The TikTok Live Strategy Getting This New Brand In Front of Millions Every Week (Untouched Blooms)

0:00Max Somerset:We're the Hartford, with decades of experience insuring millions of unique small businesses. When it comes to your small business insurance, one size absolutely does not fit all. Get a quote or find an agent today at thehartford.com slash small business. Hey, business besties. Welcome back to Female Founder World. It's Jasmine. I'm the host of the show. And today I'm chatting with Max Somerset. She is the founder of Untouched Blooms. The reason why I wanted to chat with Max is because she started this brand in 2024. She was on Etsy. getting like one order a day, two orders a day. And within their first year of moving on to Shopify, they did 10 ,000 orders.

0:38She hasn't paid for ads. This is all organic growth. And I think that this is the kind of story that a lot of us who are building businesses just want to understand what's working in terms of organic growth and how she's making it happen. So Max, welcome to the show. Let's dig in and get all of your secrets so that people can copy and paste and do it in their own businesses as well. Hello, I'm so excited. and you started the company back in 2024 let's kind of let's go back to those early days what was the product that you launched what were you building yeah so I started with flower phone grips I have a few with well actually I only have fruits I actually forgot the flowers so sorry about that but I started with flower phone grips they're little ones like this and they were little flowers and then we went to custom dogs but first we'll start with flowers yeah and it's like one of those businesses you look at and you're like it's such it seems like such a random you know a random product but they absolutely hit they're so cute it's literally a phone group if you're watching on video also go and have a look at the untouched blooms um social accounts because it'll give you a really good idea for the brand vibe that is around this and it's just one of those things that seem to like hit a note as soon as it kind of launched where um people connected with it and really wanted it and i want to understand what that kind of breakthrough moment was for you where you kind of went from, okay, this is like a little thing, get me a couple of orders every now and again, through to it feeling like you were actually building a real business?

2:05Yeah. So, okay, so I started out on Etsy, put it up there for fun, didn't let any of my friends or family purchase because I wanted to make sure that it was like a good product. Started getting sales. As again, as Jasmine said, it was like one to three. We were posting a little bit on TikTok. and then a company outside of the US started posting and we were in like the search bar of the TikTok and because they didn't ship to America, everyone in America just started coming to us. And that's when like my brain really started to like click and again, wasn't crazy. We did like maybe like 35 orders, then like 60 orders and it kind of just like kept growing.

2:45And that's when I realized we're bringing our own business to Etsy where we just need to like set up a Shopify and cut that cost of Etsy taking. That's so interesting about if there's another product that's trending that's not available in your market, you can really benefit from TikTok serving your product as like the local alternative and using that search on TikTok to ride on the wave of a trend that even another brand might be building in another country. That's so interesting. I hadn't thought of that before. Yeah, that was great. And then I want to understand the kind of the next step. So you're in 2024, you're starting to get some early traction and you realized, okay, this could be a real thing.

3:31What's kind of the next step? What's the next thing that happened that got you on the way to that 10 ,000 orders? That's why I had to order more phone grips because I was literally ordering in batches of like 50. And then what was like the next steps? obviously started a Shopify and then really started to like get consistent on social media. I noticed how far this business that was outside of the US, like they, their video had like 600, 800 ,000 views. And I was like, this is crazy that just from like a small little video, 15 second video, they were able to reach so many people. And that's when it really clicked me, the power of social media.

4:10And you started working with some influencers around this time as well. How did those first folks find you and what was the impact for the biz? Yeah, so Chrissy Chela, the owner of Honor Active, she found us through TikTok. That was a really big defining moment for us. She posted on her social media, tagged us. We did like thousands of dollars in sales. That was the biggest day that we ever did in sales. She found us through TikTok. And then Morgan Riddle also found us through TikTok. It's crazy. I was watching Morgan Riddle on a YouTube video. And I said to my best friend that was helping me pack orders and my dad, and I was like, she is going to wear our product.

4:51That evening she ordered off our Shopify. It was crazy. I was absolutely shocked. She was so lovely. Yeah, it was crazy. And she posted about a month later and tagged. And that was like another like really great moment. Okay. So they literally just found your product and ordered it. That's how those first influences came. Yeah. okay wild have you done any more intentional like influencer gifting or partnerships so I did gift Alex or and she does use our product which was like an amazing moment for us um that was a little bit more intentional I had a feeling that Alex or was going to be at an event so I made her custom phone grips and then I gift it to her in person but like we've never we've gifted the Kardashians we made custom phone grips for the Kardashians but again like their team reached out to us found us and ordered flowers ordered custom for skims for 818 for Kylie cosmetics for like a bunch of other of their brands cloud everything like that talk to me about you're saying custom what do you mean I want people to be able to visualize like what this is the dog ones to me are the other piece that I think is like so smart because as anyone who is a dog mom like you understand why people want this and why it resonates so much when you gift it to an influencer so this is the exact phone grip that we are well this is my first prototype that we gave to Alex Earl and we can take a photo of any pet your dog your cat your rat your snake whatever it is and we can turn it into a phone grip and this is the one that we gifted to Alex Earl and I need to understand how that happened because your did you know that you were attending the same event did you know that she was going to the event and you just like turned up how did you make that happen so I saw one of her friends post like an RSVP for her event and I just had a feeling it's her best friend I also love the best friend's art so I was like already following the count and interacting and of course I made for the best friend and I made for the friend so it wasn't like I just gifted to Alex but I did obviously like I was hoping that she was going to be there and it paid off.

6:57She was lovely. She was so lovely. She spoke to us for like a really long time. She actually said that this was her favorite gift that she's been ever, she's ever been given. And then like months later, she also like popped it out of her bag. And that was like another really big moment for us because everyone was recognizing us. What's the lesson here for people who want to be able to gift and have a big moment with a big influencer like that? Like, what do you think the takeaway is obviously being like chronically online and knowing who her friends are and like what she was doing paid off for you but that's not something I think that can necessarily be super easily replicated what's the thing that if you're someone you've got a brand that's up and coming and you're like okay I want to get I want to get influencers using my product posting about and loving my product what do you think the lesson is for us okay so I would say packaging if you're sending a product if you're not gifting in person packaging I would say super important you don't need a lot of money.

7:52I have a plain little pink box. I make it bedazzled. And then I put photos of like their dogs or like dog memes. And it always catches people's attention. Always. Like whenever an influencer is doing like an unboxing, they always talk about our packaging. They always want to open it first. I always recommend like a personalized like gift of something just to kind of get them to talk about it. Even if maybe it's not even really to do with your brand. Like maybe if you could get like a nice like card with like a photo of them and their dog or them and their family or something and just like write like a really nice note in there I think personalization is so important that's where it changed the game for us I would say I love the idea of uh the way that you're doing your mailers and you I feel like you've posted a few videos about this right people can go to your feed and see how you do this because when you're competing with folks who have have like road budgets, you know, like poppy budgets.

8:48We're talking about big consumer brands here. And they have these big, glossy, showy mailers that are the reason why people are posting them is because of the wow factor of what they're receiving. When you're an independent brand, I do think, or like even a, like a founder led brand, I do think the magic and why people want to support you is the human behind it. And you're thinking when I'm sending somebody this and they're not meeting me the founder how do I convey that human element to them and I do think that the way that you do your mailers feels very personal and human and like there's a real individual behind this and so that's um that's something that I think anyone who's sending mailers out who is trying to gift who's trying to get the attention of really any gatekeeper whether it's press influencers retailers whatever should think about as leaning into the magic of what you can do differently at your stage of business.

9:40Definitely. And also on all of our thank you cards, we have a photo of my dad and I making the product. So cute. Cause your dad's your co-founder, right? Yeah, pretty much. But I feel like if you ask him any questions about the business, he probably wouldn't know. He won't know. Yeah. I've like, I love watching him on your social as well. And you had your first viral moment, summer 2025. The business was pretty new. It was a video of you and your dad. What do you think you did right in that video? And what was the outcome? Oh my goodness. So I honestly just like kind, it was like one of the first photos that I ever included my dad helping me.

10:14Something that I always recommend for founders is share your story, especially if it's like your hands-on with the product and things like that. I thought my story was like really boring. I just didn't really think it was special. My dad is like always helped me my whole life. So I was just like, okay, like this is like very normal. So then I just think that sharing that story and sharing the behind the scenes it was actually like a bunch of like random videos of like my dad helping me with something and I was like okay like I don't really have anything to post today let me just like put this together and put it out there and I remember I went to like go and get a smoothie and within like the first um like few hours got hundreds of thousands of views so many orders and then I think now it's at 15 million but it was really just like the behind the scenes with like a cute little text saying like, POV, your dad helps you build your small business.

11:09And just a bunch of really easy videos that were taking on my camera. Nothing fancy. And is that something that now you double down on? Because I do, I feel like I see the two of you on your social quite a lot. So yes, I do. Do I think that I kind of rinsed and repeated it a little bit too much? Maybe. But at least I did it like so, so much. And now I feel like I'm really trying to work on building the actual brand and like posting people use the product, posting new products, adding like a little bit more of like a brand feeling than just like my dad and I making it, making it, making it. One of the biggest moments in your business was launching the custom pet phone grips.

11:47And that was one of those things that just hit instantly. I know that you sold 400 units in the first hour, which as an independent new brand feels like a really magic moment. I want to understand how you were teasing that launch and how you announced it and what the sales have looked like kind of ongoing after that launch moment. Yeah. So in the beginning, we really just started testing the waters on social media, posting like stories, like kind of teasing it, putting polls up if people wanted it. And that's like always so, so important to really get that anticipation. And then we started posting behind the scenes of making the product.

12:27Maybe I got like a few friends to kind of do like a reaction video, me surprising them with the product. We also did it right in time for Christmas. We do it October 18th because we get like people to really start thinking about like a present. We knew that it it was a perfect time for the present. So also we really spoke about gifting this. We put it onto email. We did do an email. I think that we did about three emails, nothing crazy. I have built my email list from like videos when we've gone viral and selling out. And we created like a waitlist on our email as well, which is like also always very, very important.

13:01And we always give like our waitlist a 15 minute to 30 minute early access code so they can get it before we sell out. I think it's one thing to have a really big launch moment for a new product, but how have you been able to kind of sustain that growth and those sales? And have they been able to sustain or was it one of those, you had a great drop and then you've moved on to other things? so that has probably carried our business the most if i'm being honest i think that the flowers and the fruits really pick up in the summer but we were getting into like the more like gifting air gifting times november december then like valentine's day the colder months and the dogs have been like i think it's like the abc products and like our our dogs is like supposed to be i think like the c product but it's like our like number one product don't really know how what do you mean abc that's a really good question because i actually don't know I just see that like on Shopify like ABC I should probably chat to BT that but how they like determine that but I was thinking maybe you knew it's okay all good um I want to know when you're uh also can I just say as someone who has a baby you should do baby faces on the phone groups people will lose their mind I feel like there's two there are like two categories that people will spend anything on and one of them is their pets and the other one is their children and so if you can put like someone's babies like a cute baby photo on a phone grip I feel like they would do really well 100 October 18th a little insight for you oh it's happening yeah I was gonna do it this summer but I felt like I was kind of just rushing it a little bit to kind of like get capital to like support other things but I was like you know what let me be patient let me do other things really like be resourceful when's mother's day mother's day i feel like you should do it for mother's day oh it's too soon it's next week yeah i was going to but it's okay it just didn't work out this time no you've got to like think you know give everything its own moment and have the time to do it properly i think okay how have you been funding this thing because you're fully self-funded you're you're paying for this yourself what's been the funding journey?

15:10Yeah so honestly saving every penny. I still live in my 400 square foot apartment and my living room is our studio. Not really doing anything crazy, not shopping, being on a real budget but it pays off. We've had some really great investors reach out and ask to invest but I think that at the moment it's kind of going really well. It doesn't cost a lot for us to run this. I did start with$300 and riding a tricycle around Miami beach, selling flowers on a tricycle. That's how I've got like our initial funds. I was working three jobs. I was working at SoulCycle. I was an assistant for a family and I was babysitting.

15:48So I think I've just been really good at penny pinching. I get that from my dad, a hundred percent with penny pinchers. Is there anyone that's working, that's working for you in the business now? Yes, definitely. So I do have girls that help me resin the flowers help me resin the custom dogs help me cut and then I also have one of my best friends that helps me pack all of our packages okay and are you doing all of the content all of the marketing all of that yourself yeah everything oh my god okay okay so you're packing you're packing all of your orders from your apartment in Miami you're doing all of the marketing everything yourself and you're fully self-funded how are you dividing your days now like what does it look like you max wakes up in the morning what are you doing through the day I would love to say that I'm like not on my phone and reading a book, but I am on my phone.

16:36I'm usually, I'm usually checking emails, kind of like getting on top of things. I like to get everything organized before my girls come in and help me. Then I try and go on a walk rather with my boyfriend. We do long distance. So I like to go on a walk, go grab like a croissant, go grab a smoothie. And then I'll come back, maybe like take a few meetings. I will film a lot of content again back on emails back in the dms I'm very very active on like our social media I'm all I'm chronically online looking for girls to send product to so like usually maybe I could send like 30 to 100 dms a day and oh wow that's like all me like outsourcing just dming girls asking to send them product like asking to add them to the pr list and things like that because we don't have a PR agency.

17:23So I do all of that. And then we kind of break around, like we stop at five because the post office closes. We got to drop that off. And then I take a dinner and then I go live for about an hour to three hours on TikTok. So that's around like six, seven. You're going live every single day on TikTok? Recently, yes. Every single day. Yeah. What are your thoughts around live shopping and your live strategy? I've seen a few brands do this i know that princess poly they're obviously a bigger fashion brand but live going live on tiktok has actually been a big part of their growth story this year and they said that they tested it a couple of years ago it didn't work but now it's working which i think is an interest represents like quite an interesting shift in the way the consumers are shopping do you think like tiktok is maybe like pushing this as a new feature or are people actually like really engaged how are you thinking about tiktok live should i be going live i absolutely love it i think that everyone should be going live?

18:18Well, I recommend that everyone goes live. I think it's a great chance for if you have a community to like really engage. I started with five viewers, like for like a little while, I only had like five people. And then now we pretty much have like 300 people on at all times, like coming off and on. But I think some really key interesting points that I love to see, like when I come off of my TikTok, it gives me like a summary. On average, if I go live for about two hours 600 ,000 people see my live that's not 600 ,000 people join but 600 ,000 people see my face and see my product so that is basically like a live viral video every time I go live obviously it doesn't maybe give us the numbers of a viral video but the fact that 600 that it ranges between like 400 and 600 ,000 people within two hours see us you know and that's a big deal interesting what but what are you talking about?

19:10You're on there for a couple of hours. Like, what are you doing? I'm trying to think, okay, if I was going to go live on the female founder world, TikTok, what that, like, I'm sorry, but what would I do? I don't even know. If I was you, I'd probably put up like a question poll on TikTok or on Instagram and say like a bunch of questions. Then I would post on your story and be like, Hey guys, I'm going live from six to seven. Join my life. I'm answering all the questions in the poll. If I have any extra time commented in our TikTok live chat and I'll get to it. And spend like two to three minutes on each question, depending on how many questions you have.

19:43For me, we do auctions as well. So we can like set the price at$10. We can even set the price at$1. And then we also have giveaways and then people bid on it. So sometimes like we have like an item that's like an unreleased, maybe it's unreleased or maybe it's discontinued and people will bet like, people will bid like$70 on it. And it's like a$30 item, but they want it so bad and they know that it's like limited edition so they will do it obviously it's like very important to also be like oh um like please like be mindful with bidding and things like that but a lot of businesses do it oh it's so interesting I saw I don't know if you saw the um the media company they're like a tech youtube channel and they just sold to was it open ai I think open ai for like 100 million dollars and they were going live on youtube I think every day for like two hours a day or something that was kind of their model and then they would use it um those conversations to create clips and they built this massive audience and they just had that discipline of going live every day you build your audience they know that you know their show is on their um they're tuning in every time and I feel like it takes it does take a lot of discipline as a founder to think I'm going to commit to this as like a you know a routine and a ritual for my community where I'm going to be showing up live and have something prepared and something to talk about.

21:07But I love it. I really want to bring this into my own business. I think it's really interesting. I think it's great. It obviously, like, as you said, like as a business owner, it can be really difficult, especially because sometimes people will use it as like customer support. You can get some like pretty crazy comments. Yeah. But I think overall, you have such an amazing time building a community. And I also test a lot of products on there. So if we're coming out with a new item, I'll always like show the TikTok community first. I also have like a group chat with the girls. I will even like send them items themselves to test out because I know like how much they care about the growth and how much they've just really helped direct me.

21:45I went through like a few like couple months like really struggling with where I really saw this going. I was led in like some different directions by people and I just didn't really love the vision but I kind of just lost my vision and it took one TikTok live and I was telling them about a new product and they were like we don't really want it in that color though Max like why like just to be honest with you and I was like oh my god you're so right I've been advocating for us to do it in a different color but they convinced me with data that we have to do it in a different color and they were like they're just so that you can really just build such an amazing community and they're so supportive.

22:21I think if you're when you're in that scaling phase or not even the scaling phase but when you're when you're building the business and you're starting to kind of move out of your role of being the, you know, the person who's in the DMs or whatever, it can, it can feel like you can really easily lose touch with your customer, particularly as you're beginning to hire and bring people in to do some of the roles that maybe you were closer to. And so I think that going live is actually a really interesting way for the founder is going live for them to, for you to maintain that connection with the community.

22:50Cause like you said, you start bringing in an agency and then you feel a little bit connected, disconnected it can like impact the the product decisions it can impact like the way that you're feeling connected with your own community but just bringing in that live strategy is such a great way to like re-establish that and like keep that close connection a hundred percent definitely the last thing i want to ask you max is for a resource recommendations i know that you've prepared a couple but i want to know what what you're using in the business if there's a book that you enjoy if there are tools that you're using tech tools what should we be trying oh my goodness um can I can I say a few is that okay yeah the more the merrier let's go for Instagram I recommend always editing on edits it's tick it's Instagram's base for editing and I think that they push more videos on edits for TikTok use cap cut because that's what like their partnership is obviously I'm maybe I'm still on chat GPT I keep advocating for Claude even though I haven't done the transition.

23:50Obviously, I love ChatGPT. My goodness. What about any books? Like, I feel like you're someone who's building your own business. You're self-funded. You're managing the finances, everything. Like, is there anything that you've read or any courses that you've taken or any, like, how are you up-leveling as you're doing this? Podcasts. Female founder world. Well, we connected because you're in the group chat and you like, you know, join our calls. And that's how I found out about what you're building. And I looked at your socials and I was like, oh, this girl's onto something. This is so cool. And I wanted to have you on the show.

24:21So it's nice to know that you're, you know, getting value out of the space as well. Yeah, so much. I live and breathe podcasts. Honestly, I haven't taken any courses. I'm really bad. I love books, but I've been so busy that I feel like podcasts. I am part of mental mode, which I think, you know, Raquel, the owners of Who Is Elijah. Yes. And Adam is really great with finances. He like will help me if I have any financial questions. but yeah podcasts and any community mentorship communities with founders has been like my biggest learning lessons and also if you have a mentor I would recommend that your mentor is like one or two steps ahead of you I've sometimes had mentors and I still do and I still value their advice so much but I sometimes have mentor I've had mentors and they talk to me and they're making 200 million 90 million a year and it just kind of like they think that spending twenty thousand dollars on a photo shoot is easy and obviously yes I'm like I'm so happy for them that they're able to do that but then it can sometimes make you feel a little bit like oh my god why am I not at that stage should I have twenty thousand so I guess I don't really have a resource but if you're for a mentor I definitely recommend one or two steps ahead something that I talk about a lot is peer mentorship and the idea that you need a friend group of like-minded people who are building alongside you and maybe that that includes someone who is a few steps ahead someone who is at the same level someone who's like slightly off to you know off to the side doing something a bit different like you don't just want to be getting your advice from a 15 minute coffee conversation with somebody who has exited a hundred million dollar company like you really do need that advice and that's what this show and this community is really all about because I do believe that you need to learn from people who are doing it with you because the insights and the learnings are just so different.

26:09Yeah, a hundred percent. Someone that I loved on your podcast was the Real Jewelry, I think it's called. Yes, Real Fine, Eliza is incredible. Amazing. And I love her TikTok. Following founders on TikTok is always also a great little like hack. You get so much insight and a lot of the time they don't have a lot of followers. You can also interact with them on there. Yes, DM a founder on TikTok. That's actually such a good hack. Max, thank you so much for coming on the show where can people find you and where can they find untouched blooms so you can find my personal instagram max gail somerset my tiktok is max gail i'm super active i love a voice memo so feel free to send me a voice if you have any questions and then our instagram is untouched blooms and our tiktok is untouched blooms as well and come say hi on live and ask any questions amazing thank you max i'll see you in the female founder world group chat bye

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