Sliimeyhoney's Mark Lin: Organic TikTok to Shark Tank Deal

0:00I just saw entrepreneurs on TikTok got inspired and turned my hobby for slime into a business. The main driver for the hobby to become a business was the exposure like within TikTok. I instantly went viral and then the business kind of followed after the virality. But I was just, I think just showing up as an authentic like 14, 15 year old kid at the time. You got funding from going to Shark Tank. I had applied twice and both times I had just never heard back. So the third time I was like, okay, now I'm TikTok famous. Like, how am I going to leverage this to get onto the show? And it caught the attention of Barbara Corcoran, who's one of the sharks.

0:36And then within a few months, I was on the stage filming. It was super cool. Something you would have liked to know before or when you started. Stay authentic and like share what you create with the world. And you're not doing it for money, but genuinely just to build a community of people that love the same thing as you. Like, you will find some sort of success.

0:59Hey, everybody. Thank you for listening. My name is Andres Figueira and I'll be your podcast host for today. This show is brought to you by the Global Talent Company, a company that's focusing connecting remote talent from all over the world, Argentina, South Africa, with leading companies worldwide. So if you're looking to expand your team and you're looking for the best remote talent out there, then don't hesitate to contact us and look us up at globaltalent.co to see how we can help. And today with me here, I have Mark Lin, the founder and CEO of Slimy Honey, one of the largest slime companies based in Los Angeles, California.

1:38So Mark, it's a pleasure to have you here. How are you doing? I'm doing well. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to chat and yeah, looking forward to it. Yeah, no, we're also very excited as well. And with that intro i believe we need to um help ease the doubts of our listeners and could you just tell us mark what is a slime company yeah that's totally a fair question i get that one all the time um so basically i founded slimy honey we're the world's premier gourmet slime company is like what i like to call it um we manufacture slimes and um we make them look and smell like your favorite foods.

2:19So growing up, I always loved playing with my food and my parents hated it. And so when I was kind of entering teenage years, I was like, how can I come up with like a way to get around this? And then slime came into my life and I was like, let me turn this into into food. And that's kind of like what we're operating on. Okay, so wait, so the slime you guys make, it's actually edible and it's something you can eat? or does it smell just like food? Yeah, it's not edible. So don't try to eat it, but it just smells and looks like your favorite foods. Okay, that's so cool. And from when I was like investigating the company, it seems you had this idea during the quarantine, right?

3:00It was like during that time of, I don't know, everybody was looking for different ways to distract themselves and you found slime. Yeah, so I had actually been making slime a couple of years before quarantine, but it was never something that I took that seriously until when I when quarantine hit I was on TikTok like everyone else was and I was watching stories of entrepreneurs sharing a day in their lives what running a company looks like and I thought to myself wow that looks really fun and I also saw people my age doing it because back then I thought you know that's something for like old people to do entrepreneurships later in life but then I saw young people doing it and I was like, wait, there's literally nothing stopping me from being them.

3:42So I decided to take to TikTok as well and post my slime creations on there. And that's kind of where it all started. I just saw entrepreneurs on TikTok got inspired and turned my hobby for slime into a business. That's crazy. And would you say that the main driver for the hobby to become a business was the exposure like within TikTok? Or did you follow any other marketing strategies or campaigns in that style that you would say helped out it's so funny because i think a lot of people when they come across a successful business a lot of people ask me like how did you start what frameworks did you use to get the company off the ground um but i always just tell people like i just watched tiktok videos and i took to tiktok myself and i instantly went viral and then the business kind of followed after the virality but i was just i think just showing up as an authentic like 14 15 year old kid at the time on tiktok was was enough and a lot of people liked following my story um and then that's kind of how i grew the business it was kind of like a hobby first turned into the business oh my goodness so it's actually like you created the community before the actual um business side of everything that you're doing with this entrepreneurship oh my god that's so nice and in like do you have a gauge of time from when you had five ten followers to I believe it's over one million now yeah um so I started June 2020 um didn't so I I was posting videos for like a month and then that continued to fall on deaf ears um and then one day in July I posted um it was either July or August like one or two months after I started I posted this one video that was really really bad like genuinely i look back and it was like a terrible video super cringy like filmed in my house's garage like side garage um and it got like two million views within like a few days and that just completely changed the game for me i gained like 20 000 followers in like a day from zero um and then ever since then i would have like moments where i wouldn't do so well and then one video that would take off again.

5:57And then it's like, oh, another 100 ,000 followers, another 100 ,000. And yeah, it took me like a few months, but eventually I got, you know, my foot in the door in the TikTok game. Okay. No, I love that. And it's just such a modern age story of entrepreneurial businesses, because like I've heard a lot of people that go viral and some don't do anything with that, while others, they take advantage of that virality and and seize the moment and then you end up with like a super cool business just like yours and um also as i was investigating i noticed that um you even you got funding from going to shark tank with the whole company yes okay i want to hear that story too yes definitely um so basically i had always grown up watching shark tank it was a lifelong dream of mine to be on the show i'm sure like a lot of other young entrepreneurs that's like the pinnacle of success is making it to the shark tank stage um and so i had applied twice before um and both times i had just never heard back so the third time i was like okay now i'm tiktok famous like how am i gonna leverage this to get onto the show so i created a that was like dear shark tank producers like cast me like i want to be on this show and it caught the attention of barbara corcoran who's one of the sharks um and she i i believe she forwarded to the producer and then within like a couple days they reach out to me and they were like hey do you want to like join the audition like casting process for shark tank and so that was like a really cool experience because i leveraged my tiktok to like get my foot in the door into the shark tank thing um and then within a few months i was on the on the stage filming it was super cool wow that is so surreal man like you strong armed shark tank with your tiktok morality to get on the show that's so legendary very nice very nice and in terms of of of the sales of the product do they always just maintain themselves and it's like different people constantly buying slime or have you felt the need to create certain kind of urgency to to increase the demand or or i know it's a non-essential product so it's it must be kind of hard like convincing people to buy it yeah definitely so it's interesting i've learned a lot throughout running this business about selling a non-essential product because when it was at its peak was covid like everyone was at home they wanted some stress anxiety relief products and and it was doing really well so it would just kind of sell itself i would post my videos my restocks would sell out in like literally 30 minutes each week um and then all yeah and then as the years went on it started to become less and less of a demand for it and so So I had to become like really innovative in the way that I'm selling the product, whether that's like my website revamp or offering.

8:49Now we offer buy four, get one free or running meta ads, things like that. So I've really had to diversify my product line and also my sales channels to really make sure that my sales are maintained. Oh, great. No, I understand. And how is it that you're able to convince people that your slime is better when they could actually just make it at home like you did? But I'm not sure if that's part of the story you want them to know. it's like hey you need mine because and i'm not sure if you're filling in the gap there yeah so the interesting thing about slime is that there's so many different slime companies that you can purchase from and in addition you can make at home like i did um i think what really sets us apart is the first thing is that we're gourmet slime so you can make slime at home my first slime was honestly terrible it was really hard it didn't smell like anything now after years of like perfecting this craft it's literally like cooking you can cook it you can cook a meal at home or you can go out and get a better meal and we add scents like sprinkles charms glitter like clay everything you can possibly think of goes into one of the slimes that might cost more to might cost more time and money to assemble yourself at home and then what sets us apart from our competitors is honestly like our our storyline i think it's just a matter of like a not all slime shops sell the same type of slime so my slime shop specializes in like diy clay kits whereas another one might specialize in cloud slimes or like you know i mean like we specialize in different things and also it's like the storyline i think with our marketing um we make ourselves like a really fun brand it's like a whole curated experience like you the box arrives at your door it's so fun to open the box to see the slimy honey logo inside of the box to like look at all the different slimes that you purchase like it's a whole experience from literally landing on the instagram page to opening your first order um that i think can't be replicated just by the nature of the way we've structured our branding and our our customer experience um so i i really like worked hard to create an experience for these people that i hope translates and is the reason that people are purchasing from me.

11:00Awesome. No, no, that's amazing. And I love how that's the fact and that you really know why you stand out. It's because you provide all of this other moments with the slime rather than just making it and playing with it. But OK, I'm also curious, how many different slimes do you offer? Is there like a certain variety or can people just kind of like create a custom slime i don't even know if that's a thing yeah um so our business model right now is we have restocks every saturday and we drop five brand new slimes every week so i think honestly today over the course of these past five years i've dropped over like 1500 different skews of slimes in my shop at one time we'll offer like maybe 30 to 40 um and then they like rotate they'll like sell out we'll bring them back or sometimes we'll just sell out and never come back um then the five new ones every week.

11:53What has been the most unexpected way that you've been able to get sales with anything you've posted online, like on TikTok or anything? Has there been like this video you said, no, this isn't going to generate anything and it generated a ton of sales? Yeah. Okay. There's two that come to mind. The first is honestly the video that we were talking about earlier. My first vowel video, it was just such a bad video, but when I posted it and got two million views my shop like instantly sold out everyone's like where can i buy more and i'm like why do you guys you don't want this like the video is so bad the slimes look terrible in this video i don't understand why anyone wants it um so that was one and number two was honestly the shark tank um airing we had prepared thousands of units like for launch and those sold out i think literally in the first minute or two of me airing and then it was just like i kept all the inventory in stock so it was just like i was getting so many orders of inventory that i didn't have yet and it was like super stressful but honestly like super like i had never seen that many orders come in before and it was i was not expecting it so it was cool that is very nice it's such an underdog story and i do believe that is something that when you start to produce more in mass it it brings a lot of stress because people they when when they like something they really like something and there's a whole bunch of people in the world so if you're on tiktok being viral and then on shartag i can only imagine the amount of orders that you must have received and in terms of orders you couldn't fill how did you manage then to to complete the process of sales for those that had to wait did you just tell them like hey i received your order you'll get it in two weeks instead of next day shipping for example or something like that yeah it's this is funny because we so we aired on december 2nd and this is around christmas time so i'm pretty sure everyone is purchasing for christmas so we have received like thousands of orders for units that we didn't have um and so the next two weeks of my life after december 2nd i had finals week at ucla so i was taking my finals but simultaneously like my i had to drive home every day and like help my team with manufacturing just because we had so many orders it was the most stressful period of my entire life like i would wake up at like 6 or 7 a.m every single day literally work from 6 30 to like maybe 11 p.m with maybe a 30 minute lunch break and that was like me and my entire team like of i think we had 14 people at the time all 14 of us were working to manufacture these slimes pack the orders like make the clay pieces literally from like from the moment we woke up to the moment and we went to sleep and they would like rotate in and out so it wasn't them but like i was working like 14 15 hour days just manufacturing these slimes all while taking finals and yeah not eating or sleeping really no but but kudos to you man because it's it's not easy to maintain focus in school when you have such a nice business going well and needing your attention and your time because a lot of people would just be like say hey yeah you know what i'm gonna drop out i'll just go all into slime and just do this and blow finals so so respectful of that dude that i think that's very important that you're able to like keep concentrated on what matters and i do i do have another question mark um how did you know since you started this at home during the quarantine it began to just blow up but when was the moment that you said like hey i need help i need to expand my team and and that you started to get a little bit more organized with with the um organization yeah um it's a funny story because i started making these by myself and then the first viral video hit and my shop completely sold out and i was like oh my gosh what am i gonna do i don't have all these orders i don't have the supplies or the team um so my first employees was my mom and my dad and they would help me like after work they would come home and help me pack orders or fill the slams and stuff like that um and then once i started to get more more and more viral we moved like into so we started in our house we would like constantly change the room that we're like operating in until we eventually reach the garage which is the biggest room in the house and then um once we were in the garage like i would have my friends come after school and i was just like hey you guys want to like make some money and like hang out and you guys can like pack slimes um and like we can all just chat um so it wasn't really like a super formal like oh my gosh i need to start hiring people it was like there is always work to be done like why don't you just come over after school and like we can all hang out together and i'll pay you and and you can

16:45is it is it children labor if it's another child who's offering the work because yeah no we were all of age at this time so it's okay but so cool and i love how it came from like a very familiar and wholesome spot of like your friends helping you out your parents so it's like a very um homemade company and and now that you've gotten so big after shark tank selling a bunch of units now how does your company look like in terms of organization and teams yeah so on the manufacturing side everyone does kind of a little bit of everything we have the slime chefs that make the slimes we have pickers and packers like orders um and then on the marketing side honestly and like scaling and stuff it's honestly just still me um so with marketing i film all the content i still want the brand the brand at its core to represent me and so i film all the videos i ideate all the ideas we i do have two interns for marketing that edit videos and help with social media management but for the most part it's pretty much still just me okay because that that's what i was gonna ask as well is like with the message of the brand how have you been able to maintain authenticity like from your bedroom to what it is now so the i think the authenticity here is you and your story and it's just like going for slimy honey because they've known you and now they they know it's a bigger company so that's cool how do you compete with mass-produced toys because premium handmade slime i think it's a very niche industry or for or product per se it's a great question i get this question a lot um especially like on youtube and stuff they're just like just go to target and buy this for like five dollars and why do you charge like 10 to 15 but the thing is i think that gourmet slime exists in a completely separate category from store-bought slime because i actually filmed a youtube video yesterday where we tested gourmet slime against our own and you can just immediately tell the product quality difference and the way i think about it is like you truly do get what you pay for in terms of like if you're willing to spend an extra dollar on gourmet slime that's handcrafted by a gourmet slime shop like you will get a better experience like even like i was talking about earlier i've really curated this customer journey where i think the larger brands are just seeking to mass produce things at scale and like make the most bang for their buck um like that's not who i am at the brand's core like the authenticity of it is not trying to scam you or or you know like mass produce something we're really committed to quality, quality and customer experience.

19:23And so you really do get what you pay for. And I think we're like an entirely separate category. How do you stay passionate about the slime after you've shipped over 200 ,000 units after it's been a couple of years now in the industry? How do you keep like being excited about it? Yeah, this is a really good question, because I think I've run this company for five years and kind of similar to how there's peaks and valleys within the business, there's peaks and valleys in founders commitment to their companies. So like when I first started and it was all my high school friends, like we were like, honestly, a really, really tightly knit community.

19:56And it made it really fun to come to work every day and like see all my friends and want to like continue to uphold this kind of community. And so it would motivate me to like, okay, I have to sell all these slimes so that we can all still continue to hang out. And then once I went to college, it was a lot harder to maintain focus, especially because I was living at UCLA, like in the dorms away from my warehouse. And it was really hard to maintain commitment but I think throughout the years I've surrounded myself with other founders other entrepreneurs that make running a business really fun so even if it's not you know even if the things that excite me have changed I'm like really excited now to like grow a brand bring something that I find valuable into the world and and bring it at scale um that's what excites me now whereas back then it was like oh I want to do this for the community I really like hanging out with my friends.

20:47I loved making slime. So there's like different motives throughout the life cycle of my company. But through it all, like I have continued to stay motivated and find things that like make me passionate about the brand. And I do believe that the first like the initial motivation is a certain one. And then with time, you keep on finding different things that make you come back to this. And that's why you're still here. And I think like it's truly about who you surround yourself with because if like all of my friends were doing like corporate jobs or like doing other things that you know might sway me one way or the other like that would completely change the trajectory of my company but because I'm surrounded by such passionate founders then that's like what keeps me going.

21:29I'd love to know how Slimey Honey is leveraging AI if you're doing it in any peculiar or strange ways other than the usual ones we all know about. I have not leveraged AI too much just yet. I think it's interesting. This is actually a really interesting topic because I think my whole commitment is we're trying to bring fun and screenless experiences like in this digital world that's being taken over by AI. We're trying to bring some sort of normalcy through a physical product to bring joy into the world. And so leveraging AI in a company like Slimy Honey is very, like, I don't know if it's countering my mission statement.

22:12One thing that we're trying to do is leverage AI to kind of engage our fans online. So right now, I have a founder friend who's building a social media AI company. And we're trying to create an AI voice for Slimy Honey that is going to engage fans. So when they follow it, I reach out saying like, hey, this is Mark. This is our story. And then when they reply, it's like a conversation as if you're talking to me. So that's something that's been cool. We have we're actually just testing that out for the first time this week. So I'll keep you updated with results. But that's crazy. So you're creating like your own persona in AI so that it addresses any new potential customers or anybody who's interested in slimy honey, then they'd be talking to you.

22:56but it's the ai yeah so it basically i just wanted to learn my business model learn everything about the business and so if people have questions like oh where do you ship the ai can just answer oh it's international or like there's this discount code um because that takes a lot of the time that i spend on social media is just like answering questions that could be solved with ai um and so we're we're testing it this week i don't know like it's very very new so i don't know how it's gonna work at all yet i love that you're creating a whole agent and and having this set up so so you are leveraging ai in in different ways and i really like that because it's true when i read about your brand and and i saw like the whole story i understood it was like to get time off of the screens and to get back to be creative and and what's it called and nurturing that that gray matter in the brain yeah but but okay so ai is being it's everybody is using it it's crazy like I always ask this question and people are like I don't know and then they always come with like a different thing that I haven't heard so really nice when was it that you pin like that you pin the gourmet term that it that it's now a gourmet slime I think I just always loved that word and when I thought like how am I going to describe my slime that is like the first word that came to mind and I think just the essence of what gourmet entails it's like premiere it's like this is the best you know what i mean and so if you're trying to compete in a category against like for example the store-bought slimes you have to differentiate yourself somehow and i just think the word gourmet encapsulates that perfectly no no it probably does and i agree with you because it's uh it's a different way to say premium and it does stand out because if you just said premium slime it would be like anybody can slap premium on on the name and just say it but gourmet i think it does stand out So that's cool.

24:48We actually came up with that on while I was writing my Shark Tank pitch. Okay. So this was like it was on Shark Tank that it was first heard the term. Yeah. Shark Tank was the first time I coined it. Cool. So nice. And okay, Mark, I know we're almost at time here, but I did want to ask you one final question. And this is more for the audience. And it's if you had to give one piece of advice to somebody who wants to turn their weird pandemic hobby or just something that they're really passionate about into a real business, what would that advice be or something you would have liked to know before or when you started?

25:26I would say if you had told me that this would be my life and I'd be like requested to be interviewed by podcasts like five years down the line for this random obscure hobby like I just would never think that this would be my reality 2.7 million dollars in sales 1 million followers like like shark tank like this is my life now and it all happened because I put myself out there and And I put myself in a position where I was able to receive all of this. And so if anyone has this obscure hobby that they're thinking, oh my gosh, like, I don't know if this can make it. Like, there is a niche audience out there that will consume it.

26:06And, I mean, the way that my business operates, like TikTok and Instagram and social media, it's, like, game-changing. Like, I think AI right now is what everyone is talking about. but social media and content creation is just as it's just as relevant and could change people's lives like it changed my life and so i think like if you just stay authentic and like share what you create with the world and and you're not doing it for money but genuinely just to build a community of people that love the same thing as you like you will find some sort of success and i think the hardest part is just starting and i know that that's like such a cliche like kind of piece of advice but it's just like i think a lot of people get in their own heads about being perfect before they're even putting themselves out there um and so yeah i would just say post a tiktok video and see and you'll see like there there are people that are gonna love you and your content and what you have to offer so just start that is so nice and i hope that anybody listening just just feels okay with who they are and exposing themselves to to the world because there are certain people that could be haters or trolls but I think in the majority if the community you have is a nice one and and the content you create is as you say authentic people are gonna love you for that and not be just uh dismissive about it yeah that and also I think people get in their minds of like oh I don't have enough experience I don't have enough business experience like I need to go work in a corporate job first before I have an understanding of how to start my own business but like literally i was a 15 year old high schooler like i had no experience whatsoever you just make the kink talk video and then you will like if the sales are there you will you will just follow you will learn by doing yeah guys just leave the imposter syndrome at home and make sure to just tackle and go for your for your goals and and mark before before we close out the episode i do want to give you also the chance to let our listeners know if they want to purchase slimy honey if you want to further investigate what it is and just check everything out um how could they look at your product yeah so you can shop slimes at www.slimyhoney.com slimy honey spelled with two eyes so just make sure um and my tiktok handle is slimy honey shop instagram is slimy honey youtube is slimy honey and then if you want to look at me my name is mark lynn you can find me mark j lynn on instagram i post some videos um or on linkedin um but yeah awesome also that's amazing so you heard it here first guys go to slimyhoney.com with two eyes and you can also follow them on social media on every platform and even mark with his um tag of mark jaylin so without further ado mark it was a pleasure having you on the episode thank you so much for telling us your story oh thank you so much for having me this was a blast i love sharing my story with the world so thank you for giving the opportunity and especially such an interesting one man so i just hope that the success of slimy honey continues and you keep on crushing it dude oh thank you so much