Inside the Affiliate Marketing Strategy Behind BK Beauty’s Growth

21:26Partnership, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And as a part of that, there was a brush attached to it, which was not Maybelline. It was another brand. But Maybelline doesn't really do brushes, so to speak. I keep singing their commercial in my head right now. Maybe it's Maybelline. Maybe it's Maybelline. And so, of course, Lisa kind of flagged it and told me, like, hey, by the way, they've got a brush. I'm not sure we can do this. I was like, hold on, let's figure this out. And so we basically positioned kind of Lisa Jay, right, her business, doing the collaboration. But by the way, let's use BK Beauty.

21:57And so we did. And it evolved even further from that to the point where they basically distributed our brushes and packaged them up and bundled them. And this all happened on TikTok. And it was just such an awesome moment. There's advantage to having them separate, right? Yeah, but also that kind of took guts for you because you were a smaller company, right? You like nose are free. You had to like have the guts to ask for something different with the risk of them saying, you know what? No, I don't want to do that anyway. So I think that's really cool.

22:30Matt Bertulli:Early on, was there ever like in a moment like that, what makes me think, especially early on is like, is this going to run us over? like when you do a partnership with a company or creator like somebody that big it can pop off and you cannot be ready for it like was there any of that at any point in these like early days we're like oh god we're selling way too many of these oh sure we've had a lot of those experiences yeah yeah yeah i want to immediately lean into what we know recently happened with bk duty what happened recently the didn't you ship like 20 000 orders in one day Yeah. How? Yeah.

23:04Like, how do you even do that? That's insane. Why don't you talk about kind of the lead up to that, kind of what we're talking about, and then I'll walk through kind of the operational challenges. Yeah. So what you're talking about is Ulta 21 Days of Beauty. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yes. We talked about this. We got onto the Ulta marketplace in December. So what is that? Six, seven months ago. Which is huge all by itself. Just being available for people to shop us online at Ulta is huge. It's very exciting. People are so excited. It also unlocked for creators an opportunity for them to now link us during 21 Days of Beauty, which typically in the past, if 21 Days of Beauty is happening, an Orchard Anniversary sale is happening, Sephora Savings Event is happening, we're not being linked.

23:40Because everyone's going to link brushes they can find there, right? So this was our first old one, 21 Days of Beauty, in March of this year. You know, they allot you like a daily deal. You get to have one day where you can pick a SKU. It can be 50 % off, right? And so ours was the A506, our concealer brush that's gone viral on TikTok. And Ulta reached out and they're like, we anticipate that you're going to sell around 5 ,000 of these on this day, you know. What did you think when you got that email? Were you like? I mean, we were excited. I think we knew we were going to sell more than 5 ,000 of these.

24:14We were preparing for more, yeah. You were like, here it comes. You had the inventory. That wasn't an issue. Because that brush went viral on TikTok, you know, we really overinvested in inventory. And that's why we're able to use it for promotions like this, right?

24:31Matt Bertulli:At Hexclad, Apploven has been our highest spending new channel since the start of last year, mid seven figures and growing. It almost wasn't. My team was skeptical. So I stepped in to push them. First, I had them pull data on the overlap between Meta and Apploven customers to find out if the platform was really just retargeting. Then we ran multiple holdout tests. The results, 90 % new customers, 53 % higher ROAS, 36 % higher new customer ROAS, 27 % lower new customer CAC. The numbers were just bang on. If you create an Apple of an account and launch on day one, you're going to get$1 ,000 in free ad credit, plus another$5 ,000 when you spend$5 ,000.

25:12Audio on vertical videos, unskippable ad units, new reach for new customers. Check it out today. go to nineoperators.com slash applovin. You're going to get our guide to new channels, recordings of our live expansion events with us and 25 of our friends. Nineoperators.com slash applovin.

25:31Matt Bertulli:Back to the show. We ended up selling 22 ,000 units that day. In one day. In one day, yeah. And they're all separate orders, really. By the way, we... Your Shopify notifications for that in that moment. No, no. No, that's just abusive to your ears. It would be so cool. The kicker is we do fulfillment in-house. Yeah, I know. That's the part that blows my mind. And also Marketplace is drop ship. So we're shipping all these orders out and there's an SLA. Yeah. You know, so we had to get them out in two business days. Were they going to fine you if you were late? I mean, they would slap us on the wrist, but we weren't going to let that happen.

26:08Right. And so fortunately, the two business days happened to be a Friday and a Monday. So we had the weekend to work with too. Oh, man. And so I was telling you, Katie, that, you know, that's when we found the power of staffing agencies where you can just like scale up. And so because the order, it was such a simple order, it was one product, you know, the same thing over and over. You just set up an assembly line for days and you just lick it and stick it and you go, go, go. And we got the job. Lick it and stick it. The label. And you drop it in, carton picking. We know that. Yeah. Yeah. We'll clip it with no context.

26:43I love it. But you leaned into it. So we got the job done. Yeah. And just blew also away, not only what we sold, but from an operational capacity. From a partnership, they must love that. Oh, yeah. You guys just showed that you're legit. It was incredible. And we wanted to really prove ourselves. And this was the moment to do it.

26:59Matt Bertulli:When you were first starting out, when did you guys realize this was actually going to work? Yeah. I think within the first five minutes. Like, literally. Like before you quit your job or after you quit your job? Let me add to this. So Paul wrote on a napkin before we launched what we were going to do in revenue for the first 10 years. To this day, he has been pretty darn accurate. Can we go buy some lottery tickets? Yeah. I would say, I mean, the first day blew us away. You know, I realized quickly that like, okay, this is more than just this packing orders at the kitchen table. Right? This is going to require a lot more.

27:39And the reality is, Lisa had already been doing the hard work for five years leading up to that Go Live moment when our daughters pushed the Go Live button on Shopify. They did, yeah. And we're sitting around there with, you know, high expectations, but like, it blew us away. And, you know, we're there with our two daughters and just seeing it, the magic starts. The phones on the Shopify, ding, ding, ding, ding. I mean, I'm getting the tingles, you know, just thinking about those moments, those early days, you know, when we're launching. I mean, it was just, I mean, we've all experienced that.

28:12You can't replicate that. Did you have imposter syndrome at all? Or do you still? I still do all the time, yeah. For sure. I do. Like how so? Because to me, I talk to you and I just think you're brilliant. You know exactly what you're both doing. You have marketing and ops down to a science. Like, you're just crushing it. What could you be insecure about? Um, I mean, I think everybody's not everybody, but I think most people struggle with some degree of that. Right. And I think that when you, you know, I'm a public person in a way before BK Beauty and now with because of BK Beauty that I'm even more so.

28:46And so I just think that there is an image of me that people might have that doesn't really align with what I feel about myself, maybe. I think it's just natural insecurities. But at the end of the day, what I remind myself is, is that, you know, we are all human beings struggling with these feelings and these thoughts. And we all just figure it out. You know, when I sit in rooms with people like you and other founders that are doing multiples of what we're doing and I talk to you, I realize, like, you're just a normal person. I can have a conversation with you. We're all just barely surviving.

29:18Yeah, yeah.

29:18Matt Bertulli:We all suck at a pretty serious level. But you realize, like, you know, yeah. Yeah, it is. And you just, everything's figureoutable. It totally is. And it sounds like that's how you've grown it, what it is today. Right. We've gotten this far. It's also, like, I think it's, like, a higher level thing. But, like, I think it's a unique advantage of being in the United States is, like, culturally, there is no such thing as, like, bad failure here for some reason. Like, I think it's like the, one of the greatest advantages that you, that this country has relative to the rest of the world is like, you're just allowed to try stuff here and everybody loves it.

29:52Matt Bertulli:And we sell it like the founder. I think I saw this recently. Like the founder is like now the new, like they are the new celebrity. Yeah. Right. Right. Like you see it just everywhere. It's like, we celebrate the entrepreneur more than anything in life. And I don't know, but you, it gives me permission to like, just try stuff. Yeah. I don't really feel too bad about it. Yeah. But tell those Canadians, it's not that easy. It still is very, I mean, it's scary. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm just saying it's nice to have like the cultural backup to go take your swing. Yeah. I think it's great. You can still have all the stuff.

30:23Matt Bertulli:I mean, we're humans, you know? And yeah, I think we all feel like we suck most days. At least I do. I don't know. Yeah. It's definitely normal. When did you quit your job? So Lisa took to YouTube early days, nights and weekends, as she had a day job. About, what, two, three years in? I have a really good story. Oh, we want to hear it. This is a cool story. Bring it. This is a cool story. So, you know, I had been a makeup artist. I saw YouTube as this way for me to transition out of doing makeup and still keep makeup in my life. So let me start a YouTube channel. No, you know, no expectation from it.

30:58I didn't even monetize it for three years. It took me three years to make$100 on YouTube. Oh, my God. Yes. Yeah. It was a different world back then, of course. But still, you truly were just doing it because you hugged it. 100%, yes. Yeah. It was pure passion. I was working outside of the house part time. He was working at a cybersecurity firm. They had hit the Inc 5000 list and they had invited him and me to attend the conference, the Inc 5000 conference, you know, for his company that had made the list. I was sitting, it was 2017, I was sitting in the keynote talk, which was Brene Brown. I love her.

31:28And she was talking about just balancing it all and all the things she was trying to do and feeling like she was failing and, you know, dah, dah, dah, dah. And I was, even though, you know, I was doing something very different, working outside the home, trying to do this YouTube channel, trying to do makeup, I could resonate with that and I could relate to that and I felt like I was her. And we both looked at each other in that conference and he said, you need to quit your job and do YouTube full time. And I said, I do. And I guess I just wanted permission. Like, I just wanted to know that I could do that, you know?

31:52I want a business partner like what they have. Like, this isn't. And so I put my notice. the next week, I quit two weeks. That's when I started doing YouTube full time. So this was 2017, the end of 2017. A year later, I had started monetizing YouTube. And when I started trying to monetize it, I was like, why haven't I not been doing this this whole time? You know, all of a sudden I was making, not a lot, but I was making. But you don't know what you don't know. Exactly. Yeah. And so, and then a year, a year after that conference is when we started working on BK Beauty. Yeah. A year later. And so.

32:21And then we have been on the Inc. 5000 list and we've gone to that conference now and we sit in that room yes in that wild okay sorry go keep going no i mean it's a great story and so for lisa her content creator journey it was nights it started nights and weekends for me is the brand was taking off and we were working on product development kind of getting the brand ready for launch that was nights and weekends for me leading you know i still 100 kind of day job and you had two little bitties at home and we had two girls yeah young girls And so we launched in August of 2019. Like I said, it took off.

32:56Lisa had already done the hard work, and it was basically expressing everything that she had built up and starting to grow from there. And it was very clear to me that this needed full-time attention. Like, we have something here. And so the company, my prior company, it was my roommate in college who started the company. I came in early, and, you know, we grew up. I worked with him for 10 years. But within maybe a week or two, I, you know, sat him down and said, hey, we've got something over here. I'm going to sell makeup brushes. How did he take that? Hey, man, I got to tell you, I'm going into makeup now.

33:34And so, so long story short, I didn't, I didn't have a timeline, but I needed him to know what was going on. And we needed to plan my transition. I didn't have a timeline, but it was important to me that we found the right person to come in and fill my seat. I had an equity position in the business. Like I still need this beauty. Good job. And so I, I, I stuck around for six months. He, he just kept kicking the can. Didn't want to kind of approach it, but you know, I was handling it above board. It wasn't until March 13th. It was a Friday of 2020 that I said my goodbyes to the team of March of 2020.

34:11Yeah. That's right. Which is also... Your timing is epic. It was a day they canceled South by Southwest because of COVID. No way. They canceled it that day. Before COVID really hit. Well, the following Monday, lockdown began. Wow. Did you panic? I did. I just quit my job. I panicked. Lisa did. I did. I was like, this is our insurance. Did we all not panic? Did you not have a panic? I freaked out, man. I mean, COVID wasn't really in Texas. I don't know if we can say that or not. In Texas, we did not really freak out. I mean, yes, we did, but not like the rest of us. I think your question is like, you know, did I panic?

34:45Given the situation. But he was your steady income. Totally. He was your known paycheck. He was probably your insurance. He was your security blanket. That job was your security. In my head, I'm like, okay, we've done an amazing six months in this business, but does this have longevity? You know, like that's the big question mark I have.

35:01Matt Bertulli:Yeah. Well, the beginning of COVID, I don't know if this happened to you at the beginning of COVID or you guys, but like Pila's sales at, in the first week dropped 50%. Wow. At the beginning of COVID. But then two weeks later, it went up three times. Like we saw, then it was like COVID came on, you know, everybody started turning ads off. The auction got cheaper. I saw your ads all the time. How funny is it that I'm now sitting here with you in my home now? I remember, yes, I saw his ads. I think I told Paul about it. CPMs got cheap. I'm like, how much money can I dump in this country right now?

35:30Was it for Lomi? No, for Pila. Really? Yeah.

35:33Matt Bertulli:Lomi didn't come. We didn't do the crowdfund and loan me until uh 2021 okay and then we shipped in march of 2022 but pila was like uh our big covet hit was we had a nurse right in that she had uh she was keeping uh one case at work right and then she had another case that she would have at home it couldn't absorb into the phone case or something no she just like didn't know because with some organic material she's like i don't know if i'm bringing this home and she worked in the icu so her thing was like i leave one case at home yeah can i have a work can i get another one so one of my customer service was like yes we'll just send you one yeah right like your frontline worker all that stuff uh and then i had the genius i'm like why don't we do a wear one wash one campaign so that we actually oh my god so every time you buy a case we'll give you a second one free so that if you're a frontline worker you're whatever oh yeah and i carpet bond america yeah i was like that's where You quit your job.

36:33Wait, so yeah, so then what? You just looked at each other and said, here we go? I mean, we were in a fortunate position because we had one employee. You know, we were just starting. So I think if we had been in the situation we're in now, we have a team to, it would have been very different, right? But we didn't have the history to like be down, right? It was just like, there was nowhere to go really, but not. But we, yeah, I mean, we just let her stay home and we, you guys, at that time we could fulfill it ourselves. There was not that, you know, huge demand yet. Well, it was definitely some late nights.

37:03I mean, but, you know, for me, I remember it differently. Yeah. And we've we've all been there. I mean, you've got to run through walls. You've got to do what you've got to do. But for me, when that happened, I got to shed half my, you know, like 80 percent of my schedule. Like I was free now, you know, to just lean in and radically focus on building BK Beauty. And it was very clear to us at that point that, again, not only did it need full time attention, we're six months in and we definitely got something here. Let's continue.

37:40Matt Bertulli:When did you guys decide that you were going to run your own warehouse in this whole, we've got something? Well, so again, we started at a time, you know, we started in our living room, right? Early days, we started packing out orders with our, just calling an army of friends and family to come help out. Cause again, you know, you don't know what you're getting into. We don't have history of demand. It's just when we launched, um, it was crazy. And so starting in our living room, uh, we just continued to go from there and then COVID hit. I'm not going to start a relationship with a 3PL when they're dealing with everything that they're dealing with.

38:18And the reality is for us... So it's like a forcing function almost for you to create your own thing. We had so many constraints that we were operating under. Yeah. I want to add, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I do want to add to that because we did look at a 3PL kind of early on, not this early, but after a year or so, we started looking at 3PLs. Everyone tells you you got hurt. You do. Yeah, that's what you got hurt. It's just what you're... You have to do it. Exactly. Yeah, I remember specifically sitting down with a friend who's in the VC world and early on, and he's like, well, you can't scale that.

38:47You're going to have to find a three pill. And I remember thinking, oh, well, he knows better than I do, right? Here we are seven years later shipping$22 ,000. Oh, he was still right. Like, he's probably still right.

38:55Matt Bertulli:Like, let's be honest. You're not allowed to have an opinion, although I have a warehouse too. No, we see, we're supporters. We all own our own fulfillment. Well, here, so one thing that was extremely important to me, because you have to remember, those early days, the people that were shopping were shopping because they wanted to support me. They followed me. They liked me. They wanted their dollars to go to support me as a person. So it was extremely personal to me that they got the best experience. And the idea that they're going to have to wait for their order or they're going to have customer service issues that are out of my control, the idea that that would happen really terrified me.

39:30Lisa was very. I was very protective of that. And then now here I am seven years later and we've been able to do it and do it really well. And one of the best comments I get is when a customer says, I ordered three hours ago and I just got my shipping notification. That's cool that we can do that. And I think it's our secret sauce. We're able to shoot content and bring people behind this.

39:48Matt Bertulli:Oh, yeah. It's actually, if your content creator is like, it's a full fly. It's gold. Oh, no. I tend to be a big fan of like, if you can, you should do it. Right. But my gosh, like, Katie, how many times have you rebuilt your warehouse? A lot. Yeah. Like it's not necessarily the easiest path. I know. That is a good problem to have. And my story is very similar to yours. And so sitting here listening, I'm like, yeah, yeah. Right? Like you know what we're doing. But I also know how well you know operations. And like how every, and I think keeping control of your business the way that y 'all have.

40:24No investors. Owning every step of the process. Having direct relationships with your customers. Like, that is so valuable. And it's very hard to create. So, I mean, I'm impressed because I know how hard that is. And, you know, when we started the business, it was the biggest thing I underestimated, just the operational complexity that comes with a physical goods company, moving physical goods around the world. But what I found is, like, I really enjoy this. Like, it's a never-ending puzzle. Yeah. It's like, what's the bottleneck? And that question never ends. you know but the reality is when you when you start from your living room and you scale up to where we are now it's just an incremental baby step every step along the way just to make that next unlock yeah and so it's it's doable for sure i do think there's an advantage to have like when

41:12Matt Bertulli:you own your own like that last step of that fulfillment a lot of people don't like i actually think it's an important part of building a brand like i do i think you can do a lot at that last step and a lot and when you kind of outsource it you outsource a last touch yeah you know and it's The way I explained this to my team early on when we were building our factory was, it is the only thing that we do that has 100 % open rate. It is the only thing. It is the box that you send out is 100 % open rate. It's not any SMS. It's not any email. It's certainly not any damn ad. But that box, that's getting opened.

41:44Matt Bertulli:Even if you ship them the wrong thing, they're still opening it to find out. So it's an opportunity to build a brand. And I think, as I'm sure you all have learned, there's a lot to learn just by going out and seeing how people are shipping. Hey, we're supposed to be including these inserts. Or why are you taping it like that? Or, oh my God, that poly is so much bigger than you need. Like we should, I think the optimization that comes with having it right there in front of you. Totally. A hundred percent, yeah. Right? It's so valuable. So, it's so cool. Do you guys have business owners, like entrepreneurs as parents?

42:14You do. Like as somebody, you do? So my parents worked together for 40 years. My dad's still doing it.

42:20Matt Bertulli:So this is normal what you guys do. Like for you, you grew up with like. You know, I grew up running around his office for sure. Says every entrepreneur ever. I grew up in the back room of my mom's store. Yeah. And you know what I think I picked up as a young kid just absorbing naturally running around that is just the work ethic of like what it actually takes. I don't think everyone gets exposed to that to understand what it actually takes in terms of putting the time and pushing and work behind doing something. so then I have to ask that when you left the cyber security startup to go do makeup brushes yeah the parents didn't ask any questions like what the hell are you doing was there any moment where they were like dude they were like you got this yeah no because the reality was I didn't leave my job we launched and they saw what we did and they're like holy and they're so proud I'm sure yeah which is pretty awesome I think too you got to see that it can be fun to work.

43:24Like I have entrepreneurial parents also, and I grew up in the same way. And I think it's a gift you're giving your daughters because they get to see how you two work together and how you can create this environment. I mean, you've, you have your own studio in your backyard, which is like a dream. And you're on warehouse number

43:44Matt Bertulli:three right in the last two years yeah and then and getting ready to build ptsd that that is that's a hundred percent trauma you threw me under the bus with having too many and i just want to say that well we just moved into it three three months ago so yeah it's fresh yeah it's fresh and you did that move in like like on a weekend right uh the transition sure yeah but uh like operating from a friday and then operating on monday and the next one but it was a lot of work leading up to that. The team helped and everything. But still, you just literally stopped shipping orders on a Friday and by the next Monday.

44:21Matt Bertulli:My first encounter with the brand was we had you on the pod early on because the whole TikTok creator thing, we were fascinated by it. You guys were very early. Into shops, right? Yeah, and I remember you came on and started talking to us about short form vertical video and I'm like, what? What is this? So we've seen the full life cycle of TikTok shops. We were one of the first merchants to get on the platform before anyone knew what was really going on. So we launched. How did you even know to go to it? So we launched on TikTok shops in August of 2023. And it was just an email that came across, came inbound.

44:58It was a beta that just opened up an invitation to, Hey, come, you know, you're on TikTok, try TikTok shops. And so I was like, you know, just had some site and I checked it out. I started to see what they're putting together. And what I found was they were building the entire playbook we had been operating, but now in a closed loop system where everything's working from product sampling to affiliate commissions to, you know, you know, commerce through content and working with creators. And so we leaned in. And once we got in there, we saw some early success. And it was very clear that This is what we were waiting for.

45:38A platform that really brought all those building blocks of our playbook under one platform in kind of a closed loop system. And now the algorithms really came in on that transactional data. Did you have a heart attack when TikTok went down for? No. You thought? But I mean, we knew. Yeah, I knew he'd be back. I want to say, too, we had we had done a lot of the hard work before TikTok shop was even on board. Right. We had already started building relationships with creators on TikTok on the platform. We were already seeding them. We were already building those relationships. So when TikTok shop was activated, it was just like that.

46:13They are already fans of the brand. They were already making content. They just weren't able to be monetized from it. Yeah, it's so incredible. Like you're we planted the seeds. Yeah.

46:21Matt Bertulli:And your timing, even just like making the jump into it. Like, I'll be honest that I was very bearish on TikTok shops. I'll tell you why. Cause like I've been in this business 20 years. Uh, I've watched Meta try like four times to be a merchant of record, like some version of a shops thing. And then TikTok, I'm like, okay guys, like good luck. Like we've watched Facebook screw this up so many times and yet they didn't like they combine the right ingredients and just not only that but what they did unlike say what met has done in the past or other platforms attempted to do they didn't bolt this on they completely transformed the entire platform yeah like this is what they became yeah and the investments they made to not only court brands to be in there and play with hesitation you know the way you were feeling was very natural i I think that was probably how most people were feeling.

47:14And they had to convince merchants to get in and start actively leaning in to selling within the platform. They had to convince the content creators to start changing their behaviors and tagging products. They had to convince consumers to feel comfortable purchasing something on TikTok, which that's not an easy thing to do. And what they did was they overhauled the entire platform and just the subsidies at the time that they were doing just to make it was it was mental to just condition behavior from all three of those you know legs of the stool do you think any of the other do you think youtube will ever be able to do something similar or or will meta try they're trying they're trying yeah i'm just gonna have the shops yeah i think what tiktok proved and what they're still pushing into it basically all the other platforms are taking notes from it because there's something there yeah and so we're we're still obviously very involved with the youtube team uh youtube shopping, you know, they've started to build out the building blocks that we're seeing in TikTok.

48:14And so we're very close with that team over there. We get to see kind of what they're working on. And the reality is the platforms are leaning towards us. It makes so much sense. If you think about it, it's incentivizing all the content creators to produce an abundance of more content, a frequency of which they're pushing it out. Like on TikTok, folks are pushing a dozen pieces of

48:37Matt Bertulli:to the date like you're saying can't stop talk is also weirdly very pro creator and anti-ai when it comes to this stuff right like they've actually had policies around this where they've been like no no we want more and more like human creators on tiktok yeah it's a big part of what so we still see a lot of you they actually don't want it like they're they're very like they actively try to police it whereas meta has been less yeah kind of hands-on no i think you're i think you're right i think it's like they're all angling this way one of the things i've i think i made this observation on another episode we did, but I think TikTok's biggest advantage in all this is that there's been no innovators dilemma.

49:14Matt Bertulli:They had no way to monetize their users the way that Meta had already done. So Meta had this ad machine that was making like 33 bucks per user, per whatever, which was just an incredible amount of monetization. TikTok had no way to make that level of money. So they looked at shops and they were like, this might be it. Let's go all on this. We can't do an ad platform like that. Yeah. Yeah. The reality was having gotten exposure to the TikTok team very early and working with them because we had so much success out of the gate. Like they opened the door. Like we were very plugged in with their team and what they were building.

49:49What I found was they were not competing with Meta. They're competing with Amazon.

49:54Matt Bertulli:Oh, yeah. A hundred percent. They were the marketplace. Yeah. 100%. And so if you think about it, and even all the employees internally at TikTok, they're recruiting them from Amazon, from Walmart, like they were going commerce, like the platform evolved and changed. Yeah, it was different. Do you think you had an advantage as a creator? So like what you're talking about is like a classic new platform arbitrage moment. It happens all the time. No, I'm sorry. Right. And sometimes, right? Where like something comes along and people under, they sort of be undervalued inventory. You're like, no, no, we're going all in.

50:33Matt Bertulli:Did you have an advantage as a creator reaching out to creators and like getting them on board? Because like, did you know kind of what to say and what they wanted and how to talk to them? And can you write that down and tell me? We're recording this, right? Exactly how to do this. I wish I could take the credit for being that person that did all the outreach. We have an incredible woman on our team. Her name is Sophia and she manages Influencer. But I do think to your question is that me being a creator, a beauty creator, you know, founded brand. And I think that gives us a lot of credibility and just an insert to other creators that other big brands without that story have.

51:12I would say it's always been our superpower because we sit on both sides of the fence. Yeah. So we understand the mindset and motivation of the content creator and how to play in that sandbox. Right. And so, yeah, we were uniquely positioned. So not only was it the right time, the right place, but I think it was the right people to really lean in at the time and just make the most and get the traction that we did out of the gate. with TikTok shop when it came on the scene. Has it, this might be a little nuance,

51:39Matt Bertulli:like for people listening, but TikTok shops in particular, you guys have been in there right from day one. How would you assess the platform today? Like as a channel, new brand, like neither one of us does anything on TikTok shops. Do you think it's had its moment? Is it still working or is it still? Again, we've experienced the life cycle of TikTok shop. And so it's going on almost three years that we've been on. The first 18 months were, I would call, the golden age of TikTok shop. Every new platform is going to have that period where it's the arbitrage. You've got to get in. You know, this ride's going to end someday.

52:18So make the most out of it while, you know, make hay while the sun's shining. We kind of recognize that, you know. Reflecting back on kind of the early meta days of acquiring customers on that channel or Google would search, like, when it's just so affordable and it just, and people should have all gone faster. Should have gone faster than harder. And so that was always in the back of my head, like, hey, this is the moment, seize it. And you felt it. And so we leaned in and yeah. And so the first 18 months, the subsidies were flowing, right? In the forms of free shipping for customers, discounts that TikTok was layering on.

52:53So conversions were just happening like crazy, right? They had to condition the customer and that's how they were going to do it. And it was working and so um there was a lot of gravy moving around on the table and we scooped some and makeup content was the ultimate yeah yeah category for tiktok yeah it did i think it did pose a challenge for us though and i see why other brands couldn't really you know follow the same playbook is because the discounting had to be so deep yeah and so you had to have these these massive discounts so

53:22Matt Bertulli:frequently right for some people i remember this was the conversation for a lot of older brands it was like how the hell do I even do this like how do I because Amazon makes them keep it at one price and you didn't have that yeah well I think even just from a brand integrity you know having your brand 40 50 off all the time that was why we weren't there we were like we just I can't do this you can't do that it's definitely a real concern and and we didn't have control over it because those were being applied by TikTok and and we had the same concerns we're like you know is this right? Should we have a concern?

53:55It was a conversation for sure that we were like, when do we slow this down? But what we found was like TikTok is an excellent chamber, right? What happens in TikTok doesn't really leave TikTok. And so it's experienced by those users in that closed loop system. And they experience your brand in a unique way. Not only that, but there's different like corners of TikTok and the people in those corners get served up very different content. So they may see your brand in a very different way. And what we found was we We were able to reach a younger demographic who now was being able to relate to our brand in a way that we were no longer directing.

54:30We didn't have as much control over it. The algorithm and the content was really doing the work for us. And it was really interesting to see that evolve over time. Okay. So with your new product category that's coming out, do you think it's going to be as easy to get into the TikTok shops and have the viral aspect of it? Or are you going to have to start from scratch product seeding and build it back up? or do you think you kind of have like the cheat sheet to it now? I would say it. So the products we're getting into and it's a little higher price point. I think it's not quite optimized from a product standpoint, but what it enables us to do is do some unique bundling.

55:06Yeah. And bundling on TikTok really allows us a new superpower that we didn't have in the past. I mean, we do brush sets and brush bundles and all that. But now with another product category that pairs with our brushes, There's just a lot of unique ways we can package that up and, you know, look to the brushes and subsidize and really kind of create some compelling offers that make a lot of sense. That's not something we've had in the past. And I think it's going to be a big unlock for us. Well, for so many aspects like LTV, all your loyal customers that love your brushes and already trust you even more.

55:41Right. We'll come back and buy your new products. Yeah. So the first two products that we're launching, we actually designed them to pair with one of our best selling brushes. So we have smart. Right. So that'll be a bundle that I think people will be really excited about. But I mean, there'll definitely need to be a lot of seeding, you know, to to get that get the content flowing into.

55:59Matt Bertulli:So can I just follow up on this though? TikTok, has the focus on TikTok shops ever come back to bite you? Like, has it like slowed you down? Has it like tricked you up in any way? Or has it just been like pretty smooth sailing? Like the, no problem. I think initially some of the friction points that we found that we had to kind of learn from was... It was new. That's why I'm asking. Well, so not all customers are TikTok shop customers. And when we have moments within the platform, maybe it's a big live stream that we're doing, or maybe it's a compelling offer that's just TikTok exclusive. What we found was if we leverage our email list to get that messaging out to drive people to TikTok, there's a good chunk of people that really don't want to have anything to do with that yet.

56:46And so the way and so we learned that we got feedback from our customers like, hey, like, I actually don't like the fact that you're on TikTok. And, you know, I think that's changing, though. It certainly is changing.

56:57Matt Bertulli:I'm talking about the brand perception of TikTok shops is is is mature. I read today that TikTok is like the fourth largest beauty like retailer. If it was a retailer, it'd be like the fourth largest in America. Wow. Yeah. I mean, you can't ignore it, right? Like in every big brand is now on it. But these early days, it wasn't. You didn't see the big brands, the legacy brands on there. But no, now you do. So do you think you have more growth runway in TikTok shops? I think there's still a lot. And I think it all plays together. And so we're radically focused on, you know, building TikTok shops right now.

57:30What we found is all other channels are getting easier the more that we really radically focus on that specific point.

57:36Matt Bertulli:Yeah, it's just monster top of funnel engine, right? We've seen lots of brands that just figure out that thing. And the halo effect is like 1 to 5, 1 to 7, whatever it is. The effect is real. And even outside of that, so last 30 days, we seeded another 1 ,500 products. Oh, my God. 1 ,500 creators? Yes. in 30 days you seated 1500 creators in the last 30 days also will you turn the cameras off i need to learn how to do this within tiktok 2500 new pieces of net new content were produced within tiktok and so beyond the halo effect and the demand engine that that is delivering for us leveraging that content that is scaled tested in terms of conversion and driving sales and then bring that over to meta yeah like it's it's just it's the wellspring of everything we're doing and we're radically focused but it hits everything else are you largely uh could you give me to give us a breakdown of like the mix of creators between who are you like putting on the trainers and paid versus who's affiliate like how do you work up stack the whole stack of so so everything that we've done is really focused on affiliates when i say influencer marketing like it's really an affiliate process.

58:49The way that we view TikTok and the way that TikTok, you know, trains you to view things is to break out the creators across different tiers. And so there's an L1 through an L7 and above, right? So take an L3. An L3 creator... Is this based off the size of the conversions?

59:07Matt Bertulli:That they've sold over the last 30 days. And this is their terminology, like L1, L... Oh, Oh, you didn't know that also? I told you, I'm here to just be the dumb one at the table. This is literally my job. Can I have a notepad? Keep going. This is so good. And so the volume of creators are going to be existing in the L1, L2 category, right? That's huge volume, but they're not producing as much GMV as some of the bigger creators who are really pushing stuff. So one is the best? No, one is a smaller GMV driver. Okay. This is really... What I'm getting at is there's definitely a methodology on how to approach working with creators at scale in a platform like TikTok shop.

59:50It all starts with the product seeding supported by affiliate commissions, and it's a huge flywheel. And now for the first time, well, I guess it really started early 2025, but it's definitely become a pay to play kind of game. You're not paying the creators directly. You're paying the platform in the form of GMV Max ad spend.

1:00:08Matt Bertulli:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when you started, it was largely like organic reach. 100%. I mean, this is just the nature of these platforms, right? We've actually done very little paid like collabs with influencers. Even on Instagram or YouTube? I mean, I think we've done maybe five deals over the seven years. How do you, okay. You're hogging all the questions. There's so many. Wait, I still want to know what an L3 is. You're the better one. So if you focus on, you're saying like L7, forget they're losers. No, no, no. There's just, okay. So, so the other. I'm really trying to understand this. Outside of product sampling, right?

1:00:48Which is just COGS, you know, going out the door. TikTok has automated a lot of this. So there's no overhead for us to send out 1500 packages a month in terms of product seeding. It's just COGS. There's no friction. It's just COGS. Yeah. right now is, okay, how do you retain creators month over month, right? How can we focus on L3 and above? And what's our retention rate so that the folks that posted content last month, they do it again this month. And you get a report with a ranking on who's posting the most and what's converting the best, but can't you just reach back out to them and maybe offer a better commission?

1:01:27Yeah. Is it like a... Well, so the reality is, I think the right way to approach it is the L3 and below, like the mass volume of creators that are driving lower GMB individually, but in total, it's adding up to something, facilitating some sort of Discord group or, you know, get them in a channel to teach them how to be successful. And so our brand is successful when they're successful. When I'm putting money in their pockets, we're benefiting too. Who does that? Does one of you take the lead? That really hasn't anything we've done yet. That's something we need to start doing. Retention is our big focus right now.

1:02:04You know, if you think about L3 and above, it requires more personal connection, right? And so in real life events, they want to have a connection to the brand. IRL. Everything's an acronym now. We're old enough to know what that is. And so we're trying to figure that out. And so next month, we are flying in a group of TikTok creators or our top GMB. Yeah, a small group. The ones? The ones. No. I'm talking about a soft. Wait. We need to have a side conversation after this one.

1:02:36Matt Bertulli:Higher number better. So you're the top producers for you. For us individually. But they could be anywhere in this one to seven scale. Well, they're generally going to be. Do they know where they rank? Well, I was going to say. Like, are they like, you're five. Fives are in that corner. The twos are over here. When they get here, they give them a little number and they need to know. No. But what I will say, which it's a good question. So TikTok has been, they gamify everything. And so on the creator side, the amount of data that they share with you, it's overload at some point, but it just really aligns your behavior and incentivizes you to do what they want.

1:03:16And it's in everyone's interest because we want to grow our brand within the platform. But you get so much visibility and the creators do as well. So yes, they know where they're standing in terms of what they're producing, what's working, what's not. And then they just do more of what's working.

1:03:30Matt Bertulli:Okay. So like the question I have to ask, and it's more around like a conflict I see. So you guys have built BK Beauty on affiliate, on TikTok shops, not a lot of paid creator, but yet your personal business as a creator is paid creator doing brand deals. Why don't you guys do brand deals with other creators? And do you see a future where you will? and just give me a read on the industry around this too. Cause I'm like, I'm always torn on this. Like, I don't know where this stuff is going. Yeah, that's a really interesting question. And, you know, cause like you said, I still consider myself a creator and influencer.

1:04:08I work with brands. I do paid sponsorships with brands. And then I'm also a brand founder, right? And I think, you know, to answer your question, right? On why we haven't done it, to be honest and frank, you in the early days, we just didn't have the budget for that. I mean, creator marketing is so expensive, right? I have so many friends that are creators. And when I find out what, I mean, I'm getting paid too, but like these rates are so high. And as a brand founder, in my head, I'm like, okay, if I'm going to pay that flat fee, I'm expecting three times that in sales. And that's just not really happening because the rates are so inflated, right?

1:04:41And so, you know, in the early days, we just didn't have the budget. And then we've just done an exceptional job of nurturing creator relationships, like authentically, right? I think we do a really great job of that. And that does take a lot of time. And that takes the right people on your team that can do that and do that well for you. Right. And I get that some brands want to just be able to essentially pay, turn on the light switch, get that exposure, that content, but it doesn't always convert. And when it's and when you're paying, you know,$10 ,000 for a 30 second reel and you're generating$3 ,000 in sales from it, it's like, does that make sense?

1:05:18Matt Bertulli:you know i think there was a if you look back over the last decade there was a moment in time where like there was a real arbitrage on youtube creators so like you could go i don't think sean's talked about this like ridge did really well at one moment because they could go on youtube and just like pay a little bit of money to a youtube creator youtube creator be like absolutely i'll do product placement or they'll do a whole video on it and then other categories other industries showed up it could be a lot more so like rates went up i think what also happened what you're hitting on is that creators realize that they are also brands and that their feed right if i look at like an instagram feed for a creator that is their brand so like if you as a another brand are trying to insert yourself into that that's very expensive real estate and in my view like i'm not a creator it should be expensive like you're it's it's out of place right like that like you shouldn't just like see a grid of stuff all of a sudden this is like this weird thing in the middle of it so i think that's where i actually am a big fan of what you guys do with tiktok shops with affiliate this is why i think creators all going here too is it's just more honest and that's the content that performs better i think that's the content that's actually going to move your product and and if you're a brand that has the budgets to to pay creators for like exposure and not necessarily focused on the conversion or what that content is generating sales we're not that brand right if we're going to put the money we need the money to come back to us.

1:06:41But I think that that's part of the reason, you know, and it just doesn't perform the way that organic, honest content performs.

1:06:49Matt Bertulli:Yeah, I think it's why we also see the rise of partnership ads on Meta is that that also is a mechanism where like you can, as a brand, work with a creator. You're not in their feed. You're not on their stories, but you can still use the creator's likeness and the algorithm's got an audience advantage that plays there. I think that's also like just trend wise how uh if you were starting over today would you still run this playbook would you still say like i would still go hard after create a relationship like affiliate same same thing like would you change anything for somebody starting over i'm gonna say we'd do the same thing over i would too and to put a little more color on that if you think about a decade ago the last playbook you know starting with the meta arbitrage and scaling up customer acquisition on meta you know i feel as though right now influencer relations for the first time you're able to really tie it to revenue very closely yeah yeah and so it's providing those that are coming up the track within a company like ours from the influencer relations track to be accountable for everything right it's no longer emv the squishy metric that doesn't tie back it's not a proxy metric like i am seeing sales being generated from these activities that we're doing internally.

1:08:07That's so interesting.

1:08:08Matt Bertulli:Do you see the creators also evolving now because the tools are here? So like the visibility into their performance is just so front and center, back to the whole L1 through 8 thing, like that they are now adapting and saying, oh, I don't want to be played flat fee. I want commission. I'm really damn good at this. Yes, absolutely. I have a creator friend who doesn't do any sponsor deals. She never takes sponsor deals, but what she does really well, she negotiates higher commission rates with the brand. oh it's so good they'll reach out to her we'd love to sponsor video of yours how much is your rate nope i'm not going to take that but instead pay me 30 of whatever i sell she knows she can because she knows she knows she can do it and she does it real well wow yeah this it's i mean if you just think of it like commerce broadly this makes so much sense to me like people buy from people right creators are the ultimate sort of like channel and it probably will be for a long time because this is like just it's a parasocial relationship it's like if you were to recommend Katie a product, Katie's probably going to listen to you just as a friend, right?

1:09:07Matt Bertulli:So people feel like creators are their friends. Absolutely. So it just works. And the creators that don't take sponsorships, like my friend, I have a few of them. They have built a trust that is unlike any other creator because they've never said, I partnered with so-and-so to tell you why I love their product, right? They've never had to say that. And they're still able to talk about products that they love, but there's not that disclaimer. There's not that flat fee that's exchanged. And therefore their content is so organic organic yeah yeah my daughter she's 10 she's almost 11 i saw i want to know your opinions as a creator is there an age or or do you have a view on social with kids should they be like when should they be allowed to go on number one when should they create content so like your daughters come to you like mom i want to be i want to be just like you.

1:09:56Yeah. Oh, I wish they would say that. It's making me so happy. So I have feelings about that too. You know, when they got on social media, private accounts, right? We're not creating my youngest daughter. I did let her start a YouTube channel because she started a nail business where she's making these press on nails and selling them. So her deal was you can start a YouTube channel around the process of making nails, right? So you're showing the process of making the nails. A lot of it doesn't even have your face in it. It's just your hands. It's not you dancing and showing outfits on, you know, it's so.

1:10:28So for that reason, I'm allowing her to do it. But I do have feelings. I do think that she's 11, by the way. I do think that when kids are on social media too young and I would consider that to be too young to be a personality. I think there's a lot of downfall to that. their brains are just not equipped to handle um the negative the negative comments or the judging their worth or their value on how many likes or how many comments or and all of that it's very addicting and um and just opening themselves up publicly to all the weirdos on

1:11:01Matt Bertulli:the internet you know like no there's a um so i was at a formula one race in montreal a few weeks ago and the kid that won is 19 years old and i'm not like a big race nerd but my buddy that brought me is a huge race nerd and i'm like why is the 19 year old so much better like what what is the difference he's like underdeveloped prefrontal cortex he's like that when they're younger they have risk yeah they have absolutely no fear they don't think about the risk of the decisions they're making which just makes me think of like if you're 11 or 12 or 14 or 18 yeah and you're going out and you're going on these platforms you have no idea the risks that are out there because you don't see any just like this kid gets in a car and goes 320 kilometers 240 miles an hour uh we should be having our kids start businesses earlier yeah because like they have absolutely no concept of risk yeah yeah there's no downside in their life right they think they're made of rubber every time they fall it just bounce oh she's she's got this business down she told me she's like mom i put out a promo i'm like you did what's your promo she's got i text all my friends in the group chat and i said this week only buy two get one free the free one is 20 value or less are you so proud yes I'd be just glowing.

1:12:10She's making bang. She's great. And I'm actually taking her to an annual YouTube conference that I go to with all the big YouTubers there. I mean, he hasn't been there in a couple of years, but Mr. Beast was there about three years ago. All the big players, a lot of kid channels are there that she knows. And it's all about how to be successful on YouTube because that's so valuable. And I don't need her to go out and, you know, have a million subscribers and build a business at 11 or 12 years old. But having that skill like this is or having the confidence to know that she can do that. is gonna just you know oh yeah did i tell you uh i forget when we got dinner in in palm springs

1:12:43Matt Bertulli:about my daughter uh in their class last year i think i've told you this they had to build a business as part of school and but it's like a little farmer's market business so i get to come up with something to sell so my my daughter comes home she's like i think i know what i'm gonna do i'm like okay lay it on me uh she's like i want it i'm gonna buy gold boxes and there's gonna be candy in the boxes i'm like okay this is not original she's like but in five of the boxes i'm gonna put five bucks and you can't see what's in the box so every box is four dollars but you got a chance of winning five bucks and i'm like have you told your teacher this she's like yeah like what does the teacher think he's like he's not sure and i'm like it's because you're going to turn your classmates into gamblers like you you can't i don't know that this is great so like I was so happy.

1:13:31Matt Bertulli:I'm like, secretly, I'm like, this is so my kid. I'm like, this is a great offer. She sold every damn box. The kids were going back to their parents to beg the mom for more money. I'm like, I got to win my five bucks back. And I'm like, you're 20 bucks deep, kid. You should probably stop. How funny. That's funny. I love this. Okay, I think where I'd like to go, because we've been chatting for a while, and I got a sense for how you guys run the company. I want to go in. I just want to ask you, we talked to this segment called the Titan Den. this is like a bunch of questions that we just throw i actually really curious to see if you have different answers like different seats in the company so if you guys are willing to play the game that way we did this with i think jeremy and cassandra too and it was fun um so i'm just going to throw questions at you we'll go okay so uh first one i know it's like what do you do uh you get to desert island you still have to run the business from the desert island i'm only going to give you three numbers on a piece of paper to tell you how the business is doing What three numbers are on that piece of paper?

1:14:32Okay, so I'm going to kind of think about this from my creator side of the business. Yeah, I would definitely say views, comments and engagement and revenue. Commissions. I'm going to keep it simple because if I'm on a desert island, I just need to know about sales, profit and cash in the bank. Yeah. I like it.

1:14:50Matt Bertulli:Yeah. Yeah, simple. I'll do that. That was right on with both of there. You also get to take a book, but it can't be about business. What book are you taking? I've got what is it Project Hail Mary on my desk right now so good I've gotten through a chapter or two but haven't had the time to kind of really finish it out just wait I love The Martian I don't read a lot of fiction but The Martian was the last nice one I did I'm looking forward to that and I would take the Hoffman Process book oh that's right I'm interested about you yeah it's just the activities that kind of walk you through that process again I did the process a couple years ago and loved it do you know this is the second Blake McCoskey there's because that's how i heard about it yeah yeah uh that's the second time we've heard that i'm just kidding do you know the steps uh i don't know but i know blake is a big uh this i think i think i heard about him talk about it first and then i heard scooter ron talk about it and then i booked it yeah yeah yeah very cool okay so uh what is one or two like give me a contrarian take that you have about business that most other founders most other operators might disagree with i think we have the same one here well probably yeah i think i think that you uh that you have to you have to outsource to 3pl that like having your own warehouse and doing your own distribution i mean your own fulfillment is uh you can't do that i think that i would you can yeah you can it turns out you can yeah yeah we're gonna we're gonna clip that for we had another episode recently where mike was like do not do this and i'm like i'm just gonna put you guys on top of each other I'd say the same thing.

1:16:26I mean, when we started, everyone was telling us, you have to go to 3PL. Why are you still doing this? And, you know, we're still doing it. And for our business, what I found is it's the right decision. And it's fun. It is fun.

1:16:38Matt Bertulli:Yeah. I mean, you clearly, you're damn good at it. 20 ,000 orders in a couple of days is real. 22 ,000. Oh, I'm sorry. And I will say, and you guys, I'm sure experienced this too, doing fulfillment in-house. But when we first launched into Amazon, this was maybe two years ago we experienced our first big prime day right uh the first prime day was like our biggest sales day in company history the second prime day the day after was beat that the second but our office was quiet yeah like we were just seeing numbers increment on a screen it was so boring yeah like yeah to be part of the energy music blasting fulfillment's right over there like that it It keeps things fresh for me.

1:17:21And I personally, I can't do the same thing over and over again. And so I think operations fulfillment, as you continue to grow as a business, you get to see the next levels physically. And feel it. Touch and feel. Celebrate it.

1:17:37Matt Bertulli:That's what this business is all about. Dude, I literally talk to hundreds of operators every year. I've never heard that take before. And I love it. Because like when you're in e-com, we're moving atoms around the world, right? Like we're not software businesses. But if you don't ever go and touch the atoms, how close to the thing are you really? How real is the business? I freaking love that. Yeah, I'm going to steal that just to like give you an FYI. Like I'm absolutely ripping that off. That's awesome. And I can tell you guys to fill in house because it resonates with you. What do you think the single most important word in leadership is?

1:18:15Matt Bertulli:Trust. I say accountability. Single most important word in business? Customer. Oh, nice. You're the first person that's ever said that. No. Are you being sarcastic? Really? Yeah. Again, so good. Yeah. Well, now my answer means nothing. I got to say margin. Oh, yeah. That's also good. I thought you were going to say 3PL. Or not. Well, when you say that, immediately when you said margin, I can remember clearly walking in the neighborhood, in our old neighborhood, our old house, you know, before we were launching, we're talking about, or it was before we were launching lipsticks and we're talking about what we had to price them at.

1:18:53And I remember, uh, struggling with you on the price that you said we had to price them at. So I'm like, that just seems too high. You know, I know. And, and at the time we had a tiny little office, we didn't have the overhead we had, but he had to, you know, explain to me that this is how you have to have a healthy business. Like if you don't have the margins built in, you can't grow and do what we've been able to do. And our first year in business was 100 % organic. So we had not yet started paying to acquire customers.

1:19:21Matt Bertulli:You were drunk on free. So we were - Yeah. That's a terrible thing to get drunk on. We're making 99 % more - Exactly. It's like, I remember those days too. It's like money just showed up. Get into scalable, predictable revenue and tapping into paid acquisition. You need the margins to support that. You know, it's a really great trait. I tell people this all the time. If you are great at organic, that's amazing. it's sound you're going to trade margin for predictability with paid and it's actually a really nice trade because then you have both you've got like you know really high margin it's free it's organic but i can layer in predictability and i also like predictability i don't like having to roll the dice on a viral video every now and again right yeah when we wouldn't have been able to do what we did on tiktok shop if we didn't have the margins to discount it and to do everything we've done so all this has some fun favorite meal of the day and why i would i would normally have said breakfast but now it'd be lunch because i don't really eat breakfast anymore lunch is kind of my first meal of the day yeah i don't typically eat breakfast either but it's still my favorite because of the coffee coffee yes coffee is breakfast okay yes breakfast for sure i have like four or five drinks i drink in the morning that lead me up to 11 30 p.m i mean a.m and then I eat my lunch.

1:20:36Yeah.

1:20:36Matt Bertulli:Okay. What do you think the most overrated growth tactic is? I'm going to say paid influencer marketing is probably the most overrated. Is that bad? Should we cut? Coming from this, it's perfect. That's great. Paul, recover. I would say, you know, moving on to the next platform before you've really mastered what's Working. I think spreading yourself too thin. Radical focus. For me, the word of this episode is focus, for sure. You guys have, like, I love it so much. Okay, then the flip side to that is, what is the most underrated? Underrated is investing time into authentically nurturing relationships with creators, you know, and just really investing deep into those relationships.

1:21:24We love our creators. I'm one, too. and for me it's it's just um you know going deeper and not wider right and so it goes back to focus uh i think that's that's the big one i think going deeper and mastering something that's

1:21:40Matt Bertulli:working more so than anyone else is way underrated guys i'm uh i'm blown away this is great so good yeah i'm just in first thank you for letting us in your house to do this thank you for coming Yeah. This is great. And I think that the people who, if you stayed this long on the episode, like, I mean, if you didn't learn something, you're an idiot. You didn't learn something. You saw. This is great. This is the pod. Great. Awesome. Yay! You did it!