5 TikTok products that could print money for you

0:00All right, Sam, in the next hour, I am going to flood you with business ideas. I am going to create an absolute lunchroom food fight, slinging business ideas at you. You are going to be drenched and covered with ideas. Are you prepared for this?

0:24Great analogy. The lunchroom one. Did you just pick that up? Yeah. That was very good. I'm ready. By the way, all of these ideas, very half-baked, came to me. I would say 75 % of them I thought of this morning because we had a guest cancel. And we said, let's record anyways. And how about we do some business ideas? Let's give the people what they want. Tis the season of giving. And we're going to give the people what they want, which is fun business ideas. Well, the first one, you actually have a lot of intel on, right? You actually use this thing? The first one, I have some bets. I have some bets on horses.

0:56And those horses are currently paying out. And I haven't been talking too much about it, but I think it's time. So TikTok. Let's talk about TikTok. TikTok right now, if you open up your phone, do you have TikTok on your phone? No. Okay. For some of you, you might have trouble opening the app because there might just be millions of dollars jammed in the app and it's a little bit like stuck. So it might be hard to open up because there is so much money available in TikTok right now. Do you use TikTok as a user? Of course. I'm a TikTok addict. Oh, that's why I don't use it. I had it and I deleted it.

1:31I love TikTok. I have a lot of fun on it. But I also have a couple of business bets that are doing really well in this space. And I think right now people are sleeping on it. When you say business bets, do you mean things that you own or investments of other people? I own equity in companies that are doing this. That's what I'm asking. Okay, so you invested in companies that are doing this, not something you fully own and are operating. Correct. I'm trying not to operate anything at this point. Yeah, because that like insight is a little bit different. Yeah, yeah. But these are all like, there is something in between.

2:02So there's like angel investing, which is right to check sort of passive. You're on the outside. I would say you're on the other side of the fence. They lob you updates over the fence. And then there's things where you own, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40 % of the company. And you're active. You're more actively in the loop. You're not active day to day with your hands, but you're active with your ears and your mouth. All right. So anyways, right now on TikTok, TikTok today is a little bit like Facebook was maybe, 2012 to 2014. And if you remember, you at that time were working at a place called Founders Dojo.

2:33And there was a guy who used to work there named Moise Ali. And Moise Ali today is more famous because he started a brand called Native Deodorant. You want to give the like two seconds of what it was like being at the Founders Dojo when he was creating Native? Basically, it was this guy who went to Harvard, Harvard Law, I think. And so he was like clearly smart. And he had a small e-com startup that he sold for$4 million or something like that. So very promising, but still... He was young and he's like, what am I going to do? In the Founders Dojo, which was my little 10-person office that I shared with some other guys, he was looking for something to sell.

3:09He thought mattresses, he thought a few other things. Eventually, he landed on deodorant. And right in front of us, literally every day, he learned how to use Facebook ads. And in a very short amount of time, scaled his deodorant business from zero to just an idea to something like$30 or$40 million in Revenue in literally 18 months, eventually sold it for$100 million in cash in like 24 months, all right in front of us. Yeah, two and a half years end to end from time of start to time of exit, $100 million sold to Procter & Gamble. Okay, so why did he do that? One, he picked an interesting category, but he was doing something that not every, not a lot of other Harvard graduates, smart people were doing.

3:45And at that time on Facebook, you could get traffic for very cheap. You could get sales for very cheap. And he was able to build up a consumer base at the right place at the right time. Basically, by the way, I saw his sheet. We wrote an article on it and he sent it to me. I think he was spending$4. And each customer who we spent$4 to acquire was then spending$16 with him. I believe that was the number. So it was like a money-making machine.

4:12Okay, yeah, I'm not sure of the math, but it was something like that. It was sort of like, you know, four to one, five to one, six to one payout on every dollar. Okay, so, which is very hard to achieve today. Today, 1.5 is the new four to one, right? So basically you put in a dollar, you get$1.50. Oh, that same machine used to give you$4 for every dollar. Man, those are the good old days. Well, the good old days are right now on TikTok. And so what's actually happening? So here's the breakdown of how this actually works. So you create a product of whatever type. It could be digital, it could be physical.

4:42Great product. Now, I want you to look at something. Go down on our sheet. There is on page four, There's an infographic, and it's from a brand called Goalie. You know what Goalie is? It's apple cider vinegar gummies. So they just sell gummies, like gummy vitamins, but specifically ACV, apple cider vinegar, which was kind of like a health wellness trend and craze. Now, Goalie... Dude, first of all, you could put anything in a gummy, I guess. It started with weed, understood. Then I do creatine that way. Now you could do the last thing that I thought you could possibly do in a gummy, which is vinegar.

5:18Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And actually, if you drink apple cider vinegar, it tastes horrible. Goalie gummies taste great. It's like, you know, it's apple cider vinegar without the pain. Okay. So Goalie itself was a business that grew like crazy from zero to hundreds of millions in revenue. I think they ran into financial trouble. They think they had to sell bankruptcy, something like that. They were like, they got way out of their skis. The group that bought it has basically restarted it. And one of the main things that they're doing is this TikTok creator method that I'm talking about. So look at this infographic.

5:45This is a rewards program for TikTok creators. So if you're a TikTok creator, not only do you get a little kickback on what you sell, but if every month you hit a certain sales target, you can get something. So low tier, you know, 1500 GMV, you can get an iPad. All right, cool. 4 ,000 GMV, meaning you sell$4 ,000 worth of product. You get an iPhone. All right, let's keep going up. 15 ,000 in GMV, you get an all-inclusive trip to Aruba. 50 ,000, you get a Rolex and more. You get the Aruba Trip, the iPad, and you get the Rolex, right? They're stacking. Now let's go to the high tiers. There are people that have done a million dollars.

6:20They get a condo in Miami. If you do a million dollars, I think this is in a month of your GMV target. And so they're going to creators and say, hey, do you want this condo in Miami? It could be yours. So creators is one way that you can make money on TikTok. So you don't even have to do the brand or service. You could just say, I am going to sit here and figure out how the fuck to sell apple cider vinegar gummies. And if I do this. If you get a million, they give you a Lamborghini. Yeah. Oh, my God. And there's people who have achieved these targets. Okay. So this is their program right now. So this is who you're competing against if you're going and trying to recruit these creators.

6:58It's like you're a Division I college basketball program. And you're trying to go get McDonald's All-Americans to come play at your program. Like there are guys, it's like, oh man, there's this kid in Wichita. This guy's just a creative genius. He just sits in his bedroom and he just figures out the best hooks, the best angles. And brands are putting them on retainer, 10, 20,$30 ,000 a month in order to get this guy to create for them. This is what's happening right now in the creator space. How many views do the big videos have? Millions, tens of millions of views. They can get like a million likes on a video.

7:28So you get a million likes, you might've had 5 million views or 6 million views. This is crazy. Like there's a guy dressed up in scrubs talking about it. I have no idea if he actually works in the medical industry, but because he's wearing scrubs, I'm like, all right, what do you got to say? Okay, so Goalie did this. Guru Nanda teeth whitening. Are you familiar with this? I think the teeth whitening area is full of scammers. And I think that you are not a scammer for using TikTok shop, but I think a lot of these scammers use this shit, this like TikTok thing like this way. and so it doesn't surprise me that a teeth whitening company would be using it i'm not by the way i'm not saying these guys are scammers at all but you know what i mean yeah but but i'm also not saying they're not no no no no i have no idea about this brand but i know i've seen a lot of like bullshit teeth whitening companies and i like looking in the research and i'm like oh this does nothing yeah i i don't know the effectiveness of any of these things all i know is that these uh they're selling a lot of products i think the guru nanda teeth whitening is the number one selling product on all of TikTok.

8:29And TikTok is the number, like kind of the most used app in the country, basically, right? So you have this like top selling product on the top selling network. It's pretty insane. And so if they're the top on TikTok, how much revenue do you think they do? I have tried to back into this. I don't know the exact, I don't want to say a number that's going to be way off on this podcast. Like, would it be crazy to say like 5 million bucks a month? I don't think that would be crazy, no. Okay. Let me put it that way. the brands that are doing this strategy well are doing really well. And by the way, this creates a halo effect, right?

9:01So you sell the products directly off that one video, but then people hear about it. And then when they see their ad, the ad performs better because I've heard about this product before. Oh yeah, I've seen 10 videos of this product. So now when you put the paid ad in front of me, those 10 organic impressions paid off. Or I go search for it on Amazon. Amazon then takes that signal and says, wow, people really are searching for this name. Maybe we should surface it higher. Or Google says, wait, we should surface this higher. People are searching for this keyword brand. So with that product category, so in that product category, give it more rank.

9:29So there's this multiplier effect of this. I have to imagine this is fairly mainstream though, because marketers are like piranhas, like when there's like flesh in the water, like they all like one person tells one person and they all flock to it and they eventually ruin it. So how much life does this still have and how mainstream is this amongst brands? Let's say it's in the red zone still. So basically, it's not as good as when I first discovered it. And I didn't want to talk about it on the pod because it's too good. Right? Like when something's just like absolute gangbusters, right? And it's unfair advantage.

10:02You feel like you know a secret nobody else knows. It's not there. However, more importantly, it's still at a spot where you can go do this today. It would still work if you just go and do this today. So still works, but you're not the only one doing it. Right? Both are true. I have you and like 10 other friends in the e-com world. and every business, they complain about a variety of things with software, it's churn, whatever. With e-com, the complaint oftentimes is cash flow and inventory. You're saying huge numbers, let's say hypothetically 5 million a month,$60 million a year. But is that actually a good business when you're doing this?

10:34Or is this one of those things that if you get big, you still are broke? Look, if you're bad at business, you'll find a way to lose money in any business. The goalie example I gave you, right? Hundreds of millions of dollars and basically went bankrupt along the way. So there are ways to lose, to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. There are also people that are absolutely printing profitably with this. And so I've seen both. I've seen both examples. I don't think it's about the model. I think it's about how well you actually run your business and how much common sense you use. One of the great things about this from a cashflow perspective is normal econ business, you put up the money for the ad, you put up the capital at risk in order to get users.

11:12With this, you only put up free product at risk. So you send inventory to the affiliates, the affiliates create the content. You pay nothing for that ad until the sale is generated. Dude, so if you're a digital product, you crush it here. Exactly. So I have a couple of examples of digital products as well in my list. Okay, here we go. That's a long setup for five ideas that I think you could take on to TikTok and crush with right now. Number one. So I want you to watch this video. Go scroll down and look at this link that says Botox. So the video starts, says, face taping is my jam. And then the other podcast goes, tell me about this.

11:48And she goes, if you had told me 14 months ago that I would not be doing Botox and I would be taping my face instead, I would have said, you're effing out of your mind. And so what a hook, right? So this girl's face is saying, I used to use Botox and now I use this. And I would have thought this is crazy. And then the other girl's like, tell me more. So this video itself has a quarter million likes. I don't know how many views this thing has. By the way, they have it. So usually it's like bros, it's dudes, like discussing stuff in a podcast setting that that becomes like the meme. This is like two pretty women.

12:19Is this even a real podcast? This one is. A lot of people fake these, but this is the wellness process podcast. So that video has 5.4 million views. Okay. So, and they're not selling a product to be clear. A lot. I mean, look at the comments. Every single comment is what's the brand. Anyone know the brand? Cause she says there's this Japanese face tape. And anytime you say Japanese face tape versus is just face tape already elevated. And everybody's asking for the brand. Nobody knows what the heck's going on. Some people are criticizing. It's a polarizing thing. It's a visual thing. These are good things when you want to sell on TikTok.

12:52So idea one is Botox face tape. I think you can make$50 million in top line revenue. I'll say 15 % margins. So, you know, whatever that comes out to in the next 18 months. Okay, let's be more conservative. 24 months if you hit this well. So you can make$7.5 million profit. You could build a brand because if you look at the market, there's a lot of people that are on TikTok that obviously care what they look like, aka everybody. There's a lot of people who are Botox curious, but never going to pull the trigger because it's either too expensive, like individual Botox treatments are like thousands of dollars, or they just feel like it's too extreme and they're crossing that threshold into plastic surgery and they don't want to do it for that reason.

13:34Maybe they'll be judged, maybe it's self-respect, maybe they have to go somewhere, it's uncomfortable. it's like hymns right there's a bunch of barriers reasons why you wouldn't do it dude i looked up if this works on chat gbt the answer is no who knows right health and wellness is like one of these things right like i don't do those little do those little like fate uh jade face rollers work you know do just putting cucumber slices on your eyes and i'm doing this like uh ari came on here the other day i was like ari you're glowing she's like i did a chemical peel and i was like i don't know what that is tell me more there's a whole world of beauty treatments that have some, on the spectrum of effectiveness and cost, they land somewhere.

14:12All I'm saying is that I think this could work. I don't know if red light therapy is going to change your skin and your hair, but it's selling. And that's kind of my point right now. I'm not a doctor. I can't make health claims. I have a friend who is a doctor. And anyway, she does Botox for people. And she was at my house and she had her kit with her. And she was like, I need to test this out. And we were like... Did you get Botox Curious? I was like looking at her I was like whip that whip that sucker out baby let's do this and so she gave me a little injection like six weeks ago where in my forehead like I was like you know I was like I don't even know if I want to do this but like I'm a guinea pig you know you got a needle you got drugs like I'm going to try it I would love to hear this excuse you're about to make right now you're like I like science and I just thought you know I wanted to be a supportive friend of hers and I want to support small businesses what are your other reasons that you did Botox tell me just make a list of sam's reasons besides i wanted to look better go ahead looking dope naked i mean there's like that's the only reason why anyone does anything uh right uh uh but it was i got so many compliments afterwards did you really yes i got so many compliments and it was free on your forehead someone says you look really young people kept saying i looked young and i was like and it made me self-conscious on how i used to look like and dude you're hooked have you you would never do that you're not into that no dude come on would you what would you say if your wife wanted to do it i think my wife does want to do it but she's in that that boat where she's like i don't really want to do it but i wanted to i'm curious like it's the same i bet you if somebody was at the house and had the kit and was like yeah i can do it right now i think she would be like you and i think her forehead would start looking yeah smooth or whatever it does yeah like she was right here and i was like yeah i mean if the needle is right there like just stick it in me.

16:00Let's do the damn thing. So it was awesome. I'm not driving to Taco Bell right now. But DoorDash, if it brings it to me, I wouldn't not eat it. If it's there. So yeah, I guess you could say I'm Botox curious. I think I'm beyond curious. Botox activated. All right. What's the next one? All right. Next one. Another one in the beauty space. And there's a theme here. Beauty things are tap into a core human desire. They are visual by nature. They can have before and afters. and they obviously are, you know, high margin, great businesses when you can build them. And so I want to take anything that worked in the DTC, in the prior waves of e-commerce and I want to see if I can build a TikTok native distribution strategy around it.

16:42That's a lot of fancy words to say. If it worked with Facebook ads, I'm going to see if it worked with TikTok videos, okay? So one of the big winners, I think she spoke at your conference, was a brand called Madison Reed. Dude, there's a location right down the street from my house and I think they do really well. Yeah, so Madison Reed has built a real empire around hair color. And I don't know the full story, but basically, you know, hair color is not a new idea. They, you know, there were many brands that existed. My mom has been buying this ever since I was a little kid. You know, she would go to Target and buy, you know, dark browns because she didn't want graying hair.

17:11Or my sister, if she wanted to try it. Damn, you're going to do your mom like that? Oh, dude, if I'm grayed up, you don't think my mom's grayed up? Like, obviously, obviously. And so, you know, my sister would, if she wanted to try having lighter hair for a season, whatever, go buy hair color. So Madison Reed basically built a, you know, kind of online first distribution strategy. So a bunch of Facebook ads and built a huge brand in this space. I think Madison Reed, I don't know what they're worth, but I would not be surprised. I just looked it up. Top line revenue grew 20 % last year to$150 million in revenue.

17:40Yeah, so the valuation, something like 500 million plus. So huge success. I think you could do a new Madison Reed on TikTok. I think that's just a bet worth taking, which is same idea. Maybe you have some new novel angle. Maybe it's that it's easier to apply. Maybe it's that it's less messy in your cleanup. Maybe it's less harsh chemicals so it doesn't damage your hair the same amount, whatever. Come up with your reason why this is new and build a brand off of TikTok. And I think you could do this again with creators who are gonna use the product, show the customers, build trust, build your brand, get people searching for your brand because there's always gonna be a new wave of people who are interested in this, right?

18:23So there's either people who are, whose hair is starting to gray. There's always gonna be a new generation. And so whatever the old, whatever media they consume is where you need to be in order to sell that, right? Like, remember like Touch of Gray or whatever like men's, whatever the men's hair color one. You know, they did it on TV ads and the Madison Reed did it with Facebook ads. Whatever the next generation is, they're probably gonna get sold to over TikTok and Instagram reels.

18:50And you know, what's funny is, you said there's a new generation that wants this stuff. But you know what has not changed and will always be the same is the hooks that worked in 1910 will still work today. So for example, there's this Wall Street Journal ad that tells the story of two young men, one young man. When they both graduated college, one young man got a Wall Street Journal subscription. And because of that, he got a better career, whatever. And it tells a story. There are so many ads that replicate that story or that idea successfully. Because if you Google best Wall Street Journal ad of all time.

19:23They cite that ad. And so what I like to do is find old ads from as late as the 30s, the 40s. It could be print magazine ads and just see what's an interesting line. The psychology. Yeah. What's the human nature vibe of this and just rip it. So for example, there's this one very famous ad where it says, they laughed at me when I sat down, but then when I started to play the piano dot dot dot and that's called the curiosity gap which is do you remember the brand you know uh buzzfeed and then what was the other one called up worthy it was like it was like uh you know 10 reasons why blank you're not going to believe number seven that's the same hook as that piano ad and so it's really fun to find old ads and just be like what's the human nature element of this and just replicate it on tiktok exactly exactly great way to find hooks okay here's a And here's a different category.

20:15So I did beauty. Let me give you a different one. Self-help. So one of the top selling products in the last year is something called the Shadow Work Journal. Have you heard of this? No, but that's a great name. Shadow Work Journal. So you get a, if you go look on Amazon or... Oh, I've seen this. I have seen this. Yes. The Amazon listing for this currently has over 5 ,000 ratings. And this is like a self-published type of book. And this journal on TikTok has sold over 100 ,000 copies. You know how rare it is for a book to sell 100 ,000 copies in like the first year that it ever existed with no other promotion?

20:56So this was a huge success. And basically, it was like people on TikTok would, they'd have the book open. They'd be like, the gasp, I gasped when I read this line. And you're like, all right, what's the line? And then they'll read you this like kind of heavy emo-ish quote from this journal. And then it's like, or they'd be like, you know, I finally figured out like my true shadow. You're like, what? And it's like, you know, it kind of gets into like this whole like, you know, like the gypsy girl type of vibe. It's like, there's a whole like group of people that love therapy, that love like horoscopes.

21:32It's like these like weird Venn diagrams that you can find where it's like people who are really into sort of the mystic self. And so this book capitalized on that. I think today, if you were to write, I don't know why I said you, I should have said me. If I were to write a modern day version of Tony Robbins' book, At least the Heart Within, or Mark Manson's book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, I think if I wrote a modern version of those and I just pumped, let's say, nine months and a quarter million dollars of effort into seeding it on TikTok, I think I could have a, by far, a bestseller.

22:09I think I could sell millions of copies of a book. This isn't a book, right? Is this like one of those things where it's like - This is a journal. It's like two pages, three pages of writing and then a week's worth of notes. No, no, no. This is not like a planner. It's not like a daily planner. I mean, I haven't read the whole thing, but it's basically, it's a lot of text content, but then there are like fill in the blanks or like, what's that for you in a box? And you write it in your box. But it's not just days and you need to journal in it yourself. Have you seen Design Your Life? Is that what it's called?

22:41Yeah. Designing Your Life. It's like a book by like, you know, it hits all the check marks where it's like a Harvard psychologist who spent 30 years studying happiness and lifestyle design. Stanford, I think. Yeah. Like writes a book on this. And then it's a cool book. I read it. And then now they have like a journal that goes along with it. And you could just look at this and be like, what works and what doesn't work? But yeah. And by the way, I don't know if this angle would work with you because have you Googled the author of that shadow? Yeah, yeah. She's very aspirational. She's very different than me.

23:13Very aspirational. But nobody can see that when they're just watching a TikTok. Because it didn't look like a commercial for the book. It was just somebody saying how this line in this book really spoke to them or how this book changed the way they view things. like there's a whole um hook on tiktok that's very famous where they say some it starts with somebody saying um do you have any book recommendations and then they zoom the camera in really close to their nose and their eyes they go i have books that will change the way you even like look at the world i have books that will be so good you will never be able to look at a man again and they're like romance books or whatever like i have books that will melt the frontal lobe of your brain and they go like really intense with it and that's a that's like a common like memed hook that they use so the first it's like the first video by the way i like how you were like i don't know if you could do this this girl's hot was the thing you basically just tried to tell me well she's a 25 year old like i'm looking at this new york times article by the way she's 25 which is just amazing she's like a 25 year old like really pretty woman and that's like tiktok's demographic like you know you're like you're a great boy you're a great boy should tiktok world The videos are not her.

24:23The videos are whatever. The videos are from the creator. The creator just looks how the creator looks. They don't look like her. And this is amazing, by the way. You know, I think at one point, you were like, I feel like I'm riding a horse like a few years after Henry Ford invented the car. Like, it's just like, you can't compete. When I see these videos and these plans, I think to myself, I can never compete in this world of e-com. This is just insane. Like the way that you were describing, zooming in on someone's eyes, if I were in that meeting and trying to figure out how to do it or in my bedroom at night trying to figure out how do I write this script, I would have been like, this is cringe.