638: (Solo) How I'd Launch an Ecom Brand in 2026 with $10K and Zero Followers

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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. hey founder fam nathan here and welcome back to another episode of the founder podcast and today i want to do something a little different something super practical especially if you're just getting started with e-com so at founder you know we're an education company we produce a lot of content we have a coaching arm of our business as well and first and foremost we've helped thousands and thousands of e-com, DTC brands start and scale their businesses from scratch. And one thing I'm often asked is how do you get into scaling your business when you only have a small amount of cash?

1:23Like how do you actually get started? So if I were to start a brand new business tomorrow with no audience and just a$10 ,000 budget, here are the strategic moves that I'd make to actually scale. This is what I've done before when I launched Healthish. I got that business to a million dollars a year at close to 40 % net margins. It was a great business. And this is exactly what I would do. This is what I've seen successful brands do within the founder ecosystem.

1:51Nathan Chan:Hear the stories, learn the proven methods and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder Podcast with Nathan Chan.

2:05so first and foremost i would start with a high margin product and now your unit economics one thing i see is a lot of founders they fall in love with their brand idea and their product idea and i have this saying where they tattoo their business idea to themselves onto their arm and they just want to hold on to it and they feel so kind of like yes that's mine this is what i've got to do And this is, you know, I can't do anything else because I've got to protect it. And, you know, this is what I've worked out. And I like the thought of actually having to do something else or the thought of it not being the right thing just kind of freaks people out.

2:43Right. And it's kind of crazy because at the end of the day, there are so many different products you can launch. There's so many businesses you can launch. And the thing with e-com and physical products that I've found is the best businesses, they have great unit economics. And the ones that especially grow really fast, you know, you've got at least a 70%, you know, ideally 80 % gross margin if possible. Like the healthish water bottle, it costs$2 US to produce and we're selling it for like 25 to 30 US dollars. It allowed us to do free shipping, no minimum order. That's why we had like over a 5 % conversion rate.

3:22And you want to really make sure that you've got a decent AOV on your product. With Halstice, that was probably a mistake I made. Our AOV wasn't high enough, but we worked out how to get it higher. So you really want to make sure you've got a good markup, ideally three times more on your cost of goods. You've got a target gross margin of at least 70%. And, you know, ideally the product is lightweight and easy to ship. If I think of one of our students, Michael Foreshaw, he's a founder of Breath Sleep Tape. And that's products lightweight, easy to ship, low cost to produce, high perceived value, really, really good margins.

3:59You have some buffer to use with Facebook ads and paid advertising and all that kind of stuff. But then not only that, which brings me to our next piece of the puzzle, I'd allocate a few thousand dollars to sending to influencers. And if your product's lightweight, easy to ship, low cost to produce, then you can actually send it to influencers. So I put like two and a half grand into influencer seeding, like gifting the product to 50 to a hundred nano and micro influencers that have less than 50 ,000 followers. I get them to create content. The more UGC content I can create, the better. And really, if I can get like organic shout out.

4:34So the key here is the tight targeting. You know, I'm not just sending freebies to anyone. I'm researching influencers who genuinely align with the brand. And this is a strategy that I use to build Healthish, right? And I stand by today. Like at peak, we do like send outs of like 400 plus bottles a month. And we were able to afford that because the product was lightweight, easy to ship, low cost to produce. So we just baked that into our budget. I'd invest probably about$500 into AI tools to run lean. The tools that I personally use would be Manus for helping with writing emails, copy, all of that good stuff.

5:09Chat GPT for brainstorming. Notion AI is my second brain. Triple whale starter plan. If you're running meta ads, this gives you just a lot more visibility. Canva Pro, honestly, like it's just next level for creating templates for social posts, graphics, product mockups, all that kind of stuff. And then maybe at Ad Creative AI, just for creating high converting ad visuals really quickly. So if you're running meta or TikTok ads, you don't have to have a designer. And then I'd set aside at least$2 ,000 for paid ads for warm audiences and sales. I'd set aside at least$2 ,000 for paid ads testing for warm audiences and really kind of working on getting the messaging right.

5:48I'd also test as well organic in a big way to try and get that messaging, trying to get that UGC creative as well before I'd spend anything. And I'd test low-cost prospecting ads, try some different angles. You really try it. Like I remember with Healthish, one thing we found and we worked it out is the ads that work the best was when the content creator had the bottle held up very clearly that you can see the time indicators. So Healthish was a time marked water bottle and it told you when to drink. And it was two sides of the bottle, one side of the morning and then one side after lunch. And it was a one liter bottle.

6:23So if you drank it two times a day, two full bottles, then that means you'd get your daily intake needed because you need to drink two liters of water a day they say to not be dehydrated and so i found that certain pieces of content that actually showed the clear value proposition of the product was ones that converted so i try and test as well try different angles try and test with different content from creators and i'll be doing retargeting to people from my site and i'm not looking for like crazy 10x roas on day one i just want to know what angles what content what What is the offer that really gets people excited?

6:58And then I'd spend, you know,$1 ,000 on a great landing page and an email flow. So forget about kind of like building out a huge, crazy website. Like, yes, I'd have my basic Shopify store that's set up, but I'd have one strong product landing page using a tool like Unbounce or ClickFunnels or Shogun. We used to use Shogun. Great tool. And this is as well, your own traffic engine. And then I'd have like a three-part welcome flow, build all that out. And then really make sure I've got a solid landing page that I'm testing, tracking, because I want to send ads to my landing page. And then the remaining$2 ,000, I'd keep it as learning, right?

7:34Emergency fund, additional product inventory if needed, unexpected wins to scale up, and working with like any creators that we've gifted where we've seen them blown up. And then we can pay them to do a feed post or something like that. So guys, that is how I do it. ten thousand dollars zero followers obviously worked out my product and that's my plan data tools momentum content creation this is how modern econ brands are built using ai and we help you do that throughout founder plus throughout our coaching programs if you are looking for help sign up to our one dollar trial you're going to founder.com forward slash membership we'll take you through all the systems processes we've broken it all down for you and if you are looking for coaching.

8:17You'll find out more there as well. One-on-one coaching, group coaching, you name it. We are here to help. All right, guys, that's it from me. I hope you enjoyed this episode. And as always, I'm loving your DMs. Shoot me a DM. Let me know you're loving it. And we'll keep putting these out. Really, really helpful. All right. I'll speak to you soon. Ciao.