What It Takes To Build Community on Social Media in 2024

0:00A lot of the brands are selling 10 products to one person, whereas I think the beauty companies should focus more on how do we sell one product to 10 people. Hey, what's going on? I'm Shuang Esther Shan, and you're listening to Shopify Masters, your companion for starting and building a business. We've heard this advice a lot. To create a successful business, you need to build a community. But how do you create content that's relatable and rally the support of strangers? Leah Yu has the blueprint. She is the founder of Crave Beauty, a multi-million dollar skincare company that's resetting industry norms.

0:40Leah founded the company after she documented her journey with adult acne on YouTube. Leah is here to share how she cultivated a community of over a million subscribers while redefining the industry and investing in other companies. Leah, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to chat. I watch your videos a lot. So it's really cool to speak with you personally. Oh, nice. I always get embarrassed for some reason when people say that. Yeah, it's weird because it's this parasocial relationship where someone knows so much about you and then you don't quite know anything about them.

1:20So I totally understand that. Yeah, it's not a two way street here. But yeah, I listen to a lot of your podcast. So it's it It feels the same way. Gotcha. Gotcha. Well, thank you for saying that. I mean, your YouTube videos were your personal journey about dealing with adult acne and just your refreshing take on the beauty industry in general. And that was very relatable for a lot of viewers. In that process, what was your way of thinking about content and having these ideas and looking for different topics that were able to be relatable? Yeah, I think just having gone through adult acne had made me empathize to people who are struggling with acne.

2:08And I think that's a huge population to begin with. So my content was strictly focused on how do I actually help people to clear their skin in a much more gentle way? because I think the industry can be quite a lot where you need to apply this, you need to apply that, or you need to go through an entire like laser treatment or antibiotics or Accutane, a lot of medication. And I think a lot of the times people who have dealt with acne for so many years feel almost hopeless. So when they're finally coming to YouTube to search how to clear acne, they are looking for the last piece of advice, hopefully.

2:49And I think just knowing the beauty industry a lot more and just knowing and learning more about how wonderful and how amazing our skin is as a natural organ, that made me realize that oftentimes acne-prone skin are applying way too much. And sometimes you just need to press reset and simplify to amplify and minimize your skincare routine, become a minimalist in order to clear your skin, although it's very tempting to buy everything that the influencers tend to endorse. So my content focus was really, really focused on how do we help? How do I help these people who are clicking my videos to get information and knowledge and tips?

3:35So I think that was my only objective that I had. In a sense, it was educational, but it was relatable, it was personal, and it was also entertaining because people were subscribing. They want to know what happens next and how your skin is experiencing all these different things that you were testing and sharing with the audience. I think the question here is also how do you build community, right? Creating content is one part, then there's the engagement and also interactions on different platforms. So yeah, what would you say is the key for building a community today? Oh, that's a really good question.

4:13I think community gets built pretty easily around a shared problem, to be honest. If you look at Reddit forums or if you look at any communities, they are shared. They came together with a very common problem that everyone is facing. And there could be people who have gone through that journey first and have found a cure or a treatment or whatever that may be that improve their lifestyle or that fix their problem. And I think that's how an effective and a very tight community gets built. and going back to people with acne, these people are desperate to clear their skin. And these people will be wanting to learn more and absorb more information if it does help their skin.

5:06And I think they're naturally in a position to join any type of forums or community in order to really relay and exchange information that would help their skin. So I think it was a little bit easier for me to build that. And just having gone through that adult acne, myself have tremendously helped me to be also vulnerable in front of the public and shared my skin progress, shared what worked, what didn't work. And I think naturally people started just relating and sharing their experiences with different products or what have you and started forming a community. And I don't think it was strategic.

5:49I don't think it was, you know, intentional in that way. But people, you know, started tuning in more and more. And the comment feed was really, really, really engaged. And I think there's a magic with YouTube, right? Especially long form video, you really can share your story and people tune in and they relate. What are your thoughts on short form content like like Reels, Shorts, and TikTok? How do you feel about building a community on the short-form platforms? It's definitely going to be, I mean, I only say this because it's coming from my experience, but I think short-form audience is quick to forget who you are.

6:29And you can't really form a relationship with a content creator if you're watching that person for 15 seconds. I think audience comes to YouTube and they intentionally click on your video to watch what you have to say or what your life is like, compare that to TikTok where everything is fed for you. I think everything is kind of curated and selected on your For You page. You don't necessarily opt in to watch specific person's content, which you can. But I think a lot of the times when you see how people are viewing and consuming content on short form platforms, it's always just more of an entertainment format where people are just scrolling through, killing time.

7:11So I think there's a different amount of intention from the audience who would naturally want to engage more with a YouTuber because they opted in to watch your content versus on TikTok. It wasn't an opt-in necessarily. It was more like I'm just watching whatever the algorithm is feeding me. And even sometimes when you follow someone on TikTok, their content doesn't necessarily end up on your For You page as well. It really depends on how the algorithm is feeling that day. Yeah, I think so too. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. What else was amazing was you were also working full-time a corporate job while you were creating content in the early days.

7:54I do think that's a theme that we see often with our listeners as well, where they're going to school, where they're working, and they want to create a side hustle or content creation. how do you balance the schedules of your corporate life and your content creation in the early days? Oh yeah I think I dedicated most of my weekends to content creation or I my uploading schedule on YouTube was really sparse or less frequent because by the time the weekend comes I'm exhausted from Monday to Friday job and just the pure exhaustion that comes with having a nine to five job. My case was also nine to nine, mostly every single day.

8:40So it was very, very time consuming, energy draining and very, very exhausting. So on weekends would be the only time that I would have a little bit of energy to film or to plan out content. And I think at the time, I probably uploaded maybe one video a month, which is not ideal. But I kind of kept going at it because it was my only outlet that I felt like really liberated and free. And I felt like I was just connecting with random anonymous people on the internet over a shared hobby or a shared problem. And that just gave me so much joy. So I kept going at it. Amazing to hear. That's definitely such strong dedication.

9:26And I do think even with your schedule, you were able to cultivate a community and people did want to tune in. And one of the biggest things that you discovered was that we didn't need a 12-step skincare routine. We actually needed to pare down. So talk to us about having this pivotal moment where you thought, hey, maybe I should actually start maybe creating products and create this change that you wanted to see within the industry. Yeah, exactly. I think when you're going back to the acne example, people who have, you know, certain skin conditions tend to resort to applying more to fix their problem or fix their skin issues, which is completely natural.

10:14But at the end of the day, we really need to understand that our skin is an organ and your entire body or human design is so fascinating because they are meant to regulate and rejuvenate and repair on its own. So when you have a cut on your finger, it'll heal over time. And that's what your skin is supposed to do with your oil production or your acne. It's definitely a reflection of something going inside internally. So oftentimes we tend to forget how smart our skin is. And when you do see any problem topically, you tend to go to a beauty store to buy more products to fix your problem. But truly, your skin only need a great gentle cleanser, gentle moisturizer, and a very, very gentle sunscreen is the minimum skincare routine that I would recommend for literally everyone on the planet, to be honest.

11:12And I think sometimes we forget that all the serum steps or the day cream, eye cream, and all these really micro broken down categories are very supplementary to whatever your skin needs. Like it's not something that should be baked into an essential every single day. So going back to your question of how did I connect the dots and start my own brand, I think the beauty industry knows that less is more actually for the skin. But naturally, to make more profits or maximize shareholders' value, I did see from the inside of the beauty industry that a lot of the times product developments never really start from how to solve customers' problem.

12:00It was always about how do we meet the sales target this year? And I think that's what frustrated me more because by the byproduct of those kind of meetings of new product development, starting from how do we meet the sales target, is that we end up having so many unnecessary products in the market. And I think that's what fired me up to, you know, come into the beauty industry with a brand or with a voice, hopefully, to say that you don't need all of these products. Just listen to your skin. Just start very, very simple with a cleanser, moisturizer, and SPF and add products when your skin actually needs it.

12:38Nothing more than necessary. So it has to do a lot with how do we rewire everyone's brain into thinking like 10-step, 12-step skincare routine to dial back and pair back to a three-step skincare routine. And yeah, that took a long time. But I feel like over time, people are now talking more about skin minimalism and how to have a very simple, essential capsule wardrobe of skincare routine. in their medicine cabinet. So I'm excited to see the change. And I think, I hope our brand's messaging kind of contributed to that paradigm and narrative. Yeah, definitely. I feel like your belief in yourself to take this plunge to go into entrepreneurship and create something of your own definitely created a shift within the industry.

13:31Was it tough making that decision to say, like not only am I focused on my content creation, I'm going to also do this business full-time and let go of this corporate security as well?

13:49I think so, but I also don't think I was too scared because ignorance is bliss. I didn't know what I didn't know, and I think that really helped. So I don't have any business background. I didn't study business marketing or accounting or you know all that stuff that might be useful for running a business in my undergrad. So I actually thought launching a business would be easy or running and operating a business would be easy but I was definitely quickly proven wrong and I think you know now looking back like do I regret starting my own business. I probably don't. I love that I learned so much about life just in general but also just seeing the impact that we made in the industry is really gratifying and fulfilling and just to kind of backtrack the timeline of my corporate job you know being a YouTuber and then starting my own business I actually had a little bit of gap in between so I quit my corporate job in 2015 to do full-time YouTube.

14:53I did that for about two years. And then in December of 2017, I launched my own business, Crave Beauty. So yeah, we did have like some gaps. So I'm not like taking three full-time jobs at a time. But I think when building Crave Beauty, I had a very strictly regimented routine in my life. I would wake up at 5am in the morning to work on the Crave Beauty stuff from five to nine I would be just working or doing a lot of the prep work for the brand and then from nine to six I would actually do YouTube full-time so that would be planning scripting researching editing and all that so yeah there was like a two full-time job or like one and half full-time jobs at the time but it didn't feel exhausting because I was getting like so much adrenaline rush from what it could be possibly and just the creation of everything was so yeah it's in my kind of nature of wanting to just create whether that be a business or content it's very interesting to hear about your disciplined routine and all the different chapters that led up to the creation of crave beauty and i'm very excited to dig into that even more.

16:13But first, I wanted to take a moment to thank our listeners for tuning into the show. Wherever you're listening now, make sure to follow or subscribe to Shopify Masters so you never miss an episode. And leave us a review with some feedback on today's episode. We love reading them. Thank you so much. Everyone talks about building in public right now and sharing behind the scenes and showcasing what you're doing with your business. And a lot of people, when they're starting to share their story, they might feel a little scared or intimidated to do that. What is your tip for going over that kind of self-conscious hump a little bit?

16:56Right. I think, you know, nowadays with social media, all the founders are almost affected to be a spokesperson or the face of the brand de facto, which is could be a good thing or it could not really suit someone's personality, which is completely fine. And if a founder is really self-conscious of being in front of the camera, that's totally okay. I think there could be ways where you can either hire a social media person who are more comfortable speaking to the camera and who are, I guess, more comfortable speaking about behind the scenes of what goes behind each business in front of the camera.

17:37Or the second example that I know that's becoming a little bit more common in the content creator space is that there would be like a cameraman. It's kind of like envision like the 73 questions from Vogue where the cameraman is asking the celebrity in each question that are super, I guess, relatable to what the viewers would be wanting to hear or wanting to question. So I think that could be another way where you don't need to directly like have your camera set up and speak to the camera, but the founder can be just answering questions. If a social media intern is just following you asking questions, I think that could be also a very fun and engaging way to tell the behind the scenes story a little bit more.

18:23Yeah, there's someone you're talking to versus sometimes talking to a camera might seem a little bit more intimidating for some reason. I think also press reset the hashtag that create beauty uses a lot has also had such a great impact do you have any advice for starting a movement with a hashtag I think a slogan or a hashtag would be really nice that embodies your entire brand ethos so I think about it when you know you're looking at Nike, it's just do it. And Apple is think different. So I think each business would have some sort of an ethos or a slogan that represents who they are and what kind of lifestyle that we want other people to also join and live together.

19:10And that was for us, that was definitely press reset to press reset on how we think about skincare routine or skincare journey and pressing reset on how we operate behind the scenes for a better, more sustainable beauty ecosystem. So I would highly encourage any brands to, especially if it's a consumer brand, I think it's helpful to think about what the main slogan is, what the main lifestyle that you envision for the brand fitting in basically. Yeah, sounds great. Sounds great. And then of course, digging deeper into Press Reset, you knew what you wanted to see within the skincare products, and you had these concepts that you wanted to change within the industry.

19:56How did you then go about finding the right production partners that could actually turn those ideas into products? Yeah, that's a really practical question. And I always recommend anyone who's starting the business, whether it's in the beauty industry, fashion industry, or a food and beverage industry to go to trade shows. Industry trade shows can tell you a lot about not only the market trends, but also how to, you know, come up with a product brief so that it's not only appealing to the labs or the co-packers or the manufacturers that you would potentially want to work with and also get a lot of tons of insights in one place.

20:40So you have the opportunity to also connect with so many production houses across the globe normally. And I would highly, highly recommend people to just check out their industry trade shows and build contacts and connections from there. Yeah, such a worthy investment to just kind of level up your connections and also industry knowledge. You mentioned you didn't go to business school, there's no marketing or accounting classes that you took. But how did you help yourself to ramp up knowledge on logistics, operations, production to be confident when you go into those meetings and chat with people that you had to negotiate with.

21:19Yeah, that was not easy for sure. I'm remembering because initially when I was starting, I was in my, you know, late 20s and people didn't take me seriously. And these are the people who worked in the industry for 30, 40 years. So they're just, you know, middle-aged men who are almost looking down on me because I'm just like a young Asian woman who looks way younger than her biological age, I guess. And that served me as almost like a disadvantage where I felt like just having a content creator slash influencer title also made it feel like I'm not here to do business, but I'm here to just have the cute influencer merch or something like that, which is something that I wasn't there for.

22:10So what I had to do after seeing like how people were treating me was I studied like I don't have a chemistry degree as well. And I'm not saying I am knowledgeable in chemistry by any means. But I studied like how the formulation comes together to the fact where I can talk to the lead chemists and lead formulators in their language. so that almost took you know a lot of research and a lot of time and dedication in dissecting like how other formulations are put together and that kind of gave me confidence to speak to the chemist directly whether they have like 40 years of experience or a few years of experience I think that kind of earned some level of respect to begin with and then they want to start you know, talking about business.

23:02So I think in terms of how do you convince potential partner to work with you, always the best way to do about it is to level up your knowledge so that you can speak in their language. And that definitely opens up a lot of people. And then secondly, in terms of production operations and scaling up the manufacturer, that was a lot of trials and errors. and I can't say that our first pilot batch was successful. I think, in fact, I was really shocked because when you're formulating something in a little beaker, like a size of your cup versus like a huge kettle, like a size of a water tank that's in your building, the texture turns out to be very, very different.

23:50Our very first product was Matcha Hephydrogen Cleanser and when we were formulating it in the lab, in a beaker setting that was really, really, really like solid jam type of texture. But then when we scaled that up to a 50 kilogram kettle, it turned out to be really fluidy and super runny. And yeah, it wasn't a texture that kind of matched the beaker texture that we approved. So I think that was my very first shock of like, oh my God, you know, like even though you approved a formula, that also doesn't mean that it'll turn out the way that you approved it so that's why in the beauty industry there's like multiple pilot batches or batch productions where you continuously kind of tweak the manufacturing process here and there to get the right consistency to get the right texture so that was super fascinating but that also costed a lot of trials and errors and yeah I mean, now we immediately kind of bake it into like, okay, the first batch is going to be probably a failure, but hopefully we can just tweak it from there.

24:59Yeah. Yeah. It reminds me of also food and beverage founders. They talk about taking a family recipe where it's perfect when they make it at home, but when you're at a production kitchen, it's totally different. So same concept goes for this example for sure. And that's something that only when you go through it would you understand. So yes, you educated yourself on the framework of chemistry, be able to be more comfortable chatting with a chemist. I think there was also this other communication realm that you had to do was outside of your community, you now have to communicate to a bigger audience to educate them to essentially change their consumer behavior to use less in their beauty routine.

25:44And it's something very counterintuitive. So how did you go about sending that message to a bigger audience in the early days? Yeah, I think YouTube was definitely our kind of bread and butter that we use for not only my personal content, but also to deliver the skincare education that our brand and our company subscribes to, which is about less is more and add product when you need to, not every single day. and yeah I think YouTube was definitely the most effective tool if I were to start a business now in 2024 I would fully lean into TikTok to be honest to make sure that the education is there but in a way that's super short concise and also just more entertaining moving online to offline Crave has also done such a great job with the pop-ups and sharing how wasteful the industry can be sometimes.

26:48So you are having a chance for consumers to chat about it, get access to discounted products, and also be more sustainable. So talk to us about some of the past pop-ups. Yeah. So our most recent pop-up, which was in New York City back in 2022, November, was something called Waste Me Not pop-up. And this wasn't a pop-up about showcasing our newest launch or showcasing our hero products. It was actually a pop-up about showcasing the behind-the-scenes industry waste. And I kind of told you about the failed pilot batches of the formula batches that don't get approved. What happened during COVID was that because of the global supply chain crisis and because we manufacture a lot of the products from South Korea, get shipped over to the U.S., we didn't know when our next shipment would actually come during the COVID time.

27:47So we placed a very big order of matcha hyphidrate and cleanser, which is our, you know, number one seller. So we had like a pretty significant amount of product order in place to kind of compensate for maybe a year run of sales. But that batch went wrong. so that batch turned out to be really really really different from what our regular matcha and piterine cleanser is in terms of texture experience and everything so i was really really shocked and i could not in good conscience let this go to waste too although that's the main protocol for the industry to just dispose the waste or the batch and then redo or like rework another run.

28:38However, because we placed such a big product order, I actually went to Korea to see how big the entire batch was. And I kid you not, there were maybe like 50 bathtub worth of products that are in front of me. And if you look at that batch, you can't, you can't let that go to waste. And this is a very common industry problem where a lot of times production batches go wrong or like there are screw ups and there are times that brands can't approve the production batch because it's not up to par and they would waste it. So what we did was we quickly reworked that batch or the bulk formula into a limited edition body wash.

29:25So we called it a matcha hemp body wash that is basically made out of the wasted bulk of the matcha hemp hydrating cleanser. And to tell that story, we wanted to have like a full in real life activation. And of course, New York City is great at just hosting pop ups. So we had a space in Lower East Side and on the walls, we had more of an education panel of what actually goes behind the weight, what actually goes behind the scenes in the beauty industry that kind of considers as waste. because a lot of times when people are wanting to become more sustainable, they think about the packaging material of their own beauty products, which is definitely valid.

30:08And there's a huge footprint for that. But oftentimes what people and what the customers don't see is what goes behind the scenes and what goes behind the curtains. And oftentimes a lot of the waste actually comes from the manufacturing process, like I said. So we thought this was a great opportunity to storytell. And, you know, even before this, like, I think there's a lot of things going on like that in the fashion and the beauty industry where brands would hide their waste pretty much and never gets disclosed to the public when that is, in fact, a big chunk of the waste. So, yeah, it was a great opportunity for us to storytell.

30:52in the pop-up we had 3 ,000 people over the weekend which was nuts and a lot of the times people were bringing their own friends and family and telling our story of you know what we did and what we failed and what we reworked into a matcha hand body wash and I think it was really really really rewarding to see that not only your customers in person because we're a digital brand we don't get to often see or meet our customers in real life. So that was exciting. But the second most exciting thing was that once your messaging is strong, and once your education component is also really, really strong, the brand ambassadors become more like your messengers and your champions of just spreading the message out there, bringing their friend and rallying their own troop and rallying their own community.