514: He Made $2.8M Getting People High | Nick Shackelford

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0:39Just head to omnisend.com forward slash founder without the E to get started. All right, now let's jump back into the show. It's a THC and CBD functional beverage. Right there in that conversation, it's a beverage, it's a gray area, and you're selling online. It's like playing the game on hard mode. One of the biggest names in the e-commerce marketing space. He eats Facebook ads for breakfast. Owner of Structured Social. If you've been a long time listener, you know about him. Today we got Nick Shackelford on the podcast. When you're competing against alcohol, there's an affinity that we have to change and they're consuming it.

1:13Specifically, achieve the euphoric feeling without the downfall the next morning. I've spent a lot of my career trying to make sure people understand that the work and effort put into it is not an overnight thing and you get very lucky when things go right because there's so many times a great product, a great brand actually doesn't get lift off because the world might not be ready for it. Before we dive in, I want to extend a warm invitation to join our thriving founder community. It's the perfect place to discover more insightful interviews aimed at helping you build, grow and scale your business.

1:44So don't forget to hit subscribe. Your support means the absolute world to us. Thank you so much for subscribing. Let's get stuck in today's discussion. Hear the stories, learn the proven methods and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder Podcast with Nathan Chan. So we got the legend back, Nick Shack. Now, we're going to talk about a couple of different things because you've taught incredible, incredible program on the Founder Plus platform around Facebook ads. and you're a master when it comes to ads. You've spent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars profitably on the platform.

2:30However, most recently, you've launched an incredible beverage company called Breeze, which we want to talk about that that's growing super fast. So you've gone back in the trenches. You've started multiple e-commerce businesses before, namely you popularized the fidget spinner. You've done a lot of cool stuff, man. So I want to talk about Breeze. I also want to talk about early days Facebook ads, what people need to be thinking about. And yeah, let's jump in. So my first question, I'm going to mix it up, is can you describe the first 60 days in your business? So the thing I have to say before I get into it is like very rarely do you get to like start over again and kind of have to relearn and redo things.

3:18and this has been the first time because you you and i both know like i like being on the paid media side i like being on the ad side i don't like to found i wasn't interested in founding a company and so this one i didn't found it was aaron who was like i think i have this really incredible product that would work do you want to be in on it and i was like i don't know you know like it's not really my thing but you get you only get a couple of big hits in your life to be a part of something that you, it's kind of like a cultural thing. It's kind of like when things make sense, you know, you have to go about it.

3:52Cause a lot of the times we get into business, you're like, oh, I want to make money. Okay. So the way that this product comes about us is it's a THC and CBD functional beverage right there in that conversation, you're saying you are selling THC and CBD through a.com. So, so first off, it's a beverage, it's a gray area and you're selling online. So this just even, it's like playing the game on hard mode and is the most incredible experience that we've gotten so far. So back to your core question, 60 days in, 60 days in, and I'm looking at the Shopify right now, 60 days in, we launched on appropriately 420 last year.

4:32So we're not even a year old yet. And so within the first, I'll say the first two months, first month was$30 ,000. Second month was 17, but I have to continue to tell this story real quick so that you can understand the growth that we're at right now. May or April, 28 ,000, 17 ,000, 33 ,000, 76 ,000, 186 ,000, October, 250 ,000, November, 336 ,000, December, appropriately, 420 ,000 January this year, 640 ,000 last month,$858 ,000. So you see, you see this, this like progression of just massive acceleration. And it's not just like, Oh, you're really good at Facebook. I do really good at advertising.

5:28There's kind of this whole sweet spot of, you have to have the right product at the right time. And the world, the, the, for us specifically, just the states has to be ready for it because there's so many times that great product and great brand actually doesn't get lift off because the world might not be ready for it so part of like you going back in was to get your hands dirty be part of this incredible product you really believe in it tell me like what what did you do to even launch and make you know 15 20 grand in the first month and then 30 grand or like 30 grand in the 20 30 grand the first month 17 grand in the second, like, what did you do?

6:07Like, what did you do? Talk us through that. So the funny thing is, it's very similar to what kind of Greta talks about on the starting scale. Like you need to have that little bit of the built up hype. So I have a decently large following on all socials. I've never really sold anything outside of the only partnership that you and I did on the founder side of, of the Facebook chain. So I don't really have anything on the market that's next. And so when I made the partnership and I go, guys, I have a drink, I have a drink that's for high performing entrepreneurs and high performing individuals that don't want to have alcohol.

6:37And as soon as I put that on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, all the places, we started getting our initial interest. I would say like our first thousand true customers that really believed in us. And where we did it right was we came out at the highest point of the market. And I think a lot of people make the mistake. They see what other people are doing in their space and they just kind of put the price point just below what they need just because they're like, oh, we're new. Nobody knows us. Let's do the cheapest price point. We can make a little bit of money on. We came in at the highest part in the market.

7:07We came in with our initial social posts because we didn't really want to spend a bunch of money on ads at the beginning. We wanted to see what we can drum up. And we had a lot of our email list dialed in. And the only discount because us in food and beverage, the only discount you can get is if you subscribed. So there's a 20 % there. So we thought if we could launch with the owned earned audience initially, make sure that the product is good before you kind of put a lot of gas on the oven. And then once we started seeing people love it, then we started spending ads. So ads really started to take off in June because at this point, we don't even know how much we need to order.

7:45We don't even have the different types of sizes to really kind of facilitate it. So we really wanted to be smart, work with the own audience, make sure we had the right, correct email flows to generate any sort of revenue from the traffic coming to site, then we turned on the paid ads. Yeah. Got you. So when did you turn on paid ads? In June? June. So it would, as soon as April, May started going, that was a lot of like early spend, low, just boosting posts. And then June was when we started to really pick it up at that$33 ,000 of revenue mark. And how did you know, like for people watching this, how would you know when the right time is to turn on ads and start playing with ads?

8:22So for us, it was, we knew that the angles that we were testing on organic, because we're going after those that want to have a buzz, but they don't want to have to ruin their morning. So the clear angles, and we talk about this even in the earlier courses, clear, specific communication to a demographic that we believe our problem or our solution solves their problem. So for instance, it's, we call it the soccer mom that's trying to get the buzz, but doesn't try to ruin her day because she's got to wake up and take care of the household. We want them to feel it. We want them to experience it, but we also don't want them to feel any sort of regret or remorse behind it, which sometimes when you consume a lot of alcohol, you wake up with that hangover.

9:02That's just a living regret. So that was one core angle that was starting to work on our organic channels and the feedback we started getting from the apps we're using to get the support, which we'll talk about. and that started to give us a clear idea. We could put some money behind it. Then you have, you know, people wanted to kind of alter their state of mind and it's a newer product. There's a little bit of functional mushrooms in it. People who are dabbling in this area, we kind of played on that whole psychedelic vibe. If you see the can, you'll kind of be like, yep, like it looks like a psychedelic dream.

9:34So we did kind of pull on this. Are you willing to experiment angle? And those two things that performed in organic Applying some paid spend behind it's the smartest way forward. Yeah, love it. So testing with organic first, getting owned and earned media right, and then testing the angles before you even look at putting paid ads behind it. Because you have time and you have money. And you have to use these two resources very specifically. And if you come out with it like, look, I have some money. I saved some stuff up. You could probably go a little bit harder. but we knew what we had is we're we're at our core media people we're acquisition architects we know retention we know design so we knew our skills when it came to time to make some money with paid ads we could do it we just wanted to wait as long as we can to give ourselves a little bit of runway and make some cash with this love it so man you're really putting your strategies to the test on your own product now well it's true because look as i look at I love the paid media space.

10:38I love being on email. I love being an agency. But there's times where people are looking at you like, dude, if you're so good or if you believe in this, why don't you do it yourself? And I'm by no means doing everything in a breeze. I have my lane. I stay in my lane. But you have to be dangerous enough. And we talk about this too, which is why self-education is so important. You have to be dangerous enough to be able to speak to things or call bullshit on others so that you're not sitting here going like, yeah, sure. That sounds good to me. But you don't really know. and they're able to take your money, spend your money and not allocate it correctly.

11:07So when we're interviewing maybe a good email strategist or a different media buyer for a company, because we want the best of the best, they're not going to pull a fast one. And so that self-education, actually getting back in the trenches or answering these questions, it's super important. It kind of made me feel more excited about what's going on in our space, even with all the woe is me happening. Yeah. Yeah, because look, man, that's pretty impressive growth from like zero to basically a$10 million run rate in under 12 months. That's impressive, man. I hope we hit it this month. It'd be very special to hit a million dollars a month under 12 months.

11:46And we have March, April, we have two months. We basically have like one-ish months to do this. Yeah, man, you're going to smash it. So I'm curious, do you have more sympathy for your clients now? oh my god more so of app it i feel bad like physical products are not easy drinks heavy product are not easy like this is the thing that i had no it's even even though when you do great onboarding you ask the right questions man to have text messages and like if i'm looking at my customer support channel and hearing just people go like hey this product came in there's a dent on it i don't want it anymore but yet they can't ship it back because it's just like a heavy product that there's just a little things of cash or how do we get real live ingredients at the right time like i have a lot more sympathy for these people because they have to deal with so many things that we as the paid media agency or retention agency don't even have to touch yeah so i'm curious let's get into the nitty-gritty so okay worked out you worked out some solid angles and what was next like how many creative what does it look like talk us through that because you're only marketing to the american market as well right usually a lot of your clients typically would go worldwide like you've got you've got a bigger you got a bigger demo like is this a fairly niche product like talk us through how you approached the advertising you need to meet a deeper level so specifically for our product we knew that we're going after um the sober the term is called the sober conscious so those that want an alternative to alcohol but they don't want to have alcohol which means two things when someone is compete when you're competing against alcohol you this is a religious behavior that they're partaking in on a consistent basis so there's an affinity that we have to change and they're consuming it so the the speaking to the feeling and the experience, which you'll see a lot of our founder, Aaron, talking about in a lot of our ads, is heavily the ads that are working the best is us explaining and talking about the camera phone to face.

13:53That's not the only ad, but that's the best performing ad on a consistent basis. So the amount of faces that we show, we have a pretty girl, we have a good looking guy, we have different ages speaking to when I consume this, it made me feel this specific way. And that feeling has been our best ad. So we have our top performing ads. We have 12 top performing ads. And of these ads, they're kind of, there's a variety. So we have a single advantage plus campaign, which nowadays, even when we talk about like simplicity in the ad account, that's something that we've really taken serious. And it's a lot of on the creative side of things.

14:29So we're currently in the process. We won't talk about like the problems and stuff we're going to. I'm sure you'll ask them that later on, but just looking at the ad account, it's very simplified in terms of one core campaign. It's an advantage plus campaign. And we have between eight to 12 ads. They're not all running, but they'll be turned on and off as they come. And the audience that we're targeting against is all broad and letting, again, letting what Facebook has told us to do time and time again, we're smart enough to figure it out. I didn't, I really didn't believe this post COVID, but what they've been working on, you could probably see why their stock is rising is outside of those last two weeks, which have been an absolute shocker.

15:08Like we literally yesterday or the day before yesterday, we got locked out and our team couldn't log into meta for a good four hours. Like it was shocking. Twitter was losing their mind. But when you actually go into the overall campaign build, it's the process of getting new content into there. And the easiest thing that we talk about is can I get an image with a bold text call out to showcase what problem that we're solving. Specifically for us is achieve the euphoric feeling without the downfall the next morning. And it's just a picture of the uniqueness of the can and a couple of the ingredients.

15:39That's as simple as that call it needs to be. And if that continues to perform, then we'll go make a couple of face to phone types of ads to speak straight to it. I think that's the best place for people to start because it's easy to get up and running it to can vote creation with bold text that's on brand and an image of the product. And then you go from there. Hey guys, I really hope you're feeling inspired from today's interview. Now the truth is all successful e-commerce founders started from zero with a spark of an idea and a whole lot of determination. But let's be real, building or growing an e-commerce business is no walk in the park.

16:17And that's where Founder Plus comes in, which I'm really excited to share with you. It's a culmination of a decade worth of work at Founder. So if you're feeling stuck in your e-commerce business, you're lacking confidence to move forward, or you're worried about making costly mistakes or not knowing how to grow your business, Founder Plus is here to support you on your journey. You get access to a customized learning pathway with proven frameworks from successful e-commerce founders for fast results, incredible programs, a supportive community, weekly live mentorship, exclusive savings on startup tools and 24-7 real human support.

16:52Try Founder Plus today for just$1 for seven days so you can accelerate your business goals. Visit founder.com forward slash start dollar trial or click the link in the description to claim your trial. All right, now let's jump back in the shot. Yeah, man. But I think the core of this, which is really cool and this kind of, now you're talking around your own brand and not just other clients is you start with the product first. You start with the niche first. You start with the problem first. I think so many people, they come into this space and they get so obsessed with Facebook ads isn't working or I've got to get Facebook ads right.

17:34But a lot of the time, the platform will do a lot of the heavy lifting for you if you get the product and the offer and the positioning and the messaging right and then all the ads does is accelerate it and we're seeing that right now like you've got that it's so true well it's it's in you forget like there was a time in this space where you can get anything up running and making like i've said this a couple times before there's no reason why i should launch a fidget spinner at the time i did and make as much money as i did that wasn't a company that was a widget that i I got very lucky because the timing made sense.

18:10Right here, if you look at what we're building, there's a moment around conscious consumption of what's going on. Okay, focus on a quality product that serves a specific industry. And then let's just make sure as many messages as we can to get out there. And so even beyond the ads, let's take the landing page that comes into it next. Five reasons why alcohol is tearing away your life. That's a great landing page. That's an incredible, strong stance. And then we list out the reasons why that you shouldn't be consuming this or five reasons why to switch up your consumption behavior. Those are the secondary pages that we can get more education on.

18:46And we, you and I would call this a pre-sell, but it's just further information for them to understand, hmm, maybe this thing is for me. Cause the job of the ad is to earn that click. The rest of the education should happen on the page after. And hopefully they feel good enough to actually start buying something that they're going to put in their mouth. That's, and you have to remember that like these people consume this. If you look at some of these reviews, it's like, I'm a six foot five male. I drink two of these and I'm sitting down having a good time. Then you have another post of, I'm a five foot three, 45 year old woman, and I can only have a half of one.

19:18There's such a different experience that you have to kind of start creating against. And I'm curious as well, right? Like when you run ads, are you running it straight to the store or it's a funnel? Well, for us, because of our space, we aren't able, like there's a lot of gray around what we're able to do because technically, even though we're federally legal and we're approved to run these stuff across America, these platforms, Google and Meta specifically, TikTok is not okay with any of this. Twitter, they don't give a shit. Twitter, you can put anything you want on Twitter, they'll take it, or X.

19:51But Meta, you can only run hemp and that has to be basically two to three clicks before you can get to an ability to purchase. So we don't have a choice. So we have to run directly to a funnel. Yeah. Got you, got you, got you, got you, got you. So you are not running your typical direct response ads even. So it's even harder. I'm telling you, it's like, what is the, there's two ways of thinking about this. What is the hardest industry that you should get into for you to find success? And that was a big bet on Aaron's ability to navigate this and our ability to convert people into subscribers. and as of last month we do a quarter of a million dollars in subscriber revenue on a monthly basis which means what product is incredible which means that people are staying two to four months paying us to consume this product on a bi-weekly subscription not a monthly a bi-weekly and so when you see this stuff you're like oh my god this is a moment this is something real and so we're talking about like how do you spend money like this?

20:57It's very easy to spend money when it's not yours. When you don't have to look at it, like it's very easy to distribute cash when it doesn't actually look at your bank. And when you're looking at it, you're like, how fast was my cash conversion cycle? How fast can I spend money to get enough money to pay for the inventory? And then it's a bunch of negotiation of terms. So I could spend, like this month we'll spend,

21:22we'll average$10 ,000 a day on Meta and we'll average between seven to$13 ,000 a day on TikTok. To know how much credit card debt pay down that we have to do on a consistent basis, that's enough to like give you, I have to drink my own product to calm down. Yeah, so you guys are spending 20, 25 grand a day. Oh yeah, and if we aren't losing our account, like we have some of these things back, where TikTok has gone some back and forth, I won't share too many details on this because I know it'll be a pretty big audience, but we will lose a TikTok shop page and that's like$12 ,000 a day until it gets back up.

21:56That's real. That's real issues. Yeah, wow. So that's really interesting. So yeah, you guys are spending quite a bit to acquire a customer. Our average CAC is$48 to$55 right now. Are you hesitating to take the next step in your e-commerce journey? Founder Plus has you covered with proven frameworks tailored to your business needs for fast results, a supportive community of over 30 ,000 like-minded entrepreneurs, and weekly live mentorship sessions, Founder Plus is your key to success. Try Founder Plus today for just$1 for seven days and start building your dream business with confidence. You can visit founder.com forward slash start dollar trial or click the link in the description to claim your trial.

22:42Do you know the guys at Javi Coffee? Of course. Yeah, the original founder start and scale fam, man. Brandon adjusted. We flew them down to Melbourne. They won our little founder, build your e-commerce store competition that we ran. They won. They smashed it. Yeah. The Javi boys, of course. So Brandon and I are great friends and Brandon is, they're big time, right? And so I got a report yesterday that TikTok gave like this top 10 beverages of revenue generated. Javi's nine, Breeze's 10. Oh, there you go. So I sent him a text. I sent him a text. It was like, hey, I'm coming for you. He's like, ah, let me check these numbers.

23:20and so we were going we were going at each other yesterday but it's pretty fun to play with it yeah that's crazy awesome so so that's okay so if you guys if you guys are really ramping spend then you guys will definitely smash the the million dollar month mark for sure i mean this is so my goal by that because my job is to focus like i'm corely focused currently on retention loyalty subscription how do we automate this stuff so my brain right now isn't even fully thinking about these paid ads because the paid ads is very simple. If we can get the content in there testing specifically, the hardest part is how fast we get content.

23:59How many pages can we get up and running that support, excuse me, that support the new content we're testing. But in terms of strategy in the account, there's not a lot of like, do these types of ad sets do this? It's simple as possible as can be. And it's just an emphasis on diversity of creative. So my brain right now is not even on this, how do I get new ad structures? It's more, how can I incentivize people to stay with us over periods of time? So I'm having to get negotiations of different types of koozies. Maybe I need to get a metal koozie to incentivize someone to go from subscription of one month to three months.

24:33So it's a very different shift in mind that I didn't have to have before. So you're thinking about premiums and all sorts of things. Got you. You're absolutely correct. Yep. Got you. Got you. Got you. And don't be afraid to start by screaming from your lungs, man. We just yell, yell, yell. And once you start tracking, being specific on the type of angle that's going to come out. Now, you're not just screaming about nothing, but you're screaming specifically to the who you think you can help with that great product of yours. And then you roll that into the paid ads, which is awesome. All right.

25:02So we have to move to the hot seat round. We have to work towards wrapping up, man. But before we do, I was going to say, is there anything that you'd like to share just around kind of anyone that wants to, you know, like how you market a product like, you know, CBD, THC, especially through ads or anything else, just rounding that out? What we would have done differently if I didn't have the background that we do, we're uniquely positioned to do well, is I would have spent more time on building out affiliate partnerships and SEO content to rank for these specifically. There's a lot of publications in this alternative CBD and THC space that are willing to sign affiliate deals at lower cost, but you have to work those relationships.

25:45So as you're developing the product, reaching out to the people at high times, reaching out to the people of CBD plus, reaching out to these publications that need content and partnerships. That's something we're actually like really, really late on. And so we're going to be building a lot more processes around it. Start there before you get into the paid side because paid side will take you time, especially around regulation. All right. So let's move to the hot seat, man. What e-commerce tools are you using daily in your business? okay so on subscription we use stay.ai on customer support we're using gorgeous but we might be changing into um a different one we use after sell for all of our upsells and post-purchase upsells uh i those guys are great they have another cart one too we use social snowball for our affiliates we use lifetimely and triple whale just to kind of get the analytics and reporting where everything is done in slack and then we have obviously meta meta google and then we're dabbling around some content organization with a tool called air and then we're doing a lot of refining from an app called foreplay where we're able to like save links and share some new stuff love it and then obviously shopify to power correct shopify to power and then motion analytics to pull some reports on creative.

27:07Got you. Ah, motion analytics. Okay, awesome. Yeah, I've seen that tool around. Done. All right. What's the biggest challenge you're facing in e-commerce right now? Product diversity and launch of new products. We came out with a single SKU and building that behavior of like, when you have only one product to really sell, it really depends on how creative we can be around the angles of selling that single product. Sometimes I wish we had three or four different types of products so we can kind of rotate the lion's share of what we're selling. So I wish we had a better process or I think we need to get better at a better process of product launch because it'll bring more customers back.