in a Facebook event people would come we'd introduce us the brand we were always transparent that we were a brand you know like you know we are living something we this is what we stand for this is me this is why I started the company this is like what our values everything like that um this is why hydration is so important um these this is what you can expect for the next 60 days um meet with us once a week all that kind of stuff and then we like about prizes we make it super fun and like have timers that go off and if you're the most recent comment you win prizes so there's like always very fun but always like the way to introduce yourself and your values and what you stand for and what products you have to offer and what they can expect and then uh from there we just uh announced like the weekly challenges all right so what's what's the first weekly challenge so literally you're just getting on Facebook live once a week it sounds like right work wise yeah right so can you just walk me through one of these challenges so the the hydration what is like the first challenge of that so I always tell people that your first weekly challenge should be something that helps your customers get set up for successful challenge so um like whether that be like we have a meditation Challenge and it's like make your space you know this week we challenge you to like create the space that you will like meditate in for 60 days or however long or I mean ours was um to find like fruit infused water recipes um okay so like changing from soda and juices and stuff to water can be pouring and hard for some people so this week we challenge you to find some like yummy natural uh things you can add that will kind of make it more delicious um so that was always like the very first week every I I personally ran 10 60 day challenges before I sold and I think they're on to 12 or something now um but but every single time was the same one uh for the first week to help them like get set up for the whole time cool and then so you go on live and then you mentioned something like roll call is that like just having people tell you what they've done or yeah so um I would go live every Sunday evening and every Sunday morning I'd do a post that says roll call like share because in that challenge packet we talked about earlier I had a calendar for them but they could check off that they drink their water and so on Sunday mornings I said um you know in the comments here post a picture of your calendar be eligible for prizes um so it like did two things it like helped me easily pick winners because instead of going through all the posts and stuff and trying to figure out like who was who was doing it uh they could tell me right there and then two gave them that Weekly accountability that they knew was coming so they're like okay this is gonna come up I should be drinking my water and stuff like that and where the people just naturally communicating with each other on the Facebook group or that was the thing that like blew my mind um and what I've seen in like all these challenge groups that I've helped create is is that like if you can get the people if you can get people that are on like the similar or same journey in that group going through a shared experience the conversations just happen naturally which is why I didn't have to like do all these posts and like uh facilitate the conversations as much because they would come in and say like oh I'm just trying to drink water because I want to lose weight I want to give up soda all the whatever their reason was they'd share those reasons and then um the other awesome thing that was unintentional but worked out so well was that by like changing up the weekly Focus um 60 days they have to drink their water every day for six days but the weekly focuses would kind of change or they would change and that changed the conversation and kept things fresh you know because six days is a long time and people might like lose interest of just like doing the same thing for 60 days um but every week we'd be like gratitude or healthy eating and so like people be like oh I love healthy eating here's all my recipes or I love gratitude and so the conversations um just naturally always happened because the topics were being mixed up by just the weekly challenges all right so this goes Way Beyond water bottles obviously right so essentially you get them in with the hydration challenge with The Shining Up full but really it's more of like a lifestyle thing right you talk about gratitude you talk about healthy eating uh exercise Maybe and it just transforms into this you know how to live a better life challenge yeah yeah and that's what was that's what was um so fulfilling honestly was from day one on Amazon that's what I wanted the brand to stand for and that's what I wanted to help people do but I just never could I never like figured it out until I was able to do this Challenge and then that's when like honestly it was kind of hard for me to sell it at some points because I was like this is so fulfilling like I feel like I'm changing people's lives and like helping them you know achieve these things and the stories that would happen after 60 days it was well well beyond that they just drank water it was that their whole confidence has changed our whole life has changed and um I was able to actually make the impact that I wanted to with my business um which is really cool all right so Alicia I guess I a question that the listeners are going to have is I sell something super boring how do I develop a challenge around that so um I don't know let's say I sell office supplies or something help me come up with a challenge for that yeah so it all it all starts with like every business needs to have a like a story of what you stand like that's the brand um otherwise you're just a product business and that's just not gonna go far so uh water bottle business could have had any story you know like any Mission or purpose but like mine specifically was to remind people that they could do anything and become anything so I think like starting there is the most important thing of like what your brand is like if it's an office business and you want to support um aspiring entrepreneurs that are working in the office day to day or whatever and you're gonna like help them um with mindset or something like that like you become this mindset business that is all about you know motivating um and encouraging educating your customers so starting with your brand and what your brand stands for your values and like what you actually want to achieve with it goes well beyond any product that you choose if you got that right you can do a new product you know and then you just align that mission and those values with that product and you can create that challenge um and then of course um your products can fit into your accounts like if you're doing an office supply and you're selling paper or something like that you could sell organization right organization yeah exactly and and you're going to do a challenge that helps people be organized get focused get crystal clear on their goals as an entrepreneur or even just a business professional on like what they want to achieve then that's how you can take any boring product but as long as you have like the brand um and the story that you want to like align it with yeah it's a mess yeah I like that and then once people join your challenge they're like your company name like they might not be ready to buy like a hammock or something right but they'll remember your brand and so when you do send out emails or run ads they'll remember that challenge they took part in and they'll want to shop from you right like I'm not going to buy a water bottle from the algae anymore once I've gone through one of your challenges exactly exactly because then you've you've done more for them than any brand like that's the biggest thing is that a lot of Brands a lot of just companies don't like that's why I make sure it's free like the whole challenge is free because I'd rather I'd rather like get them in and um get them into my world and learn how you know how much we care about their their experience and then lock them into like any product we launch you know because at that point like you said like really could have much money um I want to keep it like along their their journey and I was also just a side note of the best best thing ever was that we never knew what products to launch until we had this community and they were always like we want this this this this and this color and this size and so like everything was so much easier and just like okay we'll launch that now and and then it wasn't a flaw because you know who your customers and what they want now right that's cool I like that so do all these challenges have to be so long you mentioned yours are like 60 days that's a long time but do they have to be longer on the longer end in general um so there's pros and cons for sure and I'm doing a brand just starting out I just say do a shorter one like 21 days is the shortest I'd say um to like 30 days just because you want to like test the concept prove it get some social proof and use that to like build um but in 60 days it just take a while to like get all that built but for me the pros of a 60 day is one the transformation is much deeper for the customer so you get the testimonials and the stories and the Loyalty that you build out of that is like next to nothing it's just really cool and then two as a business owner it's so much easier for to manage because um the hardest or the most time consuming part of running it is launching it um and and that's like it's really great because you can get some more leads and everything let it run and and let it like nurture my customers and I could show up once a week and I had other parties too but like that was like check and then I can move on to the next big project so it was really really nice for me as a business owner to not have to like redo it all the time um and then just the stories that would happen and Transformations and it goes by so fast like so fast and you'd be surprised at how many people stay along for the whole 60 days like um are you doing them every day by the way just have I done them every day no no are you emailing them every day are you contacting them every day no just once a week just once a week okay all right yeah yeah so I we'd have our live videos on Sundays and on Mondays I'd send the recap of like here's what happened here's to one here's the new weekly Focus um all that kind of stuff okay so correspondence Wise It's actually prepping it doesn't I mean coming with the idea is the hardest part but executing it it's once a week live and then it's not maybe a couple of emails in the beginning to get them set up but after that it's just one email a week yeah exactly and I set up the like a flow that I would just duplicate um so I set up one time and that's like that's the whole part that I help my clients do is like conceptualize the strategy then build out their landing pages the emails and then once you have those like back-end emails when somebody registers you can just keep duplicating it um for future rounds I like this okay so it doesn't even sound that much work it no I mean that's the thing coming up with it is the hard part like what's coming up with it I'm building it like so for me I built out my assets over 10 challenges so 600 days so like the challenge packet my landing pages and um like made it look as professional as it is over that much time but that's like how I tell people to get it set up is like that and that can take some time you know to have it look as professional um and I didn't do that straight out of the gate you know it was just done over time um and revised and changed and um optimized uh to what it what it became but um but then after that that was the best part because we were just a small team of three people sure I just I couldn't have something that took up a lot of my time but then also just provided immense value to our customers and didn't really take much time so let's illuminate enumerate what you need here it sounds like this is challenge packet to get them started right and then for a 68 challenge that's five emails and an autoresponder essentially right like a flow yeah five to seven seven sure in the three spot five to seven and then you're just going on live once a week and getting people on you're having conversations and whatnot and maybe the next day you do another post that just outlines the accomplishments that people had is that like I'm sure there's more to it but that in a nutshell is the preparation that you need uh and the landing pages and then um occasionally not for all the challenges but some challenges I provide like weekly templates so if it's like a healthy eating here's a template for you to keep track so then but not all challenges some some people like them and some people don't use them like if you have a group of men a lot of times they don't like to use templates and stuff um I don't know um but like women love to color them and decorate them and make them quite creative and and stuff like that and so um so there's just like the small assets but yeah in a nutshell that's pretty much the the gist of it cool okay I can see this working really well it builds community and then you can actually probably use these stories in future Facebook ads too right I mean people are telling their stories okay nice yeah that's another huge thing was that I was in charge of our marketing and I just like what should I write what blog article about this should I do this and as soon as I have this community it's like all of my content was made for me um and that was like the best part was like they became my emails they're banning social posts they became all my ads um like like all of marketing just became easy um for me because they made my content before before this group I never we just like we begged people for user generated content like will you please send a video or a picture um and we'll send you something and and after this like we had like we didn't even tap into like a tenth of the content that was in there before we sold yeah no that's amazing I guess this could be kind of intimidating for someone starting from ground zero right because I guess you're putting down three to five hundred bucks uh for something that you might not see pay dividends for potentially a month or so or 60 days however long the challenge is right right and that's why I say like for new brands start off as a shorter challenge not like seven to ten like more like 21 to 30 because you still want to like go through a whole experience with them excuse me and um and like the weekly challenges if you only have like one or two like people don't get the rhythm of what you're trying to to establish so like within like a month time period people are like oh there's like this is the Cadence this is like they go live weekly they do all these things so like um a newer brand starting off shorter but still enough time to kind of show them what you're trying to achieve um I know for me uh when I first started doing these lives I I'd always be like okay what if no one shows up what if no one shows up what if no one shows up and I remember my first lives that I did I think I got like five people to show up or maybe less than that and I was like ah there's only five people watching me how did you get over that part of it that's a great question so I made fun of me because I try to go live when nobody was at first I was like so nervous to go live and I'm like and then he's like no you need to like tell them like and set a schedule so people you know come so the first few times I was like kind of happier if it was like a little bit less people to kind of warm up but then once like I set my schedule like 7 P.M Eastern Sunday that's how it was like a year and a half two years or whatever and um and they were originally at first we only had like 10 people or so on the live videos but like to be honest you just treat those 10 people like they're like the best thing ever and like you can say them by name like oh my gosh take him thanks for so much for showing up how are you and that was the biggest thing is that like um I I took a lot of time because like I really did care about these women a lot I was just like getting to know their names their families their stories and stuff like that and so once they feel like um like I said our community wanted to feel seen and heard that was a big part of it they felt like they were part of a conversation building our brand with us learning from us and like being a part of it um that just started growing exponentially but at first like it was totally okay there was just 10 of them because they were they just became like kind of best friends you know and then yeah eventually people catch wind of that and like see how much you actually really care um and like they want to come in and like talk to a brand and be a part of something too and be a part of the conversation so then it just grows from there by just treating those first five to ten people like they are your best friends and really caring makes it fun yeah they'll stay on live with you and it's a good time let's set some expectations here so if you're doing a live and let's say you get 100 people sign up like how long does it I imagine this is like a snowball thing right after a while people share the challenge because they love it so much what what time frame would you start seeing what what time is what is the inflection point like what was it for you when things started really taking off yeah um I always say hundreds like a really good base level just to see but like it was like because we but we started off with and that's just what I'm seeing from like other groups uh because we started off with like three to five hundred for something in that range um and even at that point we had just a few people showing up live but I feel like as soon as that first few weeks of just three to five hundred people and they started getting the Cadence of like what was going on that's when it like snowballed like so I always tell people three or five hundred people is such a sweet spot of just like that's really like all you need to like have this like Mass uh Power behind this group that you can like take all of those benefits that we talked about from um because that was like my very first Challenge and like the first few weeks people are like what's going on like what's what are these five videos and then by the end of the 60 days with just three to five hundred people like it was this full community showing up offering feedback okay everything like that so it really doesn't take a lot of people at all um I just think getting started started at least 100 at minimum minimum and you use the same group each time Facebook group each time so it just gets bigger over time right that's the best thing is a lot of a lot of people have asked me like do I need a group for like my brand and then a group for the challenge and it's like no you just need one group because it is your brand you know this like this is what you're bringing this is the value you're bringing to your customers um and so everything that I wanted to everything that people try to achieve from a branded Community like customer feedback or testimonials are our product feedback and stuff like that all was achieved there and um and so you just keep the same group when it builds and then the people that had um done the challenges before they know exactly what's going on and they help indoctrinate the next round of people they're like this is what's going on you know Alicia goes live once a week they have these challenges and so that's what it became easier because I had my emails to help guide them but I also had this Army of people that were just like this is what's happening welcome and I love it I'll come in if you want to see more amazing interviews with successful entrepreneurs then check out this next interview right here I think you'll enjoy it and you'll definitely be inspired

Channel: MyWifeQuitHerJob Ecommerce Channel

Views: 19,075

Keywords: ecommerce business, ecommerce business for beginners, ecommerce business ideas, ecommerce business explained, ecommerce business amazon, online store, ecommerce business ideas 2022

Id: MTo7LqjFFi4

Length: 43min 26sec (2606 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 11 2022