I’m thrilled to welcome Chase Chappell, Partner at DOE Media, one of the fastest-growing performance marketing agencies in the ecom space, Ads Mastery Founder, Founder at Serge, Partner in Success Ai

Chase has advised on over $200 million in ad spend across Facebook and TikTok, helping brands turn paid traffic into predictable, scalable revenue.

Through his experience running his own agency, Chappell Digital Marketing, and now as part of DOE Media, he’s helped DTC and e-commerce brands not only master ad buying but also build sales pages that convert and expand into new channels beyond Amazon.

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> Here’s a glimpse of what you would learn….

In this episode of the “Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast,” host Josh Hadley interviews Chase Chappell, a leading performance marketing expert, about scaling e-commerce brands beyond seven figures. Chase shares actionable strategies for channel diversification, creator management on TikTok Shop, and building omnichannel ecosystems. He emphasizes the importance of rigorous creator selection, transparent feedback loops, and integrating paid media with organic content. The discussion offers practical advice on leveraging TikTok’s rapid growth potential, nurturing creator communities, and adopting an all-in, omnichannel mindset to drive sustainable, scalable e-commerce success.

Here are the 3 action items that Josh identified from this episode:

Tools and Websites

Books

Concepts and Strategies

People and Brands

Social Media Links

This episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure e-commerce owners grow to eight figures.

I started my business in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years.

I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survive and become a real brand. I wish I would have had a guide to help me grow faster and avoid the stumbling blocks.

If you’ve hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then email me at josh@ecommbreakthrough.com and in your subject line say “strategy audit” for the chance to win a $10,000 comprehensive business strategy audit at no cost!

Transcript Area:

Chase Chappell 00:00:00  I want to know that if I send a sample that they have a good post rate, so they’re going to put the product up. They have GMV on multiple videos in the last 30 days. Their view volume is at least at least 2 to 10 K views per video on a shoppable video, and that their GTM per video is at least my product price per 1000 views. Because that means at least if they post a video, I know I’m going to break even or make money off of every creator. The problem with that is, is now you go from having 1000 people request your product to you being only able to approve 20 off this rubric.

MC 00:00:30  Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast. Are you ready to unlock the full potential and growth in your business? You’ve already crossed seven figures in sales, but the challenge is knowing how to take your business to the next level.

Josh Hadley 00:00:43  Most brands are lighting their money on fire with paid ads, and they have no idea why. Throwing money at meta and TikTok is super easy, but turning that spend into predictable, scalable revenue is a different game, and today we’re talking with someone who has spent over $200 million on ads and sharing the game changing strategies with us.

Josh Hadley 00:01:01  Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast. I’m your host, Josh Hadley. I scaled my own brand from 0 to 8 figures in sales, and now my mission is to take it to over nine figures on my journey to nine figures. I bring you the unfiltered conversations with the smartest minds in eCommerce. Past guests include Ezra Firestone, Kevin King, and Michael E Gerber, author of the E myth. Today, I’m super excited to introduce you to Chase Chappell, who is someone who’s been at the forefront of some of the biggest paid media wins in e-commerce. With Chase, he has been the partner at Doe Media, one of the fastest growing performance marketing agencies in the e-comm space. He’s the Ads Mastery founder founder at surge and partner in success AI who knows what time he actually sleeps. Chase is has advised on over $200 million in ad spend across Facebook and TikTok. He’s helping brands turn paid media into predictable, scalable revenue through his experience running his own agency, Chappell Digital Marketing, and now as part of Dough Media, he’s helped DTC and e-commerce brands not only master ad buying, but build sales pages that convert and expand into new channels beyond Amazon.

Josh Hadley 00:02:05  With that introduction, welcome to the show, Chase.

Chase Chappell 00:02:08  Thank you for having me, Josh. I’m happy to be here.

Josh Hadley 00:02:10  Chase. And who knew it. But we are here in the DFW metroplex together. We should be doing this in person instead of.

Chase Chappell 00:02:17  Yeah, we should have. We’re just right up the road.

Josh Hadley 00:02:19  But funny enough, the e-commerce space is a small world and even smaller when you’re in the DFW area. So those listening, if you’re in the DFW area, you know me and chase me. We need to put together a meetup or something.

Chase Chappell 00:02:29  There we go. That’d be a great idea.

Josh Hadley 00:02:31  Chase. Super excited to have you on. You have been in this game. You know, I’ve seen you on multiple stages. You have done significant like ad spend for sure. But one of the most important things that I love about what you’ve done is you’re not just like a one trick pony. You’re not the guy that’s like, oh, hey, he’s the TikTok guy. Oh, he’s not just the Facebook guy.

Josh Hadley 00:02:51  He’s not just the Amazon guy. I love that you have a broader, broader ecosystem of how you’re like utilizing all these different sales channels to really take brands to the next level. Tell me, like, what are you guys actively focusing on right now with like, Doe media and knowing that you’re speaking to existing seven figure e-commerce business owners? Like, what do you see happening and what do you guys actively focused on in your performance marketing agency?

Chase Chappell 00:03:15  Yeah, no, we’re ramping up big time on the agency side, mainly working with like brands doing, you know, 500 to $3 million a month and like helping them scale to like the $10 million month range. But we focus on like full service. So from creatives to the media buying from meta, Google, TikTok launching on TikTok shops, lifecycle marketing, retention, marketing, email, SMS. It’s like full coverage because we know like you know, all of these pieces play into each other. So we want to make sure we cover every basis point for what we can control, to be able to get the results that we’re looking for.

Chase Chappell 00:03:46  A lot of times brands will have really good, you know, ads and they’re wanting to, you know, improve website. But really it’s like know your email and SMS is like leaking a huge portion of this. This is where the main focus should be. So a lot of that right now is like, you know, we’re working with a lot of large e-commerce brands, and we’re also sending out lies to acquire smaller agencies that are like very focused on what they do. Like smaller TikTok shop agencies, creator community agencies, because we’re looking to, you know, ramp that up because the demand is so high and there’s really good small teams out there that have like exponentially focused on one thing and, you know, really crafted that in. And we want to connect that into the whole ecosystem to continue developing that.

Josh Hadley 00:04:21  Love that I think that’s super smart. My question for you, Chase, and this is one of like the ongoing debates, which is how quick do you diversify off of whatever platform you get started on, right? For a lot of our listeners, it’s been Amazon.

Josh Hadley 00:04:36  And, you know, I’ve also told people where it’s like, hey, I honestly wouldn’t like start jumping ship until you’re probably doing five plus million dollars so that you’ve actually put together the teams and the system for at least one sales channel before then you go and have to go figure out a whole new strategy and system and operation for another sales channel. give me your take in, like the brands that you’ve been working with. What’s your advice? When is it too early to scale off of your main channel that you got started on, and when’s it maybe like, hey, you should have done this like years ago, man.

Chase Chappell 00:05:07  Yeah. Any for there’s a lot that goes into it. So like if you’re on Amazon and you’re doing, you know, 100 K monthly, like you’ve proven that your product works, it has demand and it’s achieved some level of scale. So you know, you’re doing a million plus a year at that point, like introducing meta ads and so forth to expand your Amazon.

Chase Chappell 00:05:25  Like that’s a very logical next step. And then typically it would be like your Shopify store next where you own the data. And anytime you go to another channel, take over your website or launch another platform. It is just as much work as it was for the first like distribution channel you got live. So however, whatever you were putting into Amazon, it’s if not the same or more for the next channel, and now you’re managing both. So you want to be stable. You want the numbers to already be working well for you. And usually it’s like you go from Amazon to Shopify as the logical next step. You own the data, you control the marketing, you open up your margin a little bit more, and typically you’ll see a little bit of a run off running ads directly to Shopify, where you see anywhere between like 5 to 30% on really good numbers flow over from when you’re running out as a Shopify. They’ll flow over to Amazon and you’ll get both channels at the same time. Because we see a lot of people, they’ll see an ad, they’ll go search it, and they either choose to buy it from the website or they choose to buy from Amazon.

Chase Chappell 00:06:16  It’s like a pretty even split. So you want to be on both of those channels initially, always and usually. Same thing there. You get to about 80 to 100 K. Monthly is what we recommend before you ever decide to touch TikTok shop, because that is an entire beast in itself. So, you know, I’d say 100 K plus monthly. Get on Shopify, build that up to about 100 K monthly, then get on TikTok shop, build that up.

Josh Hadley 00:06:36  Why? Why is TikTok shop number three in there?

Chase Chappell 00:06:39  Because it requires a different type of level of input and management. So when we look at Shopify and Amazon, you can get a set number of statics and get a system for like you know what creatives you want to push and then you already have like maybe organic search from Amazon. And then on Shopify you can run meta ads pretty stable and not have to, you know, pump an enormous amount of hundreds of creatives to get to 100 K a month. You can launch an ad, and it can run 90 days and spend $20,000 out of five x, and that’s your 100 K monthly right there off that one ad.

Chase Chappell 00:07:08  That’s a very realistic, you know, it’s not unachievable and can be hit pretty often with just a handful 15, 20 creatives. And you don’t have to be constantly refreshing it. TikTok shop on the other hand, we’re not looking at it as a launch ads first platform. We’re looking at it as exponential growth platform. So we’re not going 0 to 100. We’re going, you know, 0 to 3, three to mil, 1 million to 3 million very quickly. And that requires an enormous beast, which is UGC creators because you have to onboard. You’re not dealing with five meta ads you’re launching, and it just runs in the background. You’re talking about managing creators, inviting them, sending tens of thousands of invites, speaking with them on the content, retaining them, communicating at a large scale and then connecting your shop, setting it all up and then keeping that constantly running and then managing that nucleus of creators, which is a very, you know, intense operation at scale. And it can be quite challenging to initially launch on TikTok shop if you don’t go all in on it from day one.

Chase Chappell 00:08:06  And even if you’re proven on Amazon. TikTok shop is so different in terms of just like all the other stuff that goes into it. Whereas like Shopify, you can really control all the outputs very quickly. So it’s always like a logical step for us.

Josh Hadley 00:08:19  Oh, that makes a lot of sense. So then why all of the why all the rage for TikTok shop right now I guess would be my question for you. What do you see? And then how many brands do you see actually succeeding at TikTok shop? Because I know Shopify has been around for decades. Right? But here you have TikTok shop, relatively new kid on the block, and now people won’t stop talking about it. Right. But there’s also like there are some massive wins on TikTok shop, don’t get me wrong, but I feel like just as many wins as we can call out. There’s probably like 100 x the number of losers that have gotten on there and gotten their butts handed to them. Like, what are you seeing from that standpoint?

Chase Chappell 00:08:55  Yeah, from a TikTok shop perspective, the from how we look at it is we don’t see any other platform right now where you can go from 0 to 10 million in such a short amount of time, like, whereas like back in the day, if you went back to 2016 and you ran ads, you could get wicked low CPMs, you could get crazy low cost per clicks, you could get, you know, 20 cent purchases, a dollar purchases, and you could scale spin on that same creative and dominate.

Chase Chappell 00:09:17  And as much as you wanted to scale, you would scale with it. Amazon early days. There wasn’t a lot of competitors. You could launch a product, and if that product wasn’t on Amazon, it was more than likely going to absolutely take off and crush it. It’s hard these days to see a platform where you can just launch and it have such exponential growth all at once. I haven’t seen any meta brand or Amazon brand where they just magically pop from 0 to 10 million in just a matter of months, or 0 to 1 million. It’s very hard. It’s usually a very slow, gradual scale with just over time. You build up your rankings, you build up your ad creatives, you get better at messaging your product, your subscriptions, and slowly it grinds up. It’s a grind. TikTok shop is the first time that we’ve seen something. That’s our 2016 era where everybody had explosive numbers, where you can spin up a thousand affiliates in a matter of 30 to 90 days, and a few hundred of those videos go viral, and they do 50 K to 100 K sells each.

Chase Chappell 00:10:10  And all of a sudden you went from 0 to $3 million in 60 days. I’ve never seen a brand go from 0 to $3 million in 60 days on meta without like, pouring a huge volume of spend, and even then, it’s usually not profitable. It just doesn’t have that same take off effect. You can’t. The virality on TikTok is just what allows such rapid growth in a way. So that’s kind of how we look at it. And I think a lot of people see the viral videos, they see the big numbers and they get excited. So that’s where all the craze is, right? And it’s this new thing that people don’t understand, and they’re used to making statics or they’re used to doing organic a certain way, or they’re used to managing their website, having control, or they’re used to just getting organic traffic. Naturally, this is the first time where everyone’s being forced on a creator relationship level and learning how how to operate, you know, an army of a thousand people to get it going.

Josh Hadley 00:10:54  Yeah. No, I think you’re exactly right there. And I think that it’s true, like the amount of work that’s required on TikTok shop is it’s a whole different animal compared to Amazon and Shopify. And really you’re diving into like the the creator management is probably the most like labor intensive aspect of this. And here’s like my opinion on this Chase is that everybody sees like the easy examples of like, oh yeah, you just give out samples to creators and then they go viral. Yeah. And that’s how I just I’m printing money over here and it’s like, no, what I believe TikTok is I believe this is the new MLM. But in the 21st century, for us, this is the new like MLM machine of the 2020s. And what I see happening is like, just like Mary Kay was basically an MLM built off of. You have independent sales reps. They’re going to go sell their friends and family. Then they’re going to go tell them to go become an independent rep, to then go sell their friends and family.

Josh Hadley 00:11:49  I think that what’s happening is like Tick Tock Shop is basically that you have all these independent sales reps, and now instead of just having a little block party or party at their church, it’s now 2000s of people seeing the content. They don’t necessarily have to go recruit people under them. But I do think that’s a fun like creator activation strategy when you actually dive into it. But what’s happening is like they’re just selling their friends and family at scale. But if you take a look at like, all right, let’s pull a page out of Mary Kay’s book. Like, what all did it take for them to incentivize these independent sales reps to actually keep going, to actually keep hosting parties, to actually keep selling these products? And I think that’s the disconnect that most sellers have, is, yeah, it’s easy to go get a sample out to a bunch of people overnight on TikTok shop. It’s a whole other animal to keep those creators coming back and giving them a reason to come back. More than just like the GMV, because what happens if they don’t hit on their first video? So, Chase.

Josh Hadley 00:12:47  Talk to me about that. Like that’s like the the UGC creator flywheels that I think are so important. It’s also like the creator life cycle. Tell me what you see from your perspective of like the top brands are doing this differently than maybe the brands that are just seeing this as like, hey, I gave out a bunch of samples, why am I not winning?

Chase Chappell 00:13:04  Yeah, it goes back to why we recommend, like, you know, if you’re on Amazon, go to Shopify, then TikTok shop, because there’s also an effect where whenever you start activating that portion of it with TikTok shop, it lifts both of those channels at the same time. Whereas if you go TikTok shop first, like there’s a lot more to it. But how the flow works is you get activated on TikTok, shop right, your products proven. You then set up an automation where you can start sending out these invites. We use an AI automation tool to do this, and so you send out thousands of invites, right? But you’re not going what you what people used to do, which is what scared a lot of people in the beginning, which did not work, is they thought, oh, this is the first time we’ve seen people wanting samples.

Chase Chappell 00:13:41  Let’s just go ahead and wipe our inventory on this thing. So they give out thousands of products to the thousands of invites they sent, and 90% of the videos never got any views. And now 90% of those people have product, and it’s killing their margin because they’re just giving out loads of free samples in a crash. What’s working right now is what everyone should have done from the beginning is actually applying strategy to it. And so you send out the invites, you then follow a rubric. Does has the creator generated sales in the last 30 days? Second layer of that is are all those cells tied to one video? If that is, that’s a red flag because that just means it was a one trick pony. Now, how many brand collaborations have they done and how many views in sales do they average per brand collab? If they’re consistently hitting a, you know, nice batting average on every video they post and get sells, that’s more compelling to us than somebody who had a one hit wonder viral video, because we’re not looking for the random one offs.

Chase Chappell 00:14:29  I want to get predictable ROI, just like I would on an ad creative that I know could get a 2 or 3 for X Rojas. I want to know that if I send a sample that they have a good post rate, so they’re going to put the product up. They have GMV on multiple videos in the last 30 days. The review volume is at least at least 2 to 10 K views per video on a shoppable video, in that their GTM per video is at least my product price per 1000 views, because that means at least if they post a video, I know I’m going to break even or make money off of every creator. Problem with that is is now you go from having 1000 people request your product to you being only able to approve 20 off this rubric. So therefore you have to then dramatically ramp up the amount of volume going out to be able to do this. And so what we do is we’ll have brands leverage their Amazon reviews because it’s already established you import them to Shopify in addition to with your Shopify reviews, you import them over to TikTok shop and it gets you to a 3.6% satisfaction ratio.

Chase Chappell 00:15:26  Day one. And then your reviews look good. It looks established. You have all of your Amazon imagery that we already know works, plus what they have for A+ content embedded on TikTok shop as well. You just duplicate it over now. Your reviews, your A-plus contents there. Your Amazon images are there because we already know they work. And then you have all the videos from like your organic now on feed so it presents it well, invites are going out. And then because we got you to a 3.6 satisfaction ratio day one, you automatically get 20% lift on views for every creator who posts. So if they get a thousand views TikToks bonus ING you 200 views, then we’ll have them go claim all the vouchers because it can be unprofitable very early on on TikTok shop because you’re waiting for the breakout moment and you’re shipping product and there’s up to a two week delay, you have seven days and maybe the product being shipped out. They have other brands that the creators are posting about before they get to your product.

Chase Chappell 00:16:16  Your product finally goes up and it doesn’t go and get views for three days. Then TikTok finally starts, you know, pushing the video. Five days later, it goes viral. Well, you’re already in 20 days before you even see momentum, and a lot of brands give up between that time if they don’t stick with it. And another thing is lag time, which confuses people. There’s a lagging issue. So because of that 20 day span, you’re waiting for the video to start getting sells. Well, if you send out 100 products today and then 20 days later you start seeing cells, you’re like, I’m good. And then 20 days later you have zero sales because those videos don’t continue to move on their own without spin behind them. It’s just organic. So then brands are like, wait, I got to send more affiliates. And it gets very cyclical. And so their cells are spiking up and down. And it’s very confusing to how to how do you optimize something that’s up one day, down the other day.

Chase Chappell 00:16:59  It’s not predictable. So you have to force the invites, the rubric on approvals every day of maintaining affiliates daily. And then you have to then add in what we call a second stage, which is then recruiting the top creators that are generating sales for you in a private community to further incentivize them. And then our third stage is being able to build that community of those best creators, up to 100 to 1000, and then leveraging that army to then push it to meta, to push it to Amazon and TikTok all at the same time, which really brings it all back together. But the process between there and getting to that point is a long road of tweaking, optimizing and getting all those pieces in play. And it can be very challenging for any brand that doesn’t know what they’re doing to just hop on there and try that.

Josh Hadley 00:17:41  Well, and I think the most complicating aspect is like you’re dealing with creators and people at the end of the day. And so it’s not just like, hey, if you do X, this will always occur Y, right? It’s a lot more like, well, this creator has this personality.

Josh Hadley 00:17:55  This creator wants this, this creator wants that. How do you manage that? And I also I’m curious to hear your perspective on this chase as TikTok matures and it’s maturing pretty darn quickly, in my opinion. I think you’re seeing these top creators know that they can command a premium. And so they’re like, look, I have 1,000,001 sample request coming my way, and I don’t have to pay attention to all of these. I’m only going to work with brands I actually want to. And maybe once I can actually make significant money from. And I’m even seeing some of those top creators say, no, you can pay me like the influencers back in the day where you had to pay per video. It’s like, hey, yeah, you all post about it, but give me 1500 bucks first. Then I’ll talk about your product. So what are you. Are you seeing the same thing? And how do you navigate that.

Chase Chappell 00:18:39  As the number one problem right now that you just mentioned. It’s so common.

Chase Chappell 00:18:43  So you send out the invites right. And then you have quality the quality creators. There’s also a network of like the top performing creators that TikTok then reserves for their DSP partners, which is like, oh, y’all are doing 100 K sales. Video we’re going to put you in this private thing, so only agencies and big brands can talk to you. So now that’s already out of the equation for who you get to reach as a new starting brand. TikTok caps you on how many invites you can do initially, and then you’re going to run into this problem, which is going to be one of your biggest ones that you know the average person will face. Launching on TikTok shop is where are the quality creators at? Well, it’s exactly what you just said, Josh. They’re choosing who they want to work with because they want to make the most amount of money. It’s their job, right? So like some of these creators are making 20 K a month, they’re going to be very specific about who they choose to work with if Ninja reaches out to them for home kitchen appliances.

Chase Chappell 00:19:25  And you know, James is chocolates that just launched his business. You know, a week ago reaches out. They’re going to go with Ninja before they go with James’s chocolates. Because Ninja has $100 million business that has a proven moat behind it that already has the brand name and distribution, and they’ve already done all the legwork over the last decade. So they’re going to win over those creators. So the question then becomes, well, if that’s the case, how could I ever get good creators? Well, that’s where strategy comes back into play, where it’s like what brands have historically done and still do to this day. That launch on TikTok shop is they go in with the wrong messaging. You have to learn how to speak human to human with people, and a lot of times they’ll be like, they think that means complimenting and they’ll say, hey creator, I love your content. You post amazing stuff. We want you to push our product because you align with our brand, and we think it would do well with your audience and we think we’re perfect fit together.

Chase Chappell 00:20:12  They’re basically just like dousing them in compliments. And these creators see that same message a hundred different times. And of course, it’s they’re not going to be accepting all these invites. And you look the same in a spam inbox. So you have to then actually flip the script and talk about how you can toot my own horn. You have to be that way. You have to say, hey, I’m crushing it on sales right now, doing 300 K a month. I have an 80 K ad budget that I’m going to put behind your videos, help me launch on TikTok shop. I will float the budget. I will push more spend behind your videos to get you more volume in sales. And we already have a proven product. It’s working like crazy right now on these other platforms. We’re new to TikTok and we want your help. So it’s basically like the creator then goes from like seeing the same message to like, wait, this brand wants to invest in me? And they’re saying they’re doing these numbers over here.

Chase Chappell 00:20:59  That’s interesting to me. All right. I’ll I’ll go out on a limb and help them on TikTok shop. So it kind of like repositions yourself to like you got to really sell yourself. You have to tell them you have the budgets, you have to let them know you’re doing well. And if you’re not, then you’re going to be stuck in like that same message flow, right? So you have to find unique ways that other brands, you know, what they’re not saying. And that’s one of the things right now that is working really well. Your sample approval rate goes from a 0.13 on average for every 100. You’re getting literally zero for every thousand. You’re just about getting one person on a on those invites, right? Just saying I love your content. Whereas you talked about your own revenue and how amazing your brand is doing and all these great things you have going on, and you’re ready to launch the TikTok shop and you’ve got the budgets to do it, and you’re going to help them out and grow their videos, too, and they’re going to make a lot more money.

Chase Chappell 00:21:43  And you’re offering the best commissions. Well, now your sample request rate jumps to 5% from 0.1. Now, for every 1000 invites, you’re actually getting 50, you know, creators coming in. And maybe 10 to 15% of those are quality versus sending 100,000 invites and getting maybe, you know, 100 at best for, you know, quality. So you have to reframe your messaging and split test how you speak to people. And a lot of what we found is how you sell them.

Josh Hadley 00:22:08  Yeah. Well, it comes down to like what’s in it for them, right? And a lot of it is, hey, this is look how cool I am. But if you phrase it to say, yes, look how cool I am. But here’s what that means for you. You join us, you have a product that actually works and resonates with customers. You also have an established business that like, by the way, we’re not going out of stock or we’re not going, you know, out of business.

Josh Hadley 00:22:33  Tomorrow when you work with us, you’re working with a legit person. And when you work with us, we also have ad spend. So you’re going to get more exposure in addition to because our products actually have product market fit, it’s increasing your likelihood to go viral. So it’s like I think it’s marrying those together. So Chase, it still doesn’t answer the question for me, which is what about the creators that are like adamant now they’re like, yeah, 1500 bucks. Like, are you do you still see a viable path as of today to say, no, you can still go get these big creators at commission only. Or is the game starting to change to where it’s like it’s even paid to play with the creators, like you’re paying per video up front? It makes it more risky. But like welcome to the new age of TikTok.

Chase Chappell 00:23:15  Yeah. So I mean, like, there’s so many different commission structures out there. We would TikTok shop if you’re already sending out product and we just recommend a tiered approach with your commissions, you’re new to TikTok.

Chase Chappell 00:23:25  Just start high. Be generous with it initially so that way you can get the sells. We just need TikTok shop brands. All you need to do is just get past 20. GMB in the world opens up TikTok will give you co-funded program offers. They’ll give you vouchers which cover the discounting of your products. So that way you don’t have to discount it yourself. They’ll cover your ad spend credits sometimes 30%, sometimes just A5K1 off, and a lot of other times 50 to 100% of your marketing costs as soon as you pass that threshold. So it’s just like you just have we recommend brands like just bite the bullet initially on higher commission tiers to attract the creators and get the ball rolling, and then you tear it down once the ball is in your court, once you’re doing 110 GMB, you don’t have to offer 25% commission. Bring it down to 15. Once you’re doing 500 K on GMB per month in sales, you’re a proven thing. People on TikTok can see those numbers. They know the product’s working and it has high sales velocity, so you don’t have to offer 15 offers, you know, 7 to 8% doing a million a month off for five.

Chase Chappell 00:24:15  You know, you want to tear down and it opens you up your margin progressively afterwards. And you know, the creators and brands will if you share that back and forth, then it’s going to end up working. But a lot of times creators will ask for one off payments. That does happen where creators are like, hey, we want 50 bucks, we want $500, $1,500. And brands always wonder if they should do that if the math makes makes sense, because we can see the craters numbers and if their view volume in cells GMV lines up, then yes. But a lot of times we always just recommend the commission straight. And then once you get them in your community, you can build these unique programs that are personalized where you actually do like we will run contests as a stage tool. So let’s say your TikTok shop finally took off and it’s past 20 month. You’re doing 50, hundred, even a million. The problem becomes rather than recruiting creators, you don’t. That’s not that’s not the issue anymore.

Chase Chappell 00:25:02  Like more creators isn’t going to lead to more exponential scale. More videos from the people who already have your product leads to more scale. Because if you have 1000 people, have your product y going get another 1000 people to get another 1000 videos by shipping out an additional thousand. If you already have 1000 creators with 1000 products, those are what you said earlier. It’s technically your sales reps, right? They already have your product, but they only made one video. So you get them in a community and you incentivize them further. Now we’ll pay you 50 bucks, 100 bucks if you just make a post plus the original commission, as long as you just post. But all you have to do to get that money is just generate one sell. That way we just break even off of the video and it’s an additional incentive. So it’s a contest. More videos you post, the more videos or the more sales you make per video, right? So there’s layers that you’ll add on on top of that.

Chase Chappell 00:25:45  And some brands will do crazy stuff. I don’t think you have to go all out with like all these weird, crazy, you know, different plans.

Josh Hadley 00:25:51  To give out a Lamborghini and UAE.

Chase Chappell 00:25:53  Yeah, yeah. You don’t have to give out Rolexes, Ferraris and all this other crazy stuff. I don’t know that that’s bizarre to me, but, you know, the simple commissions, if it’s. That’s enough. Plus a little bit on top for your private community, for your best creators, retain them. And sometimes it makes sense to get people on A3KA month if they’re a live streamer and they’re going live eight hours a day, great. Look at that as a salary. It’s a full time job at that point. If they’re doing 6 to 8 hours a day for you. We have a brand that we’re working with. They just pay creators 3KA month. And ROI is because they make 600 bucks an hour per live, right? So if they’re live for ten hours, right, that’s six grand and you’re paying three K month.

Chase Chappell 00:26:29  And if they just do that, you know, five hours, two times a week, it ends up maxing out, you know, in the long run. So there’s different programs like that. But that gets really specific for when it makes sense.

Josh Hadley 00:26:38  Yeah I love what you just touched on there. And I think that’s kind of like advanced TikTok 2.0, which is it truly see these people as like part of your team? I think that’s again, where the struggle comes from is like so many people are just on this like new creator hamster wheel perpetually. Right? And you’re like, oh, I just need my latest viral video. But I’m a big proponent of it’s like the 2080 principle, right? Naturally, 20% of your creators are going to be driving 80% of your GMV. And sometimes on TikTok shop, it’s like 1% of your career.

Chase Chappell 00:27:07  Yeah, it is.

Josh Hadley 00:27:08  Riding 90% of your GMV. So what does that mean? Take that 1%. Take the 20% and do something different with them.

Josh Hadley 00:27:17  They’re your brand evangelists. These people, hey, they’re winning. They’re making commission. And probably they’re probably more engaged in your TikTok or your discord or your WhatsApp communities. But I love that frame of mindset that you just shared, which is just kind of like a mindset shift for me as well as like just see them as like they’re independent contractors for your brand. They’re just their sales reps. They are your boots on the ground sales reps. Imagine if you were at a mall, right? And you just wanted to have your team out there just like hustling, trying to sell your products left and right. Like that’s essentially what you have there. And if that’s your business model at a mall, you’re like, how much am I paying these people per hour? How many sales do they drive? Do I make more profit by adding more sales reps or just doubling down on the top ones, etc.? And then you just it’s a whole math equation at that point, which to me as a business owner gets really exciting.

Josh Hadley 00:28:05  And that’s where the predictability comes in from TikTok shop, instead of constantly being like, I’m only as good as my latest viral video.

Chase Chappell 00:28:11  100%. Yeah. The name of the game is Retention on Creators. And like having them in your own community that you control outside of TikTok shop. That’s like the big play, the brands that really struggle with getting consistent sales on the platform. They just look at it as like ship as much product as possible.

Josh Hadley 00:28:27  Yeah. Well, you you made one key statement that I’ve been a massive proponent for, and any time I’ve shared my presentation on stages, I feel like today is a creator gold rush. every decade there’s like an arbitrage opportunity.

Chase Chappell 00:28:42  100%.

Josh Hadley 00:28:42  Back then, it was the meta ads, low CPMs, etc. now in the 2020s, I think the greatest arbitrage is creators. And you’ve got to create, go find and accumulate all of your creators so that again, in the next decade, whatever shifts, like you’ve got this like sales army that’s willing to follow you.

Josh Hadley 00:29:00  And I think it’s never going to be cheaper than it is today. I personally believe, like in the next 3 to 5 years, I think that TikTok definitely gets to a game where at least the experienced creators, you are having to pay them upfront. Like there’s so few people willing to take bets because, like, they’re already full. They’re already employed full time across a few select brands that they’re actually creating good GMV with. And so their appetite to take on risks is going to be lower. So that’s why it is I really loved your idea of like just go all in and even lose money just to get 20 K and GMV because like, you just need to unlock those doors so that you can begin creating your own creator network. But the key thing that you said that I got down this rabbit hole on was get them off of TikTok, because if you don’t have their email or their phone number, then this is all for nothing in my opinion, because planning to reach out to them on TikTok shop, they get thousands of DMs a day.

Josh Hadley 00:29:56  Good luck. Like that’s no relationship if you’re just reaching out to them on TikTok. So it gets creative. Like how do you incentivize them to give you their cell phone numbers so that you actually have them and can contact them. So any unique strategies you’ve heard that way. Or building taking your affiliate army off of TikTok and building the camaraderie?

Chase Chappell 00:30:14  Yeah, we put them in a private community on another app. And it’s really cool because right now. So just to take a step back for this part, when we’re speaking of brands like especially big brands, and the reason this all ties back into Amazon, Shopify, then TikTok and so forth, right? It’s when you look at a brand that you want to look at TikTok shop, so linear of what’s my direct and direct always because what a lot of brands miss is if you’re on Amazon, Shopify in retail and all these other distribution channels, you’re infinitely going to have much smaller about. This needs infinitely much more value by launching on the platform, because when a video gets views, if they don’t buy on TikTok shop, they may go buy on Amazon.

Chase Chappell 00:30:52  And that’s great that you’re listed there. They may go Google search you and buy on Shopify. So there’s this big lift that we always see from TikTok shop that helps Shopify. We always see it. There’s never a case where you get sales on Tik Tok shop and you don’t see your shop light go up because of it. There is a natural flow over that. People fail to, you know, measure or realize or they see it and then they realize it and they’re like, oh, this is great. And this is just a side benefit we didn’t know we get. But big brands like if goalie goes viral, big, massive brand that has incredible distribution CVS Walmart, target everywhere Amazon here. You know, your local mom and pop shop, any gas station you walk into. Well, if they don’t buy on TikTok shop and then they don’t buy on Amazon and they didn’t buy from your website, I can assure you, the next time that they walk and see that product in aisle, the chances of them picking up the products are going to go up tenfold, and you’re likely to receive a sale because of it.

Chase Chappell 00:31:38  So it’s how accessible is your product and if it’s very accessible on lots of different and lots of different channels in different audiences, you’re more than likely going to reach an overlay with that through TikTok. So you’re getting the brand lift. So it’s a huge type of funnel play, right? And you’re getting the creators, which then can be used to where I’m circling this back to of you get them in the private community outside of TikTok now. Well, let’s say that your TikTok shop is barely profitable. 510%, right? It’s nothing. Nobody’s riding off into the sunset over this. When you’re doing great margins on Amazon, Shopify and other places. Well, what you did get, you just got an army of affiliates that now can go and you can take all those videos, launch them to meta ads. And now your role as double your CPM is dropped. Now you don’t have to then spend as much money on static ad images or big creative teams because your army is producing all the creative for you.

Chase Chappell 00:32:24  Now your Amazon sales are getting at 30% left. Do we factor that into our margin over here? Wait, our Shopify went up 20% because of all the volume we’re getting on TikTok despite not seeing sales there. So then you have to kind of look at it and say, well, why are we measuring? Measuring? You know, ROI is 1 to 1. It’s important. We want to know our direct in and out for our teams. But let’s take one step back, measure the entire business and all the metrics as a whole and see where the lifts are. You know what overall massive impact is TikTok having outside of the, you know, in platform metrics. And that’s where a lot of brands that are big established and understand these things are like, well, we’re dialing back ad spend now. we’re cutting costs over here because we’re getting so much overflow. Why were we ever paying 100 bucks to get somebody to buy our product at a loss, to make our money back 90 days later? Because our, our meta performance had just gotten so much more efficient just by migrating our videos over our Google search brand keywords on what our bids were just dropped dramatically because our search volume exploded.

Chase Chappell 00:33:19  Our Amazon brand keywords, just our costs went down. So we’re getting way more efficient. And now we’re overspending. They’re cutting costs back, and they’re scaling up creators because they can dedicate more budget there now. So I always tell brands, you got to look at it from that perspective because you get more than just the, you know, one offs or the big pops and sells on TikTok. You’re getting overflow. You’re getting creators and videos you can use elsewhere organically. Ads. There’s so much more that comes with it. So I think there’s a bigger play to be had in any brand in the 2016 area that’s established. It’s a no brainer. I don’t there’s no excuse for any brand that had crushed it for the last ten years. You have to be on TikTok shop. If you’ve been around a decade and you’re a known brand that’s killing it in its household level. You got to be there. And if you’re not a household name and you’re not on TikTok shop, you have to assume nobody knows you.

Chase Chappell 00:34:06  If you do a 100 K a month or a million a year, or 5 million a year, even 10 million a year, more than likely, the average middle America creator isn’t going to know the brand. You’re not that known, and people might live in their own ecosystem and think there is somebody on their channel and everybody knows their product. There’s a lot more people out there than you’d realize that I’ve never heard of you, so you have to really pitch yourself. So there’s a lot of factors that all play together there.

Josh Hadley 00:34:28  Yeah. Chase, you summed it up so well. This is why I think TikTok is so exciting because it unlocks additional channels, additional distribution. I think for like an Amazon brand, as you build that up. You talked about the halo effect onto Shopify and Amazon and that’s great. But that’s where I see like that’s where the puck is moving. It is all about distribution and your distribution strategy over the next 3 to 5 years. If you’re just riding the wave of arbitrage keywords on Amazon, which is, hey, how much keyword search volume is there? Hey, what’s the cost per click? Can I come out with a better product? Like the overseas competitors are always going to bid against you.

Josh Hadley 00:35:06  They’re also going to have unlimited pockets. It seems like to have extremely low margins, like you’re not going to win in that game. Where can you win? You can win on omnichannel brand dominance, which is everything that you just talked about. And my favorite thing with like the whole TikTok strategy and building a group of affiliates for your brand is when you’re ready to make the play into retail. If you’re not into retail, that becomes one of your biggest bargaining chips more than anything, because if you walk into the doors of Walmart or Target, it’s helpful to say, yeah, I am the number one seller over here on Amazon, but it’s kind of comparing apples to oranges. Just because it performs in a DTC space doesn’t mean it will perform on retail store shelves 100%. Why are most retailers concerned about bringing your product in? Because they don’t want to be stuck with a bunch of inventory taking up space on their shelves that doesn’t move. Where do you flip the script? If you can say, oh, by the way, you know how I’m getting like millions of impressions every single month? I can tell all of my creators to go to target next month when we launch this.

Josh Hadley 00:36:06  This is magic.

Chase Chappell 00:36:07  That is the magic. So everything you said is just sums up my week in Aspen. Last week I was in Aspen. I was meeting with platform, which is, you know, distribution, marketing, people that work with all these huge brands and, you know, they’re partnering with target, Walmart, all these like huge big box retailers. And it’s exactly what you said. Like if you have huge social awareness and all of this buzz and talk online and everybody’s talking about your product wants to try your product and they haven’t bought on TikTok or Amazon, a lot of those people are going to buy through retail just from the overarching like massive awareness and how much, you know, communication and talk and trending and people sending the links to their friends and family. You got to try this product. A lot of times people don’t take the step online and just hit the like button. They get busy. Stuff happens, but when they’re in the grocery store and they’re rolling around their card or just like walking through.

Chase Chappell 00:36:54  It is so easy to just grab the product off the shelf at that point. If you’ve heard it 20 times and everyone’s like, you got to try this and you still haven’t bought it online. The moment you walk the retail, it’s going to be so easy to just grab that product and check out. And it’s like, all right, I’ll try this product my friend keeps talking about. I see it everywhere.

Josh Hadley 00:37:08  Love it. Chase. Final question that I have here. You and I, I think could riff probably for hours on this thing. Thing. I am curious though to get your take on like what’s the difference maker of creating an affiliate army that actually cares about you, that actually wants to interact in your app? Because everybody talks about having a discord, everybody talks about having a WhatsApp, but what sets apart those that are actually killing it and can take 1000 creators and say, hey, yeah, you want everybody talking about go to target. We launched our product there. What does it take? What type of like structure contests.

Josh Hadley 00:37:42  Like what are the actual tactics that people are doing in strategies to build that love for the brand with their creators?

Chase Chappell 00:37:48  This is the yes, this is the key. The secret to all of this is the feedback loop mechanism that you install with your community. You can tell creators to go make videos all day long. You can incentivize them and say, hey man, if you just post this much more, I’ll give you this much more money. If the videos don’t work, creators get, you know, demotivated or they just don’t see the end of the road as much as you. Cast out that net and say you can make as much money. Even when you have those people in a private community, it can still fall flat. So the final piece to it is the feedback loop system that you integrate. And this is where a lot of brands are just now. I won’t even say anybody’s doing this heavily yet. It’s just now becoming like something where people are like, wait, this is working, we should be doing this.

Chase Chappell 00:38:29  Previously you would get a video, you would get the creator, you would get the video from the creator. And then you’d say, great, this video is good, but only you and your team discussed. It was a good video. You tell the creator, hey, we want more videos from you. They go provide more videos. Some of the videos didn’t work. There’s really not much back and forth on educating them. So the key is, well, once you have them in the private community, you take the best performing video from your top creators, and you put it in there and say, this creator’s video made $300,000 at 3 million views. Every single one of you should go make this video right now, because you can make a ton of money because we know this format works. Because Susie made it and John made it, and John made $70,000, Susie made 300 K, and all of a sudden everybody goes and remakes that video, and maybe they don’t make 70 or 300, but they made more than what their last video did because they watched the video and they’re like, oh, I’ll just film this exactly the same way because it worked.

Chase Chappell 00:39:20  And then you get all these people to make the same video and it crushes it. Then on meta, you take that video, you run it behind ads, it gets A7X row as well. You’re spending money behind it. Most of the time brands are like, great, we’re getting a good role. They don’t tell the creator, they just say, hey, can we get another video from you? Because their internal marketing team said, hey, go ask the creator to get us another video. All right, we’ll go give them 1500 bucks. The key is, if you’re getting crazy Roas or you get really good sales on a video, you take that video and you share it to everyone and constantly keep them updated on the latest videos, the latest creators, anything that crushes it or that is working. Hey, this narrative that these creators we have right now are pushing, it’s it’s on fire. Like every time we’re seeing viral videos. Please everyone go make these. Then creators build confidence. They get excited because they’re like, wait, I can make a simple video like that comparing this product against that.

Chase Chappell 00:40:06  That’s not hard, right? So they see how easy it is. They see the numbers and then they get the result themselves right after because they have the context. It’s a feedback loop. So you don’t just want to get them in a predicament and say, hey, go give me more videos, I’ll pay you more. It’s, hey, literally this is the video that’s working. These are the ads that are working. This is our data. Here’s our Roas, here’s our screenshot of our meta ads manager. That’s your video in there that we spend 100 grand on. Like we want more of those. And that’s when you start to see your creators turn around and say, well, this is great. I’m getting feedback. I’m getting insights on how to make more money. I’m seeing the videos that are crushing it, which is making me a better creator. And they’re obsessed with it because everyone’s winning now. But a lot of brands are scared to share their metrics, and I don’t understand why or they haven’t thought about it.

Josh Hadley 00:40:49  How much are you paying people to use their videos on meta?

Chase Chappell 00:40:52  So it’s a different commission tier structure. So let’s say you’re giving 20% on TikTok shop on a TikTok shop GMV max ad. You may give like 10% on meta. It’ll be like 5 or 10%, because if you’re going to spend the money and creators don’t even have to post it, they just provide you the video. Well, the whole bet is you get 20% because you post it and you generate the views and sells. But if we’re not doing that, we’re just getting your content. It’s going to be way lower commission tier because we’re putting up all the cash behind it, and we’ll give you 5% of whatever your video gets inside of ads manager and sales. So creators like it too, because they’re like, wait, don’t have to post it on my feed. All right. Then I’ll provide more videos. And then what it ends up becoming is, well, I gave you a video. It took me an hour to film it, and all of a sudden I’m getting a $1,000 check in the mail.

Chase Chappell 00:41:33  $5,000 check. And it’s consistent. I want to give you more videos. So the creators just start sending like five, ten, 20 videos and they’re just like, please put all my videos in your meta ads manager. And so they start the tide, then turns around and you’re like, all right, well, now we have an approval mechanism. All of you are submitting so many videos, we’re only approving the ones we think are going to work now. And so it flips the switch. And this is where you start to see like wow we’re able to do 57X Roas while spending 100 K a day. That’s achievable these days. Most people like that’s we haven’t seen that in ten years. And brands are like there’s no way you’re doing numbers like that. It’s because now your video velocity into meta ads is you’re going from running 50 active ads to running a thousand to running 13,000 active ads in 90 days. And people are like, how is that even possible? Well, that’s your stage four. So you went through all the stages and you finally hit the golden, you know, nectar there.

Chase Chappell 00:42:25  It’s just the feedback loop.

Josh Hadley 00:42:26  Love it, love it, love it, love it. I totally see that. How are you tracking like their sales on on meta, right. Are you using a third party app to kind of like track that and also share it with the creators? What do you.

Chase Chappell 00:42:38  Yeah, so it’s tried it’s a closed beta right now. And essentially what it does is it gives unique links for every video inside of Ads manager. It automatically syncs it up so creators upload their video. It then there’s just a button, you approve it, it auto imports the meta. And when you run, spin behind it. When they click the link, go to the product page, check out there’s a script on the website, keeps track of all the cells independently from that ad on the website, and then the creator gets 5% of whatever is sold from that specific ad. So if you spend a thousand generate ten K in sales on meta, you’re out a thousand bucks on the ad spend, plus you’re out 5% of the 10-K for that video creator.

Josh Hadley 00:43:12  No, I love it. You said it’s called tribe. Tribe and it’s in beta. Yeah. All right. I’ll be following closely. Love it. Chase, this has been awesome. Is there anything that we haven’t yet touched on that you feel like our listeners need to hear?

Chase Chappell 00:43:25  Whatever platforms you decide to go into, you have to have an all in mentality and really uncover every little setting and thing in there. Don’t go in blindly and just say, this is going to work magically. It can become a disaster very quickly. Everything comes in stages. There’s a right time and place for things. It can be exciting. Shiny object syndrome can get the best of people. Be strategic. Analyze your numbers. Run the math. Make it make sense in your head. Measure all value adds that you could get out of this if it doesn’t work, and build a system and know where you’re going with this. Why are we sending a thousand products? I don’t know, make it make understand why you’re sending it.

Chase Chappell 00:43:58  What are we doing with the videos? Is there a part two ABC plan afterwards? How do we extend the life? How do we extract as much out of this as possible? And what is required to be able to do that? You have to understand those things so you know things can work and be glamorous, but it’s all of the steps that you need to know to be able to get there, to make that happen. So big thing there is just if you plan on doing it, have an all in mentality.

Josh Hadley 00:44:21  Yeah really well said there Chase. You know, I’d love to leave our audience with three actionable takeaways from every episode. Here are the three actionable takeaways that I noted. You let me know if I missing something. Action item number one piggybacks off of your last comment, which is focus, and you go all the way back to the beginning of this episode, and we talked about when is the right time to begin diversifying if you started on Amazon. Like one thing that you had mentioned, Chase, is like, as soon as you go over to Shopify, you now have to set up the same systems operation that you just set up on Amazon, but then there’s probably a few other wrinkles.

Josh Hadley 00:44:55  So now it’s like you’re choosing at a minimum the level of complexity in your business. And so my encouragement is, yes, I know TikTok shop is the hot girl at the dance right now. I know that Shopify is always like, you want to own your customer, but if you’re starting on Amazon before you can actually go kill it on TikTok shop and on Shopify, you’ve got to have your ducks in a row. On Amazon, you’ve got to have like, what your supply chain look like. Are you staying in stock on Amazon? Because if you’re going to if you’re struggling just to stay on stock on Amazon, if you go try to light that up on TikTok shop like you’re just exacerbating your problems tenfold. So that’s why I’d say focus is the number one action item. Focus on what you’re doing, systematize it. Get it to a point where you could then go experiment with more time, while the while the ship just keeps running on its own. Action. Item number two. This goes to one thing that you did not touch on Chase with the whole creator ecosystem and developing like really? I guess responsive attraction to your brand from your creators is I think it comes down to your personality and it comes down to you as the brand owner working with those people now, is there a place where you don’t have to be that personality? Yes, but at the end of the day, these creators, like we’re all social creatures, like there’s attraction.

Josh Hadley 00:46:15  Why is comfort clothing crushing it on TikTok shop? Because Hudson goes live with his creators for a few hours every single Thursday, and he loves them and they love him in response. And so it’s like, what are you doing that I would argue the overseas competitors, frankly can’t do. They could all send out the cute, gimmicky message of, hello, dear, how are you doing today? Make some extra commission. Right. Like. But what can you do that’s different? It’s like you’re here. You know the culture, you know the customs. Speak to them. Create a relationship with them. One thing that we do is, like my wife for our top affiliates, like actually created like unique Christmas gifts for them and sent them to them. And you would like they couldn’t stop talking about it. And they’re wearing our stuff. They’re talking about outsourcing further. Right. So that’s why I say like, go the extra mile because it’s simply less crowded. And action item number three is like, see, the future, which is the future of e-commerce, is so much more omnichannel than I think any of us realize.

Josh Hadley 00:47:12  And I think it becomes less on, hey, I’m crushing it just on TikTok shop, or just on Shopify or just on Amazon. The people that are really succeeding in the e-commerce space, especially if you want to become a nine figure brand, you’re looking at an omnichannel approach. And Chase had a whole dialogue monologue on this that was so well said of like, look at the impact of like TikTok has over onto Amazon, and then your meta ad spend has over on to Amazon. And then guess what? If you have retail mixed in there. It’s a whole other flywheel where they just like continue to support one another and it’s an entire ecosystem. So you’ve got to shift your mindset from, I started in e-commerce to make a quick million bucks to, oh, if I actually want to make a significant impact in the world, I’ve got to get all of these plates spinning so that they continue to feed off of each other. And if you don’t want to play in that game, just know that that’s who you’re competing against.

Josh Hadley 00:48:01  It’s not about the hacks of ranking on Amazon, because somebody that’s in retail, somebody that’s on TikTok shop, somebody that has meta ad spend, they’re going to outrank you just because it’s just natural buyer evolution of just like search, find and buy on Amazon. And there’s no amount of ad spend that you can put on Amazon to overtake, overtake their rankings. Chase. Those are my three action items. Anything you feel like I missed.

Chase Chappell 00:48:24  You hit the nail on the head I love it.

Josh Hadley 00:48:26  Awesome. Chase. Final three questions for you. Number one, what’s been the most influential book that you’ve read and why.

Chase Chappell 00:48:32  The most influential book would be Rich dad, Poor Dad. I read that more than a decade ago. Now I feel like that may be a gateway book for everybody. It’s a simple, easy read, but if I had to go by biggest impact, that probably was it. That’s that was the first major shift I had.

Josh Hadley 00:48:46  Love it. It’s a it’s the gateway drug. It’s entrepreneurs.

Chase Chappell 00:48:49  Exactly.

Josh Hadley 00:48:50  Question number two what’s your favorite AI tool that you’ve been using and how have you been using it?

Chase Chappell 00:48:54  Lovable I’m obsessed with it right now. They know how to get the credits out of me, though, in terms of the cost. But it’s cool. I feel like AI is actually at a point now where it’s it’s getting it’s past the point of just like, oh, that was a cool one off thing. Or like, oh, that’s spooky. It’s starting to enter into there’s a lot of value in a lot of things that can be done very quickly. If you do this, you use this tool the right way. It’s getting to the point where it’s like, wait, it’s maybe 80% of the way there for like what a human at 100% talent could do. And that’s that’s exciting for me because I’m like a lot of cool projects we’re working on, like creative generators and, you know, internal softwares that we’re just releasing for free to our customers, like our frameworks that are a lot of manual things we’re doing with AI now and like giving those away for free.

Chase Chappell 00:49:37  Based off of our own internal, you know, knowledge and what we know to be true, that works and people are loving it and we are too. It’s fun and I’m addicted to it in the evenings whenever I’m not working.

Josh Hadley 00:49:46  What’s your favorite thing you’ve done in lovable?

Chase Chappell 00:49:49  The only creative generator tool? I’m like, almost there and I won’t release it yet because I have to have it perfect. I feel like AI tools out there right now. I could go on about this forever, but when you try Google, Gemini or ChatGPT create or Google Video or you know any of the creative tools out there, AI self interprets. So if you say, hey, go make me something that looks like this, it’s going to come out different every time. And if you give it your product, no matter how high of a resolution it is, AI has to redraw the product. And if you say Times New Roman font on a features of benefits based ad, the AI will put the features of benefits on your logo on your product label.

Chase Chappell 00:50:22  We don’t want that. That’s our product label. Don’t mess with that or adjust the font on your product label. It’s like, no, it’s Times New Roman use that AI can only redraw. So it’s an interesting thing where it’s like it can create really cool content, but it’s still AI and it still messes up. And even the greatest AI tools right now mess up. I’ve been playing with like shadow grading, deterministic rendering and compositing, and figuring out a way, like other technologies that these AI tools aren’t using of how can I layer this to gridlock? Perfect static add images that I know convert at least above A2X for brands that I can template ties where the AI does 100% with their brand kit, their brand font, exactly without having to redraw it. And that’s been like an ongoing six week project I’ve been doing, and I think it’s going to take me a long time to finish it. But it’s it’s fun.

Josh Hadley 00:51:08  It’s super exciting. Love it, love it. Final question who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space that other people should be following, and why.

Chase Chappell 00:51:16  So many people out there, the guys from Platform Noah and what they’re doing on the retail side, and Greg with bloom and how they’re ramping up just massive dominance right now in social settings and all of that stuff. Hudson, who you mentioned earlier from comfort. You know, hammering the creator flywheels. I like the e-commerce founders that are, you know, building their 100 to billion dollar ecosystem and understand marketing, just not at a, oh, we need to spend more on ads or let’s grind this out type of way, but are innovatively thinking about how we can do things at scale and introduce new systems and look at it as like, you know, how do all these mechanical pieces work together? And how can we spin this up and go crazy with it and do new things that other people aren’t? Yeah, I just like looking at other brands, seeing what’s working and hearing in the grapevine that, you know, the founder of Dynetics, who owns I’m Ed Health, the fastest growing supplement brand in history.

Chase Chappell 00:52:04  I was hanging out with him in Aspen, and the first thing I walked in on, on a conversation he was having was I just hooked up. Open call to Magnus AI, and now I’m pumping AI creatives at Google and Meta, and I’m like, I just heard about Magnus yesterday. And this e-commerce founder, the fastest growing in history, is already doing this. It just blew my mind. I was just like, I love hearing stuff like that because it’s like there’s some real, like, hardcore dudes out there that are in the weeds and are fast. And I think a lot of people get late to the game. And if you’re the fastest growing company in history, I can see why.

Josh Hadley 00:52:34  Yeah, no, I love that. Great recommendations, Chase. This has been a lot of fun. If people want to follow you, they want to learn more about you. Where’s the best place for them to do so?

Chase Chappell 00:52:43  Yeah. If you if you love learning about e-commerce brands and short form content, we do a lot of stories on what brands are doing in the space on my Instagram at real Chase Chappell or on YouTube, you can just go to YouTube.

Chase Chappell 00:52:53  Chase Chappell we do brand overviews and just diagnose their marketing, what’s working for them, and even talk about what’s not. And, you know, kind of connecting the dots that most people don’t ever really get to see. So it’s a lot of fun that we do on there.

Josh Hadley 00:53:04  Fantastic. Well, Chase, been a pleasure having you on the show. Thanks for your time today.

Chase Chappell 00:53:07  Likewise. Thank you so much, Josh.

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