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

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley speaks with Matt Greene, CEO of Happy Innovations, whose personal care brands have reached mid eight-figure revenue. Matt shares his journey from product development to scaling across Amazon, TikTok Shop, Shopify, and retail. Key insights include the importance of product innovation, building and supporting affiliate creators, approaching retail only after reaching ~$20M in revenue, and prioritizing profitability on each channel. Matt also recommends leveraging TikTok as the easiest post-Amazon expansion and emphasizes patience, operational excellence, and continuous product improvement as foundations for long-term success.

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

Timestamps:

00:00:42 Podcast & Guest Introduction
Host Josh Hadley introduces the show and guest Matt Greene, founder of Happy Innovations, a mid-eight-figure personal care brand.

00:02:34 The Origin of Happy Nuts
Matt shares how the brand started from a personal need, focusing on a year-and-a-half-long product development and branding process.

00:04:16 Starting on Amazon
The decision to launch on Amazon was driven by its low customer acquisition cost for an innovative, low-priced product.

00:05:21 Amazon Success Strategy
How they found success by targeting existing search terms for related problems like anti-chafing and sweat protection.

00:07:40 Diversifying Beyond Amazon
Amazon is still their core channel but now represents less than 60% of their total business revenue.

00:08:33 Profitability in New Channels
Matt discusses early struggles with Shopify and the importance of ensuring every new sales channel has a path to profitability.

00:10:11 Early Foray into Retail
Matt explains the long and complex process of getting into retail, which started years before getting on shelves.

00:12:11 When to Expand Sales Channels
Matt’s philosophy on focusing on one channel until $5-10M in revenue before expanding to reach different customer segments.

00:15:25 Why TikTok is the Best Next Step
Matt recommends TikTok as the first channel to expand to after Amazon due to cheap traffic and similar operations.

00:16:08 Building a TikTok Shop Strategy
Matt details their journey on TikTok, from early struggles to a successful strategy focused on supporting and developing affiliates.

00:17:38 How to Work with TikTok Creators
The strategy involves coaching new creators, setting expectations for a 30-60 day ramp-up, and providing continuous support.

00:19:29 Incentivizing New Creators
Using small retainers and performance bonuses to encourage new creators to consistently post content and build momentum for the brand.

00:27:30 A Targeted Shopify Strategy
Their Shopify approach focuses on specific, high-intent periods like holidays and seasonal campaigns rather than an always-on strategy.

00:30:38 The Realities of Entering Retail
Matt advises waiting until your brand is stable and recognizable (around $20M) before tackling retail’s high costs and complexities.

00:34:12 Driving Sell-Through in Retail
How they succeeded in retail as a bootstrapped brand through strong on-shelf branding, product quality, and a TikTok halo effect.

00:38:13 Three Actionable Takeaways
The host summarizes key lessons: master one channel first, expand to TikTok next, and approach retail with caution.

00:42:19 Matt’s Book Recommendations
Matt shares two influential books on SEO and life prioritization, including “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry.”

00:42:49 Favorite AI Tool
Matt explains how they use Claude for data analysis, creating dashboards, and developing landing pages for their website.

00:43:54 Admired E-commerce Peers
Matt shares his respect for other brand owners in his network rather than big-name figures from a different era.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Tools and Websites

“Shopify“: “00:04:32”, “00:40:21”
“TikTok Shop“: “00:01:03”, “00:15:25”
“Expo West“: “00:10:11”
“Amazon PPC”: “00:06:28”
“Meta Ads (Facebook Ads)“: “00:09:09”
“Amazon MCF (Multi-Channel Fulfillment)“: “00:14:56”
“Discord“: “00:26:06”
“Google Forms”: “00:26:06”
“NetSuite“: “00:32:02”
“Claude“: “00:42:49”

Books
“The E-Myth by Michael Gerber“: “00:01:03”
“Good to Great by Jim Collins“: “00:42:19”
“The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer“: “00:42:19”

Notable Mentions
“Happy Innovations“: “00:01:34”
“Happy Nuts, Happy Curves, Happy Soles“: “00:01:34”

Key Insights / Actionable Takeaways
“R&D Tax Credit”: “00:04:32”
“Retail Brokers”: “00:10:53”
“Influencer Marketing”: “00:17:38”
“Focus on the Best Sales Channel”: “00:38:32”

People Mentioned
“Prue and Ryan (MDS Members)”: “00:44:01”
“Daniel Schaefer (Native Pet)“: “00:44:01”

Additional Resources
“Presentation on Setting Up Affiliate Marketing”: “00:27:06”

Episode Sponsor:

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:

Matt Greene 00:00:00  I think that works really well when you’re like, you know, five up to like anywhere from 5 to $10 million. Like, yeah, you should probably do one channel and just build your team first. But after that you go wide and each because each channels type of marketing, you’re touching on different people. And it’s funny though, like some of those people might actually be Amazon customers. You’re just not hitting. So it grows everything.

MC 00:00:28  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 00:00:42  Getting off Amazon sounds great until you actually try it. Well, today’s guest has the real playbook for scaling on TikTok. Shop Shopify and retail without having to kill your business on Amazon. 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.

Josh Hadley 00:01:03  I bring you the unfiltered conversations with the smartest minds in e-commerce. Past guests include Ezra Firestone, Kevin King, and Michael Gerber, author of The Myth. Today’s guest is a friend of mine. I’m super excited to have him on the show. His name is Matt Greene. Matt is the CEO and founder of Happy Innovations, which was bootstrapped to mid eight figure revenue, selling personal care products under the Happy Nuts, Happy Curves and Happy Soles brands as you can see featured behind him if you’re watching this on YouTube. Matt, with that introduction, welcome to the show.

Matt Greene 00:01:34  Hey, good to be here, Matt.

Josh Hadley 00:01:35  I’m super excited to dive into your journey. And I know you’re not often on podcast, and so this is going to be refreshing. I’m going to be able to yeah. Put you on the spot here.

Matt Greene 00:01:44  This definitely is I think it’s my first podcast ever. So we’ll see how it goes.

Josh Hadley 00:01:48  Awesome. Well happy that that gets to happen here today. But what you’ve built with your brand is frankly incredible.

Josh Hadley 00:01:54  And that’s like I’ve heard what you guys are doing. We’ve sat in some masterminds together. I was obviously impressed enough to be like, this dude’s got a lot. A lot of good stuff that he could share with everybody else. So that’s why you’re here today. But Matt, why don’t you just kind of talk to us about, like, how did your brand get started? Where did you start? Like what sales channel? And then we’re going to go through your journey of like how you guys have effectively scaled off of Amazon because oftentimes that’s the biggest pain point. Many of our listeners started on Amazon first. Everybody wants to get off of Amazon. But good grief, it is much easier said than done. And you’ve done that successfully across multiple sales channels. So we’ll dive into that today. But Matt, why don’t you walk us through like your journey as your brand?

Matt Greene 00:02:34  Yeah, definitely. Yeah, we started about 7 or 8 years ago. I was actually living in in Manhattan, Hermosa Beach area and, you know, surfing at the time, playing a lot of beach volleyball.

Matt Greene 00:02:43  And we had a lot of just chafing issues. One of my good friends was a cosmetic chemist, so we actually made this, like, lotion to powder chafing formula that worked really well. And we actually didn’t, like come up with a brand or anything. First we were like, how do we market this? And we were using it like in the groin area a lot. So it took us like six months or so and we came up with Happy Nuts. And I think, you know, from the start we probably that took like a year and a half from product development and everything. We’ve always put a lot into developing our products. So they outperform competitors that are out there and just get really good reviews. And then we also took the time to come up with like really good targeted branding. So like, you know, you know, in in a second when you see the product like what it’s for and there’s like a lot of familiarity there. We really started we noticed, you know, with the lotion, the powder, that it was kind of an everyday replacement for, for gold bond and baby powder, where guys are actually the most common area they use.

Matt Greene 00:03:39  It is their groin. So, you know, we have a good branded, better performing product for that. And that is gold on a baby powder. Overall, the products were really like replacing and modernizing and making better.

Josh Hadley 00:03:51  Oh, I love it. Well, it’s it’s a fun journey and it’s a fun product to have to talk about. But I think it all comes down to, you know, like innovating, creating something that’s better and very unique. And again, you spent a year and a half just in the R&D process, which again, most Amazon sellers are not that patient. Like they’re like, hey, what’s the next thing I can flip tomorrow? And if it’s face masks, so be it. Like what’s my next quick like million buck opportunity.

Matt Greene 00:04:16  And so yeah, it is like I you know I had like an IT consulting business previously. And then because I wanted to sell online I actually had a small surfing brand that I started just doing the normal import, trying to just like learn how to sell online on Shopify and Amazon and learn the ropes.

Matt Greene 00:04:32  And then I was like, okay, let’s go big with this and develop some really good products. I mean, to this day, we still spend, you know, like a few hundred thousand dollars a year on just R&D and like there’s a tax credit for it. Get your taxes down. We have a whole R&D lab here. It’s we’re still coming out with really, really cool, unique products that put a lot of effort into that. And that just helps you differentiate and get good reviews and get like, it’s really the amount of repurchases that get you going. And the reason we started on Amazon, it’s like we just need to get our product in people’s hands as cheaply as possible. And it’s just the lowest customer acquisition cost, especially when you have selling products for, you know, 10 to $25, that really matters. So that built our base of like core users who are really hooked on our products and keep repurchasing. And that allowed us to really grow from there.

Josh Hadley 00:05:21  So how did you do that on Amazon? Because what’s unique about you guys is like, you got your start on Amazon, yet you have an innovative product that like, people have no idea what to even search for.

Josh Hadley 00:05:31  So like, what keywords were you going after? Did you have like a bunch of social media content that was like creating that, like awareness to then have people search for new.

Matt Greene 00:05:41  Products to search for, like the anti chafing and spot protection in those areas. Also, there was some issues on the networks because here’s this mug has like our original logo that some of the display networks didn’t really like. And so that helped to push us into that direction a little more. But there are like lots of people. It’s not like this random new product that’s solving a new issue. There is an issue, and there are a lot of products on shelf that that sell, you know, nine figures a year through retail or probably even more that are used for what we’re solving for.

Josh Hadley 00:06:15  It makes a lot of sense. So at the end of the day, like you guys didn’t have like a social media play with this, you’re just arbitrage.

Matt Greene 00:06:21  I mean, we definitely did go on Instagram and everything. Yeah, yeah, we didn’t do at all.

Josh Hadley 00:06:26  Was that the core driver or was it more like.

Matt Greene 00:06:28  No.

Josh Hadley 00:06:29  We were all so good at Amazon PPC and we just like started ranking for these like broad search terms of like anti chafing and things like.

Matt Greene 00:06:35  That. Yeah it was a little bit of everything. I mean when we launched it was pretty you know TikTok wasn’t even around yet. So that we probably I mean it might have gone a little more wild with that. We also had some production issues with Covid and our manufacturers making hand sanitizer. So I feel like we lost like a year and a half of momentum. They’re being out of stock for like nine months or so. So we really didn’t. Didn’t get going till 2022. We also launched our women’s brand Happy Curves. So that’s when I really started taking off. And especially with TikTok coming out, that helped a lot because Instagram like there’s reach there and everything, but like they haven’t been that generous with how even influencer content gets delivered in years. So we did it all, and I think it all added up to help Amazon get off the ground and really rank.

Matt Greene 00:07:20  But I think we did pretty much everything we could.

Josh Hadley 00:07:24  Yeah, makes a lot of sense. But at the end of the day, you guys got your cut. You cut your teeth on Amazon. That was your that was the sales channel driving revenue driving profitability for your business, which for all of our listeners, that’s the majority of where we all started, our brand included.

Matt Greene 00:07:40  So yeah, it’s still our core channel, but it’s down, you know, under under 60%. So like that’s it’s pretty solid that to get it down that low. Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:07:50  Yeah. So yeah. And I think that is an important note. Like it’s not hey, get off of Amazon and run away from Amazon. It’s like no like Amazon still is like the shopper’s like tool of choice and purchase like cart of choice. Like at the end of the day, they’re just used to it. It’s easy, it’s fast, it’s convenient, and there’s no strings attached. If they don’t like the product, they’re going to return it like so.

Josh Hadley 00:08:13  They’ve created that ecosystem so you can’t shake your head at it 60. It’s below 60% of revenue for you guys, which is great, but obviously still very meaningful because you’re doing very meaningful numbers off of Amazon. So that kind of is like my next question to you, Matt, is so you guys were having success on on Amazon, what was the next channel that you guys dipped your toe into and why?

Matt Greene 00:08:33  I mean, we definitely like failed a lot of times at Shopify because you just can torch money and.

Josh Hadley 00:08:39  Especially when you have a $10 product. Right?

Matt Greene 00:08:42  Yeah, definitely. So there is something like I hear a lot of people say and I like don’t necessarily agree with they try to like, say like, well, run it at break even or even a loss, and it’ll just grow your Amazon channel. I think that’s maybe okay if you’re running meta to Facebook because you can control that spend in sales so well, but any other channel, I don’t think that’s a good idea at all, especially TikTok, because like, let’s say you’re going to run your TikTok at a 10% loss.

Matt Greene 00:09:09  And okay, that’s cool when you’re doing like 50 K in sales. But what happens when organically it starts blowing out to half a million 600 K? Well, now you have kind of a problem because you’re gonna not only impact your margins, you’re even a percentage is going to look bad and you’re actually going to, like, hurt the value of your business, especially if Amazon doesn’t catch up enough, which it won’t at a certain point. So you have to run these new channels profitably and make sure you’re there. That’s what I really think. Like people need like understand or at least have a plan to get there at a certain scale because there are fixed costs that are related to be like, okay, if we can get this channel to break even at like 100 K, at 200 K, we can make 10%, three, 400, we can we can make our 2,025% contribution margin and that’s great. So I think you always have to have a path and a plan to get to profitability when you’re launching these new channels, or it doesn’t make any sense.

Matt Greene 00:09:59  And don’t do it because there’s so many of them. Just pick a different one. Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:10:04  No really good insight. So talk to me. So Shopify was the first one you guys kind of went after. And you guys struggled with it at first.

Matt Greene 00:10:11  So like tell me I wouldn’t say that actually. You know we did start doing retail really early. But that’s not like something you can just like turn on. Like there’s it takes a long time. I think we’ve been going to Expo West for like four years now, which is it’s local for us in Anaheim, but it’s huge. A trade show, mostly like food, personal care, supplements, primarily those areas. All the big retailers are there. I mean, the first year we did it, super bootstrapped, like snuck in our setup and set it up ourselves. But we met like all these retail brokers that helped us start getting to know buyers. It’s a long process, though, because from when you meet a buyer, it’s like, well, you don’t know their schedule because they’re on an annual reset schedule.

Matt Greene 00:10:53  And usually they’re meeting that. They decide that that you give them the pitch is like 6 to 9 months before that reset. And then they usually tell you, you know, a few months, maybe 5 or 6 months before the reset that you’re like going in store so you can plan your inventory and everything or not, depending on the retailer. It can be there depends on the retailer, but some are not very great at communicating, so that’s tough to plan for. But basically what that means is a really long lead time to that channel. Like we from when we like started really trying it. We got our women’s brand Happy Curves in the Walmart about two years ago was when we got on shelf. And you know, that took us probably from when we first like met that broker like maybe 2 or 2 years prior to that of marketing and talking to them and refining the product and product line to get in the store. But then those are big, steady orders once you have it figured out, and you can usually plan for those, you know, the foot traffic and level of sales there is pretty stable once you figure it out.

Matt Greene 00:11:51  So that’s a really good solid channel. Yeah, no.

Josh Hadley 00:11:55  It makes a lot of sense, but it sounds like you were almost trying a little bit of everything. Then after you had some success on Amazon it was like a little bit of Shopify. You’re still going to Expo West. You want to get into retail. Is that kind of like what its looked like for you guys? It’s kind of like, hey, let’s go expand.

Matt Greene 00:12:11  Yeah, we always looked at it like a real business and brand. Like we’re not like gonna just pick and stay on one channel because I think that works really well when you’re like, you know, five up to, like anywhere from 5 to $10 million, like, yeah, you should probably do one channel and just build your team first. But after that you go wide and each because each channels type of marketing, you’re touching on different people. And it’s funny though, like some of those people might actually be Amazon customers. You’re just not hitting. So it grows everything.

Matt Greene 00:12:42  You just want to ultimately get your product in as many people’s hands as possible. I think it’s a really good product and they will rebuy it and you will like create that following. There’s no like really hack to it I don’t think.

Josh Hadley 00:12:54  Yeah. No. So you’ve got to start with a solid product. And if I heard you correctly like your recommendation to the audience is like, hey, like if you’re doing 5 to 10, like keep pushing on the sales channel where you got started until you get to maybe 5 to 10 million in that what you also said is like, make sure you lock down that channel, make sure you have your operations intact, that like you’re executing well because you just touched on this, which I think is a really key aspect that most people overlook. Everything else off of Amazon is almost a completely different business model, like retail is a whole other animal. TikTok shop has very unique nuances to it that you’re not dealing with on Amazon. And same thing with Shopify. It’s a very unique like offering to make meta ads convert onto Shopify as well.

Matt Greene 00:13:40  Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:13:41  So like you can’t yeah. If you’re going to go figure out TikTok like and then you just are letting Amazon go to waste. Like with no shops, like you’re going to be in trouble.

Matt Greene 00:13:49  Well, retail is like the most wild because each retailer has a different cost structure. And we have like this whole spreadsheet. And that’s where people will say like, oh, I’m just going to try and get it myself. That might not be the best thing. It might be good to go in through some brokers just to get information on like what the actual costs are. Because between one or another like it’s it’s pretty wild. TikTok actually is somewhat similar in cost structure to Amazon because I think like a bunch of Amazon people built it or X Amazon people, I’m pretty sure because like when we started plugging stuff in to like our company contribution margin, it like mapped basically the same way as Amazon, but it still is a little different than, yeah, Shopify is a completely different business from in terms of like customer acquisition costs and the fulfillment.

Matt Greene 00:14:33  PNL looks way different. Having a handle on those before you jump in and just start doing it so you know which metrics you need to get better on and improve really makes sense, especially on Shopify. Like if you’re using like Amazon MCF. Like what are your costs on that? Is that actually better? Like the three pls you can use. You can get killed things like that pretty easily.

Josh Hadley 00:14:56  Yeah, I would totally agree with that. So which of those three channels. So we’ll dive into each of them. And like what’s working for you guys on each of those three channels. But if the audience is listening to this and they’re like, all right, Matt, give me one that I should actually focus on, like I’m succeeding on Amazon. I do have my operations intact. I do have a team that’s taking care of the day to day. I just don’t know which of these three channels I should focus on next. Which one would you like encourage the audience to go double down on first?

Matt Greene 00:15:25  Yeah, I mean TikTok, just because it’s new and I mean that like CPM, the views you get from it is it’s just where you’re getting cheap traffic.

Matt Greene 00:15:32  And if you have like good eye catching products like that should work out right. So that’s definitely where I go first. And also the operations are like pretty similar to Amazon that it’s a lot. The learning curve is a lot easier for your current team and you get that marketing benefit.

Josh Hadley 00:15:50  Yeah, totally totally agree with that. Because like the operations for retail and arguably even for Shopify can that’s where it gets a little more complicated. So Matt, let’s talk let’s dive into TikTok then like how did you guys get work started on TikTok and what is actually working for you guys on TikTok shop today?

Matt Greene 00:16:08  Yeah, actually, funny story. We actually hopped on pretty early with our Happy Nuts brand and it actually like blasted off right when they started shop. However, we got a ton of violations and creators started getting a ton of violations, and it kind of crashed and burned for a while. And then we kind of struggled. We were just like trying to seed as much product as possible. Like a lot of agencies tell you to do that and it’s not very good idea without any intention.

Matt Greene 00:16:35  So that like didn’t work for like a whole 6 or 8 months. And then we started running it kind of like how we deal with our publishers and affiliates on Amazon where we’re like, hey, let’s, you know, get affiliates and really, like, support them and also sell something. It’s kind of like an old school Shopify play with, with influencers, where they would get an influencer who doesn’t necessarily, like, care about their account as much and just have them posting stories and stuff every day. So we got people posting every day supporting, kind of like community creators, whatever they need to get them performing. And then it really started to take off from there.

Josh Hadley 00:17:11  Awesome. So it sounds like, yeah, you were working with creators the whole time and supporting them. Tell me a little bit more about like, what that looks like, because this is the hard thing about TikTok that arguably most people do not do and they don’t want to do, which is they want just the easy sells.

Josh Hadley 00:17:28  Similar to Amazon. But like what you just talked about is like supporting these creators, training them like that’s something you don’t have to do on Amazon. So what are you guys doing for your brand?

Matt Greene 00:17:38  Well, so it sucks. But like the the deal for them is and you have to get them to buy in on it. Is that like, hey, like this isn’t you need to commit to making content for really like 45 to 60 days, maybe 30 to 45 days at least because you like your first five videos are probably not going to hit like you have to warm up the algorithm to the product and see what angles start working. And they might get, you know, a thousand views. Once they get above 1000 views, it’s like, okay, you’re starting to get somewhere, go to 5000, that sort of thing. But supporting them with like, okay, here’s our content that works, and here are our affiliates that are converting. I mean, they can see it actually, if they have our data all it’s all open on TikTok.

Matt Greene 00:18:19  So that’s nice. So you can like show them the success stories and they can see that they can sell a lot, but you got to get them to buy in and stick with it and really support them and doing that to get them to convert. So it’s kind of like the customer acquisition, like doesn’t stop or affiliate acquisition doesn’t stop when you like, get them onboarded to your program or whatever you want to call it. You need to follow it through or have like, support them in following through to get them to converting to actual sales. It’s like once they’re making money. Yeah. They’ll post all day because like, okay, it’ll sell. They sell, you know, 60 K a month or 100 K a month. You know, they’re making five, ten, 20,000 in commission. That’s enough to get them to keep doing it. But you have to get them there. And and that’s like the really huge battle because and also it’s not like Amazon Instant results like aren’t really a thing. They’re because you’re building a relationship you have to ship them product.

Matt Greene 00:19:12  They have to make content. So like when you’re talking to someone. Like their content is really not going to go live or start producing till I don’t know, at least, you know, a month or two months out. And that’s like the long term journey of just building that is it’s a lot of work.

Josh Hadley 00:19:29  Yeah. So how are you doing? Like, how are you incentivizing them to like, create multiple videos for 30 to 45 days for you when they’re not seeing sales just to try to get some momentum. Especially when, you know, the the biggest challenge today is there’s only 20,000 creators on TikTok that are actually generating $5,000 in GMV or higher per month. So like the pool of creators that we’re all trying to work work through is like really small. And they get a they get hit every single day with like thousands of brands reaching out. So like what your guys’s unique place to, like, incentivize these creators to help them, like, stick around.

Matt Greene 00:20:05  Well, like those figures too are asking for some pretty wild retainers now.

Matt Greene 00:20:08  Like, it’ll be like two grand for five posts and stuff and no guarantee. Yeah, and and that’s because all these brands want to work with them because they’ve had results with a different brand. That doesn’t mean that they’ll have results for you. And you need to make sure they’re in your vertical. I just don’t think it’s a very good tactic. Like you want to create, it’s way cheaper and way better. Use your time to create new people, like teaching people to get into that category. And they stick with your product because they know it converts. And when you see these people switch like, it doesn’t automatically like work. I guess the algorithm like doesn’t. I don’t know much about how it’s like siloed, but like for some reason it doesn’t always just convert. So that’s building your own affiliates for new people, because there are a lot of people who want to, you know, take advantage of this opportunity and we pay them like two, 300 a month to, to do their first, like 30 posts.

Matt Greene 00:21:00  After they do them, we pay them, obviously, to make sure they follow through. But investing in some like small retainers and that’s really pretty cheap product like pay the retainer. So you also own the content. You can use it wherever. And it’s like it comes out ten, $15 a post, something like that. So you’re actually also generating and owning pretty cheap content at the same time, even if it doesn’t, you know, pop up, you can use it if you think it’s good and resonates on your own social media, things like that.

Josh Hadley 00:21:26  Yeah, I love that. It’s a really unique strategy. How do you are you vetting those creators like I or. Yeah, a couple questions. Are you vetting those creators up front to say, hey, I like their content. I think this guy is going to be good. Or this girl.

Matt Greene 00:21:41  You know, not really. That not really. It’s like because now the bar is a bit higher to get the affiliate accounts. Like, I think you need like 5000 followers and stuff and like, yeah, there’s some bad ones that don’t work out and most of them won’t work out, but it’s kind of just collateral damage.

Matt Greene 00:21:56  I feel like our products are also not not that expensive. So it’s not that that big of a deal.

Josh Hadley 00:22:01  People out.

Matt Greene 00:22:02  Yeah, yeah. And if they don’t follow through, we don’t pay them a retainer. You know, it is what it is. And a lot do you fall off. I don’t think it’s worth being being picky though, because we’ve had some good success with people who really don’t have much content. And that’s why we’re like, we’d rather invest in coaching them and bringing them up rather than than going for like these people who already have other brands they’re producing for and already making good money. Like, of course they’re going to be more expensive.

Josh Hadley 00:22:28  Yep. Oh. Totally agree. So what? You’re and you might not have the data off the top of your head, but at ballparks are fine. How many like creators are you onboarding every week that are getting these new samples? And are all of them getting like a 200, $300 like retainer opportunity with, you.

Matt Greene 00:22:46  Know, like some some don’t ask.

Matt Greene 00:22:48  We are trying this new thing this month where like if you post, I think I actually I think they’re landing on the number. I think they’re having a meeting right now, but it’ll be like a 3 or $400 bonus on top of that if like you post 60 times in a month. So we’re trying stuff like that, it might be like $500 bonus. I forget what what they’re actually going to do, but stuff like that to really incentivize them because like, okay, then you can make the retainer and you make $800 doing some posts with our product, as long as it’s within, you know, guidelines and we’ll get a lot more content, that sort of thing. As far as number, I’m really not sure it’s it’s in the hundreds a month of new people we send product. I should look into that because there is like a high falloff percentage. And that’s kind of how it works. It’s just like a product of how like everything’s set up and I don’t really worry about it too much because there is there’s a pretty high churn rate, unfortunately.

Matt Greene 00:23:40  Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:23:41  So not every creator gets a retainer. What? What determines whether you give somebody a retainer out of the gate versus somebody that’s just going to post 30 times on their own.

Matt Greene 00:23:49  You know, our marketing manager talks to him and she kind of just decides because it is really pretty arbitrary.

Josh Hadley 00:23:57  So are you like, are you like literally it’s a one on one onboarding session. Maybe that’s what we’re getting at. Like, is it like every new creator that gets a sample, like has a call with your marketing manager?

Matt Greene 00:24:07  Then we have a lot of onboarding materials we made over the years and repurposed for our content and everything. So that’s really, really helpful. And yeah, it’s probably like direct chat. They’ll do calls with them. I think we’re actually working on hiring like some of our good creators to take up the like, coaching aspect because they’re actually, like better at it than us. That’ll be nice. But if it’s necessary, like, really, we just do whatever we have to.

Matt Greene 00:24:32  So I think people need to take that. It’s not whether we like systemize things on TikTok too much. It like, doesn’t really work that well because you just people fall off. So it is very messaging heavy. We have, you know, support like we’re actually like chatting with each person. We’re not just sending them to fill out like an onboarding form and things like that. So there is a personal touch. But no, we’re not like hopping on calls with each person. Okay. Which might if we had the bandwidth, that would be really cool. But unfortunately we don’t right now.

Josh Hadley 00:25:02  Yeah, I think like the overall takeaway from that is when you’re dealing with people like there’s just like a lot of unique nuances that are involved with that. And so being able to like customize all of that. I would totally agree with TikTok. It’s almost like it’s a numbers game. And what worked with one creator is not going to work with another creator. And it’s just like it’s a very messy process that like, you do have to invest in the relationship though, with the creator.

Josh Hadley 00:25:26  That is the takeaway. It’s one on one communication with these creators, sometimes arguably not scalable. But when you can get the number of videos that you’re getting, that’s where the scale becomes efficient and it becomes worth your while to do all of that.

Matt Greene 00:25:39  So yeah, and it’s like it’s wild. Like some are super organized and they just want an email with like all our promos ongoing for the next few weeks and what products they promote. And they don’t want a lot of interaction and some need it. It’s just how it is.

Josh Hadley 00:25:54  Yeah. How are you getting their info off? Like when they request samples on TikTok? Are you just approving them in TikTok or are you like getting them outside of the TikTok ecosystem? Like, how are you getting like, their contact info?

Matt Greene 00:26:06  Yeah, we we have a discord and we also have another thing they use. I forget what it’s called, but it also we use the system. We kind of use a few different because it it found is like, you know, discord got like popular within TikTok because I think someone big Graham was just using it.

Matt Greene 00:26:23  But we’ve actually found like a lot of these affiliates or creators that have never even heard of it. And now they have to like download a new program and everything, and like that’s problematic. We do have like a Google form onboarding thing. So we get all their information and send them product and everything so we can get back in touch with them too. And they definitely complete that because like they want free product obviously. and they have to do that before they’re approved. So there’s like a little friction there. But we’ll message them and follow up so they get it done. But it’s pretty light. And then also, you know, all the supporting materials are, are just, you know, are like swipe files and everything are all there for them to check out.

Josh Hadley 00:27:00  Yeah. Fantastic. No I love that. That’s excellent insight into how that’s working for you guys.

Matt Greene 00:27:06  I think you have like a really good presentation on setting that up those clothes, but you could probably link for people to check out because that’s pretty much what we do.

Josh Hadley 00:27:14  I would love that. Yeah we would. We can include that in the show notes. And I myself would be fascinated to see that.

Matt Greene 00:27:21  Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:27:21  So Matt love that. All right. Let’s shift gears over to Shopify. So what’s working on Shopify. What did you guys how did you operationally have to change?

Matt Greene 00:27:30  I mean, it’s actually like not working great right now. So and I think a lot of people like it’s still up and everything, but it works really well. During holiday we’ll run a lot of traffic to it. Holiday bundles and gifting. It also is you know winter time right now. I’m not sure when this is going live, but there’s not a lot of sweat protection anti chafing products. It’s a lower season for us. So it’s definitely a tougher sell to push. Our product is more like when people need it they need it. So getting it quick, like our websites and stuff, we do a lot during the gifting times, like our next big thing we’ll gear up for is of course like on the happy curbside, like we do like a whole summertime sweat campaign that does pretty well.

Matt Greene 00:28:12  And then Father’s Day for For Happy Now. It’s kind of funny, but we do pretty well that holiday on the gifting aspect. So we’ve kind of taken like a more targeted approach. And we’ve also started buying, you know, moving away from meta. We just don’t see it performing that well, I almost feel like meta is more like retargeting on like Google where like buying keyword, like it’s not actually getting new people at this point. And we’ve been trying, you know, like Snapchat and Apple all been over holiday was decent actually, and just trying different networks and traffic sources for our site and seeing what works. It’s kind of like niche and sometimes not that scalable, but like you want to get wins and build it slowly because when the Shopify customers are like usually your most loyal customers and they will go if they’re like out of stock and just want a product, they’ll go buy it on Amazon. They’ll leave reviews without even telling them or doing anything. So that’s a really, really, really helpful.

Josh Hadley 00:29:10  Yeah, I totally agree with that. And what’s interesting about your Shopify play is that, like, it’s very nuanced. And this is what I hear over and over again, is like, just because somebody is killing it with meta ads in their brand doesn’t mean it’s going to work for your brand. Like, you’ve got to find a unique creative offers, or you need to like look at app love and look at Snapchat. Like, I love that you guys have done like affiliate marketing as well just to see like where are you going to get the biggest bang for your buck. And that’s that’s the message of Shopify, right? Again, it’s another massive platform to just like you gotta throw a lot at the wall, see what sticks.

Matt Greene 00:29:45  Yeah. When it works it works. But like I mean don’t don’t force it. Like I feel like if you try and force Shopify, that’s when you start burning money. Like you’ll know and you have a win. And then it’s like time to optimize. But it’s like if you if you’re at like, you know, a one Roas, like, okay, kill that.

Matt Greene 00:30:02  Like you can’t incrementally get that to where you need to be usually unless you’re selling, if you have a really high AOV, that’s probably the exception. But you know, sell 10 to $20 personal care products primarily. So that’s tough to get a high enough card value to do that.

Josh Hadley 00:30:18  Yeah. Now let’s kind of wrap things up here with like retail. And again you kind of shared your journey of like how long it takes to get into retail. Go into Expo West. It tastes like a two year buying cycle just to even get on the store shelves from start to finish. Like, what are your advice for somebody that’s like, oh yeah, I want to I want to get into retail. It’s like, all right. Hold on.

Matt Greene 00:30:38  Yeah. I mean, I, I think we did it too early. It definitely like, was a lot harder from a business standpoint with there’s different logistics. You need to like set up EDI and have a good ERP system that can like auto automatically process orders because you get retailers that they have like 50 DCS.

Matt Greene 00:30:58  They send the Pi over each DC each week. And if you don’t deliver it within windows, you get big fines and all this stuff. So you get killed pretty quickly and you have to definitely. There’s a lot of risk if you don’t understand your costs going into it, because you are stuck there basically for a year. I guess you could stop shipping, but like they would never, you know, you’ll never get into retail again if you don’t deliver for a year. And so you’re stuck with like the deal you make for a year. probably. You probably can’t really change it if they want to keep you on shelf so they are more permanent. There’s a lot of risk in that. If you don’t do your due diligence and know all those costs associated. Yeah, I would make sure like your online business is stable and can like afford those investments because like setting up EDI and doing like a legit ERP system and all that stuff is pretty costly. Even though people like we use NetSuite, which is expensive, but like we also looked at other systems and they’re also like, okay, the the annual fee might not be as expensive, but you’re still going to have to hire a few people, especially the less managed systems to to run it.

Matt Greene 00:32:02  You’re going to have problems, you’re going to need support. So there’s that expense that’s basically a fixed annual expense. You’re adding that you need to absorb. And and your first retailers might not cover that for a while unless they’re really large. So that needs to be understood before you go in. That’s why I’m like, oh, depending on what you sell in your margins, like you probably want to be like at least in the 20 million range or more before you you go into that and not really just from a financial standpoint, but just from the standpoint of that. Many people have actually bought your product and recognize it, because if you have if you’re, you know, a 5 or $10 million, you know, Amazon brand, not that many people have really gotten your product, probably unless you’re really cheap price point. So like, no one’s going to recognize it in store. You know, once you sell a few million units, like there should be some recognizability and better conversion on shelf so that you perform well so you can stay in store because like, staying on shelf is probably a lot more important than getting in.

Matt Greene 00:33:04  Because if you don’t stay like, then all that those costs you did up front to get ready for it are really not for anything. So that’s when I run into people who hate retail. That’s a lot of times the journey that they didn’t think about it like, oh, we just sold it in. Well, it’s gotta sell through and selling through in retail. It’s like, do you have VC money to push it through with really expensive advertising? Because it’s one thing to get on your phone and have people click and buy your product. But it’s another thing to have them actually like drive to a store and go in and buy your product and hit those people. That’s going to be really expensive to drive. If people just walking in the store don’t recognize your product, which is another thing, like you got to be on on shelf in the right section where people are looking for whatever solution your product provides. So there’s conversion there. That’s a big aspect of the retail situation. So it’s a very like you have to plan the system to be successful, and your brand has to be at a certain point of recognizability or stand out on the shelf and solve the solution better than the stuff that’s on the shelf currently and have people pay more for it.

Matt Greene 00:34:09  So that’s kind of my quick take on retail.

Josh Hadley 00:34:12  Yeah, I mean, there’s so much that goes into that. Yeah. But how did you guys drive sale through? Because you were a new brand. It’s not like you guys were widely popular. You said you started maybe too early. How did you guys drive it? Did you have venture backed funding to, like, Go Hard?

Matt Greene 00:34:25  No. We’re bootstrapped. And to be honest, like, I think we got a little bit lucky with a few aspects of it and, you know, that happens. We also did work very hard to develop our products. So like there’s our, you know, happy years. Comfort powder was very uniquely branded to take over. Like there’s all these women who are buying baby powder for sweat protection and stuff in the summer. So in the branding is a lot better than anything in that section in Walmart and like really stood out on shelf. Our products are like easy to read in the front. We’ve actually made all our products always for retail because we always thought like, oh, we’d be this big household brand and can take over this sector.

Matt Greene 00:35:04  Old tire, not brand new, well, products. So that definitely helped us out planning wise. So there’s like two aspects like that. Having that big brand following though is like for sure gonna sell through it, sell it through. But also like having the product. So it makes sense on shelf because you can sell anything online when you have big landing pages and big images that explain what the products for and all the benefits. But like you have to do it on shelf with just the product sitting there in that section and have people like understand the benefits. And then I think also like our sense are really good. Like we have our own R&D labs. So like we actually put the sun in the formula because like it changes how it smells and really dial it in rather than, you know, having a manufacturer just throw it in after smelling it. So I think the sad aspect really worked well, actually, one of our original scents on shelf like bombed, like it sold, you know, maybe 10% of our others.

Matt Greene 00:35:57  And like that was an indication that scent wasn’t working at all. Right? Where people could smell them where like. And it’s funny, online it was selling fine. But then after time we saw the reviews coming in for it not as good, and the sales started to fall off and it wasn’t getting subscribers. And that took like 6 to 9 months to see online where like in store, it was like instant when someone could smell it on shelf. So that’s.

Josh Hadley 00:36:21  That’s.

Matt Greene 00:36:21  Very interesting. Yeah. So there is like there’s a two aspects of like you can you can dial it in to compete on shelf, but you really have to have like good branding and like people need to know what it is and it needs to be in the right section. But if you have like the really awesome aspect is like if you have that big branding and or you have like that big following of people who already buy it, that’s great. And we’ve seen that with like that, our products are women’s ran heavy hitters like really trending on TikTok.

Matt Greene 00:36:47  We’ve seen our sales numbers go up significantly as we’ve scaled that channel up. So that definitely drives retail.

Josh Hadley 00:36:55  So even though you’re not saying like none of the TikTok content is like, find us in Target or Walmart, it’s just like Big Halo.

Matt Greene 00:37:02  We’ve done that actually, that. But the problem is, is like, okay, that’s really targeted content. And like that post might get like, let’s say it gets like 20,000 views, but like, okay, we have a good week with stuff going viral. We’ll have like 7 to 10 million views. Just our brand. And like that 7 to 10 million is like that’s like linear TV level reach, and it’s targeted for people who want to see it. So that drives sales way more than like those targeted posts. It’s like, oh, we we do them, but like they don’t seem to go viral. Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:37:31  Makes makes more sense.

Matt Greene 00:37:33  Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:37:34  Matt, this has been a fascinating with kind of everything that you’ve done in your brand journey.

Josh Hadley 00:37:39  A lot of like hustling, a lot of grinding and just seeing like what works and making it work. And, you know, success is opportunity when it meets preparation. And I think you guys have always been on the hunt. You’ve had a good product, which is that preparation. And then you’ve continued to experiment with those sales channels and like continuing to refine it until you find like, all right, here’s the angle that works for us. Is there anything else that you wanted to share with the listeners before we close things out today?

Matt Greene 00:38:04  I don’t think so. Unless you got questions for me, I didn’t really I kind of just showed up here. I’m not super prepared like I usually am. So I’m new at this. Maybe next time I will. I don’t know.

Josh Hadley 00:38:13  I love it. Well, I do have my final questions, but before we dive into those I have, I love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from every episode. You let me know if you think I’m missing something, but action item number one is to focus whatever sales channel is producing the best, like momentum for you today.

Josh Hadley 00:38:32  Continue to double down on that sales channel until you get your operations set up and locked in, because as soon as you pivot your attention to any of these other sales channels that we just talked about today, you you’ve heard all the stories of like, little nuances that are required to succeed in these different channels. And so make sure that you have a team that your SOPs are well integrated. Make sure you have AI, you know, agents that are working and executing some of those processes for you so that it continues to thrive. When you point your attention to the next sales channel. So that’s actually number one.

Matt Greene 00:39:08  Yeah. And just to add to that, like I would address like when you’re diving that channel in, it’s not just like like dial in the profitability as much as possible because that’s going to be your channel that you’re going to need to take that money to invest in growing other channels and things. And so that profitability in your first channel is, is like really key.

Josh Hadley 00:39:25  I would 100% echo that.

Josh Hadley 00:39:27  And especially if like you’re a bootstrap brand, like that’s got to be like the essential item there.

Matt Greene 00:39:32  So definitely.

Josh Hadley 00:39:34  Love it. Action item number two is like if you’re trying to figure out how to scale off of Amazon, like your next best bet truly is to go over to TikTok. Because in terms of operations, it’s the easiest to get on to. There’s a there’s good debate that people will have to say, actually do Shopify first, because then you benefit from all the halo traffic from TikTok. However, like if you’re just like again, bootstrapping this, the easiest one to turn on was similar operations and cost structure is going to be TikTok. It will create a halo effect. And my my third thing would be my next I guess sales channel to light up would then be Shopify. So my third and final action item is, you know, if you want to get into retail, as Matt said, you probably want to be crossing the $20 million mark. You want to have a good number of customers that already recognize your brand.

Josh Hadley 00:40:21  But lastly, you want to make sure you’re well capitalized in order to take advantage of that sales channel because it is a great growth lever for you. But there are a lot of like you said it yourself, Matt, like, it’s so much easier for me to put up a billboard on meta or whatever and like try to convert a customer than it is like to try to grab somebody in store where your kneecap placement or your place on the shelf makes a world of a difference, and you’re locked in for a year. And so those would be my three final action items for people. Anything else that you would add there, Matt?

Matt Greene 00:40:51  Yeah, definitely makes a lot of sense. Yeah. The retail like getting your costs up front and making sure you have it supported from your other channels is is just a great way to look like go about it.

Josh Hadley 00:41:01  Yeah. And I think what underlies all of this, Matt is having a quality product. And we and everybody talks about quality product and everybody, even if they don’t think even if they do think they have a quality product, It maybe is not, but everybody thinks they have a quality product.

Josh Hadley 00:41:16  But do you have something that is so unique or differentiated that it truly takes you 18 months to develop, that it is different than the rest of the market and the competition? Because in order to have success in these different sales channels, you need to have unique angles. You can’t just be a copycat, and that’s something that we could record a whole other podcast episode on Matt, which is like, don’t just follow the competition, because if you’re following the competition, they’re already working on next year’s plans and they’re always going to be ahead of you.

Matt Greene 00:41:46  So yeah, definitely. I mean, the way I look at it is like other products like Amazon sellers do this like you, you download all your reviews and like, see, you know, the bad stuff. But it does get to a point where, like, they’re just not that bad. And then you got to just like, what can I do to make this product better and just come up with some ideas and keep doing that with your whole product line, or come up with new new ideas and, and, you know, adjacent products, but you always want to be making them better and constantly improving.

Josh Hadley 00:42:12  Yeah, well said. Matt. Matt, my final three questions for you. Number one, what’s been the most influential book that you’ve read and why?

Matt Greene 00:42:19  So there’s actually two that I like. So the the one that’s either like good or great SEOs or lazy. It’s a great book. And then also there’s a book called like The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, which is is awesome for like, like, do I actually have to do this right now? or just prioritizing? It’s not really even that much of a business book. It’s more like just a life book of like how to use your time. And it’s it’s definitely a good one.

Josh Hadley 00:42:42  Awesome recommendations. Haven’t heard those ones before. Love it. Second question here. What is your favorite AI tool and how have you been using it?

Matt Greene 00:42:49  Right now I transitioned to using Claude because like I was using a bunch of different ones and like lately Claude’s gotten really good. And and primarily we’re using it for a lot of just data analysis and making like dashboards from our data.

Matt Greene 00:43:04  Really cool. And then I feel like I use it for like a hodgepodge or just random stuff when I need to, like just general efficiency. We’re actually going to do at like our happy huddle next happy huddle business meeting, which will occur around the time this is airing. we’re going to do like an AI productivity seminar, but just getting everyone to use it. So instead of hiring more people, you can just make everyone you know produce more than they usually do. Yeah. So we’re we’re big fans of cloud right now and that’s what we’re using for a lot of stuff. Also on the website, website development is really easy to make landing pages with cloud code and just pop it into Shopify so you can make like 50 different versions and you know, an hour for sure.

Josh Hadley 00:43:44  And like you can increase like great use cases on AI, GC content, media spinning those things.

Matt Greene 00:43:51  So email flows all kinds of stuff. Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:43:54  Fantastic. Third and 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 I should.

Matt Greene 00:44:01  You told me these questions earlier and I didn’t think about that one that much. You think about it. You know, I really like hanging out with, like, Prue and Ryan and their MDS members. They have an awesome, awesome business so I definitely my respect them. Dan Schafer like native pet great dude. And there’s definitely like a lot of people in the space. But I actually think it’s good to just like network around and talk to a lot of different people and see what they’re doing and find out the stuff that they can help you with, or you can just institute in your business. I think a lot of the big people who like, exited, it was like they did it a different time when Medicare was around. That’s not that great to follow them. And I haven’t met that many of them, to be honest. So yeah, yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:44:45  Matt, this has been a super fun conversation. If people want to follow you, they want to reach out to you, maybe buy some of your products.

Josh Hadley 00:44:52  Where’s the best place for people to find you? Well, Matt, thanks again for joining us on the show today.

MC 00:44:56  Thank you for listening. Visit Ecomm Breakthrough Comm for more information. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, the best way you can show your appreciation is by clicking the subscribe button and quickly leaving a review. See you again next time!