How to Build a Multi-million Dollar Business by Developing Brand Loyalty with Andy Schreiber: An EOFire Classic from 2022

0:02Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, the only daily show interviewing the world's top entrepreneurs seven days a week. Today, we're pulling a classic episode from the archives, and we'll be breaking down how to build a multi-million dollar business by developing brand loyalty. To draw these value bombs, I brought Andy Schreiber and EO Fire Studios. Andy is co-founder of Pure Vitamin Club, Pure Coffee Club, and NSNG Foods, along with his business partner, Vinny Tortorich, a multi-time guest and entrepreneur who's on fire and a Fire Nation fave. And today, we'll talk about how to build brand loyalty, how to build your brand slowly without incurring unnecessary debt or risk.

0:41And don't always hammer away with pitching. Use social media to establish loyalty by giving out information and oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Andy, Vinny, and our sponsors. Franocity has helped hundreds of people leave unfulfilling jobs, invest in recession-resilient businesses, and create legacy income for their families through franchising. Visit Franocity.com. That's F-R-A-N-O-C-I-T-Y.com to book a free consultation and start your franchising journey with expert guidance. Andy, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1:22One thing about becoming successful is that that is not the goal. That is not the destination. That is, for me, the journey in that being successful doesn't satisfy what I want to do with my business. It's the byproduct of working hard and trying to do good with what I do. So Andy, I gave an introduction of who you are, of what you have going on. And one thing that I'm personally curious about, and I know Fire Nation will be as well, is the fact that you took$20 ,000 and you turned it into a multi-million dollar enterprise. Tell us that story. My partner, Vinny Tortorj, and I started this back in 2014.

2:14It was an idea to offer a completely unique product on the market and turn it into something bigger, starting slowly and building on that. We were told by everybody that we were wasting our time, that entering the supplements market was highly competitive and there was just no way to break in, no way to break through. And we said, okay, yeah, we get it and we're going to do it anyway. And we celebrated every little success along the way. I mean, when we first launched after the initial kind of, you know, couple days, because we used, as I'm sure you know, I don't know if your audience knows that Vinny has a rather well listened to, well followed podcast.

3:08And that was really our own, our only marketing was just promoting it through the podcast. And then, you know, we did some email blasts to his email list, but we had zero dollars for marketing. Zero. Every last penny of that$20 ,000 that we invested was in building the website and building the infrastructure and research into our first product and then making our first product in a very small manufacturing run. It's all we could afford. So every little success we celebrated. we celebrated. So after the first, you know, couple of days where we sold probably, you know, maybe 75, 80 units, and we were thrilled that that, you know, went that well the first couple of days, uh, for the first like year, we had a thing where, you know, we would get on the phone with each other and say, Oh my God, it was a double digit day.

4:01We sold 10 units. We, you know, couldn't believe. And so we would completely celebrate if we sold 10 units in one day. and we said look we're going to um take this slowly we're not going to take on any debt because we don't know if we take on debt how we're going to pay it back so we're going to build this thing you know super super slowly um which is which is what we did and we waited a year and a half before we even added a second product uh because that's when we could afford to do it. We continued to market just with Vinny's podcast and occasional email and some social media, which is basically free.

4:49Well, let's hone in on that now because the podcast was the obvious go-to, but then you guys were able to use social media effectively. Talk about how you did use social media to build your profile. The important part of that is when we went to social media, we weren't always just hammering away at, you know, what seemed like pitching. You know, we didn't want to always be pitching, pitching, pitching. So we used social media to establish some brand loyalty by giving out information. Some of it might have seemed, you know, directly related to our products and some of it wasn't. So we would put out posts and videos and, you know, just text or pictures with tips about specific vitamins.

5:41Here's some information, maybe something you didn't know about vitamin B12. Here's something you didn't know about magnesium. But then also, you know, did you know that if you do this kind of an exercise, you can help with this situation? So we tried to become a place that people would come to our social media feeds for information rather than, oh, there they are again, you know, pitching me, pitching me, pitching me. Because people get very weary of that very quickly. They want to see that there is some value coming to your social media, that you're not just always there with your handout. Now, one thing that you've done very effectively is you knew when it was time to add products to your current offerings.

6:21A lot of people either wait too long or they do it too soon. How do we know when it's the right time? When we have something that's working, that's clicking, people are loving it on the podcast, they're digging it in social media because you're adding value, and you're like, you know what, now it's time to add a product extension. How did you figure that out? First of all, when can I afford to do this without jeopardizing my ongoing business? So if it's going to take me, you know, X thousands of dollars, it's going to take me$25 ,000,$50 ,000, whatever it is to develop and order and, you know, manufacture and label and market and come up with all the things that go into a launch of a product, doing the label, doing the advertising.

7:07Can I afford to do that on the assumption that I won't sell a single unit of it? and until you can do that we didn't we never did it we always assumed uh we'll never make this money back you know we never intended that to happen but we had to uh do it in such a way that um you know taking the leap to a new product wasn't going to damage us financially that's number one number two is we listen to our customers uh if somebody likes one of your products to begin with, they will inevitably start asking, you know, do you have any plans for this related product? You have a multivitamin. Do you have plans for a vitamin C?

7:52Do you have plans for a vitamin D for a magnesium? So you listen to them. You look at the market in general. What are the best selling kind of brand extensions? Does, you know, does a calcium cell as well as a magnesium? What is the market looking for? And then finally, what can you bring to a specific product that nobody else can? How do you, if you're deciding that your next product, like our second product was a magnesium, and we said, look, there are a lot of magnesium products out there. How do we come up with a magnesium that we can tell people is the best on the market and pull them away from whatever brand magnesium they are using.

8:39So until we feel confident that we can put out a product that is unique, that is marketable, that is what people want, that we don't do it. Fire Nation, I always say when you're the number one solution to a real problem in this world, people will beat a path to your doorstep. When you're the number one solution to a real problem that they have, and they will ignore the second best solution through infinity. People want the best. They want the best solution to their real problem. So you need to sit down and say, what are the things that I can become the number one best solution to and go all in on that?

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9:53Once you sign up, you'll get everything from formation paperwork to custom domains and trademark registration all in one easy-to-use account, ready to form your business backed by real business experts with decades of experience. Don't wait. Protect your privacy. Build your brand and set up your business in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Visit www.northwestregisteredagent.com slash fire and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at www.northwestregisteredagent.com slash fire. Andy, we're back. And I want to talk about Amazon for a second here because a lot of people think Amazon's just the obvious go-to because they're so big.

10:30They have so many clients, so many customers. They have this like really great logistical warehouse system, all this jazz. And there's pros and cons to Amazon like there is in everything in life. But how can we build our business on Amazon? Should we build our business on Amazon? Talk to us about this. First of all, yes, absolutely you should. I have to confess that when we first started our business, we had no intention of going on Amazon. We didn't think, A, that it would be good for our brand or B, that we would be able to succeed and break through there. It's so competitive there. Everybody is on Amazon.

11:08but we were approached very early in our business i don't think we were i think we were about six months in from our launch date when we were approached by a company they were a fairly young company still uh who specialized in setting up people on amazon you know getting you positioning all of that and they came to us with a very appealing offer for how they could do it for us with no initial investment. They would cover the costs of all the initial listing and developing and then take a portion of our proceeds. And we thought that there's zero to lose there. And it worked out extraordinarily well.

11:49We didn't expect anything. We thought, okay, we'll sell a few units here and there, but we're not going to break through. we've now you know literally made millions of dollars off of amazon and it's on an annual basis it accounts for about 25 percent of our overall revenue the way we've done that is a couple things we have worked i am not an expert on how to market in inside of amazon i couldn't do this and i wouldn't have been successful we wouldn't have been successful on this without using an expert. So that's number one. If you can find somebody who knows how to work Amazon and can work with you for a percentage of your revenue and you've got enough of a margin that you can afford that, that's a great investment because they will know how to use the workings of Amazon to your advantage to build the brand.

12:51And that's more than anything what that exercise has been for us, even though, as I said, it's a big portion of our revenue at about 25%. It's even more valuable to us as a brand awareness builder. So brand registry, if you can get enough traction in Amazon to get brand registered, it's going to help your success tremendously because A, you're going to prevent the kind of people who go in and somehow get a hold of your product at a discount and then sell it at a jacked up price, which makes it very difficult for people to find you properly within the Amazon universe. And when you're brand registered, you can short circuit a lot of that stuff because nobody else can put anything on with your brand.

13:42that's number one number two is it enables you to use some of the the tools within amazon uh to build that kind of brand loyalty and cross promote from one product to another uh our intention from the get-go with amazon which has actually borne out is that um people come to will find us on amazon you know that we're going to reach people that we would never reach on our own because people will search within Amazon. We did all the kind of tricks to build up our reviews, which is an important thing. So more people will find us more easily the more reviews we have. They will get used to us. They'll try our products.

14:26They will like them. We're confident enough in our product that we know people will love them when they have them. And then they'll do what I always do when I find something on Amazon that I like. if I got I really like this product I wonder if I can get this direct somewhere for less so we actually price our product a little higher on Amazon than we do on our own website because we want people don't listen Amazon we want people finding us there and then figuring out oh I really like this product and if I go and subscribe on the you know the 90-day plans that we have on purevitaminclub.com, we can get this cheaper and we can set it up.

15:06And yes, there's a subscription module on Amazon too, but it's more expensive and they have less control. When they're dealing with us directly, they can call us and email us directly and we can handle the customer service in a way that Amazon's really not equipped to. A lot of good stuff there, Fire Nation. You need to take that, apply it to your business, your situation, and figure out, is this the path for me? And if it is, hopefully you're going to be able to follow some of this great advice. Now, it is easy, Andy, to spend a lot of money when it comes to paid advertising and to just see that money waste away.

15:41So how can we use advertising on Facebook and Google cost effectively? Pay-per-click is a wonderful thing because you're really, you're not paying anything until people actually look at your listings. And that doesn't mean that everybody that looks at it is going to buy. And you have to figure out who your target is, who you're trying to reach through Facebook and Google, and how best to reach them. So what our, you know, and again, this is a situation where I personally do not have the expertise, nor do I have the time to invest in figuring out all of that, who our targets are and what the messages are.

16:30So I use a marketing consultant. And that's why we didn't do any of any Facebook advertising or Google advertising for the first few years, because we didn't have the means really to do it. We had to do it through promoting our brand loyalty through social media, the podcast, everything else, pimping ourselves out, pardon the expression, to other people's blogs and other people's podcasts, basically getting as much kind of free advertising, free promotion as we could until we could afford to pay somebody to handle these things for us in a way that would be much more effective than what we could do.

17:10once we could, the secrets to that have been figuring out exactly how to fine-tune our targets. For example, we have one of our products that we introduced a couple of years ago is a children's multivitamin that we introduced, and we're probably still the only one on the market that's not some sort of a sugary delivery system. It's not a gummy or a chewable or anything. We've done very, very small capsules that children can swallow or open up and sprinkle in their yogurt or applesauce or whatever. So we developed a message for that, and our marketing team looked at who are we going to market this to.

18:02So we do a couple of different things. We look at what's called lookalike audiences. So we look for people who buy similar products. And we can do that rather narrowly and get a very good hone in on those people so that those are people that we're looking at and making sure that our message comes in front of. Then we go like really specific. For example, with the children's, we looked at, we selected several different targets of people that follow specific cartoon characters, you know, like Peppa Pig versus Sesame Street versus that one versus the other one. and you know we found that for whatever reason the most responsive audience that we reached were those who followed peppa pig we don't have kids um and you might not know this but that's just a cartoon character uh there are a lot of merchandising around a lot of cartoons and for some reason the peppa pig audience loves our our product then within that we try a couple different messages, you know, a couple different versions of the ad, different backgrounds, different text, sometimes little video, sometimes little GIFs.

19:23And we start very, very small to do like some split testing. So, you know, now we've tried these three, four different audiences. Let's try with each one of those audiences, these two or three different messages. Let's see which one brings back the best response rate and the lowest cost per sale? What's the best return? Once we find the best returns, we maybe even split test a little bit more to refine it. Once we find something that works, a message that works with a target audience that works, then we scale it up. So if We know that if we use, you know, version A of our ad and we're targeting the Peppa Pig audience, and we know that on average for every$2 that we spend on clicks, we're going to make back enough money to cover not only the cost of the clicks, but the cost of goods, right?

20:32So that if we sell 50 units based on that ad, the cost of the advertising plus the cost of the goods and the cost of the shipping, everything else that goes into that, we're still in the black. Because once I know that that is working, that we're in the black by using this advertising message to this audience, I'll ramp that up as quickly as I can because I know that the more I do that, the more I'll make. If it's underperforming a little bit and for every, you know,$100 that I make in revenue, it's costing me between, you know, what I'm paying for the pay-per-clicks and cost of goods, it's costing me$120, then I've got the wrong message or the wrong audience because, you know, I can scale that up all I want and it's just going to cost me more money.

21:21It's not going to be, you know, advantageous at all. Fire Nation, a lot of takeaways there, a lot of things to say, you know what? This would make sense in my business if I applied it in this specific manner. So Andy, a lot of value bombs you dropped. Let's really bring it home for our audience here today. What do you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from our entire conversation that we had here today? Then give us the best way that we can connect with you, any call to action you have for our listeners, and then we'll say goodbye. Build brand loyalty. Do that by offering value above and beyond whatever your product or service is.

21:59Make sure that people look to you as a resource for information. People are very, very hungry for information. Then build your brand slowly without incurring unnecessary debt or risk. That's been very key to our business model. Not that we're so-called risk-averse, but we're risk-intelligent, I would say, risk-cautious. We never put ourselves in jeopardy as a company. Number three, be creative about your brand extensions. You know, we took Pure Vitamin Club and shortly after we decided that we could exploit our success and the loyalty of our customers into some completely different areas. So that's when we, a couple of years after we started Pure Vitamin Club, we started Pure Coffee Club with the same model.

22:56And then just last year we started NSNG Foods where we're doing a completely different product. It's a food product. They're little pouches of a nut butter mixture that fits well with the lifestyle of people who follow our vitamin business because it's low carb. It includes electrolytes. It's a great healthy product. We knew that our customers would go for that. So that's enabled us to go in a completely different direction and grow the business horizontally as well as the years we've spent vertically building it. they can connect with me at andyatpurevitaminclub.com I'm happy to answer anybody's questions or any of that and you know call to action check us out at purevitaminclub.com at purecoffeeclub.com and at nsngfoods.com Fire Nation you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with and you've been hanging out with AS and JLD today so keep up the heat and head over to eelfire.com just type Andy in the search bar.

24:02The show notes page will pop up with everything that we've been talking about here today. And Andy, thank you for sharing your truth, knowledge, value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you, brother, and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thanks a lot, John. Hey, Fire Nation. Today's value bomb content was brought to you by Andy. And Fire Nation, are you ready to rock your very own podcast? Check out our free podcasting course where I I will teach you how to create and launch your podcast for free. Freepodcastcourse.com. Freepodcastcourse.com. I'll catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side.

24:39Franocity has helped hundreds of people leave unfulfilling jobs, invest in recession-resilient businesses, and create legacy income for their families through franchising. Visit Franocity.com. That's F-R-A-N-O-C-I-T-Y.com to book a free consultation and start your franchising journey with expert guidance.