#411 – The Key To Explosive Sales In TikTok Shop with Josh Coleman
Join us as we welcome Josh Coleman, a Helium 10 Elite member, who shares his inspiring journey of launching and growing his brand on TikTok. After attending a Helium 10 Elite workshop in late 2023, Josh and his wife decided to experiment with TikTok, drawing from their unique blend of design and data-driven strategies. Listen in as Josh discusses how his passion for analytics helped him understand their audience better and the collaborative dynamic with his wife that propelled their brand to success.
We also explore the experiences of a couple who transitioned to full-time e-commerce with Amazon in late 2022, achieving seven-figure revenue within a year despite having no prior experience. Their story highlights the importance of focusing on building a brand and audience, navigating supply chain challenges, and understanding the difference between revenue and profit. Additionally, we discuss the misleading promises of easy success in e-commerce and the evolving complexities of the industry.
Finally, the episode touches on maximizing sales across multiple platforms, emphasizing the value of learning from those with practical experience. We discuss the impact of TikTok Shop, the strategic alliance between Amazon and TikTok, and the growing influence of influencer-driven sales. For those looking to transition from Amazon to TikTok Shop, we offer practical steps and highlight the importance of having a hero product and effective inventory management. Join us for a comprehensive look at the future of e-commerce and influencer marketing, and discover how you can stay ahead in this dynamic landscape.
In episode 411 of the AM/PM Podcast, Kevin and Josh discuss:
- 00:00 – TikTok Sales Boost E-commerce Business
- 03:51 – Helium 10 Elite Workshop To TikTok Success
- 08:09 – Building a Successful Amazon Business
- 13:57 – Long-Term Strategy for Amazon Business
- 15:58 – Maximizing Sales Across Multiple Platforms
- 20:50 – Comparing TikTok and Amazon Sales
- 32:48 – TikTok Influencers Boost Amazon Sales
- 35:43 – Maximizing TikTok Shop With Creators
- 42:24 – TikTok Creators and Agency Partnerships
- 45:01 – Leveraging Influencer Agencies Strategically
- 47:47 – Optimizing Hero Products for TikTok
- 51:27 – Future of E-Commerce and Influencer Marketing
- 56:18 – How To Get In Touch With Josh Coleman
- 58:36 – Kevin King’s Words Of Wisdom
Transcript
Kevin King:
Welcome to episode 411 of the AMPM podcast. This week, my guest is Josh Coleman. Josh is a Helium 10 Elite member that came to a Helium 10 Elite quarterly meetup in the fourth quarter of 2023, heard one of the speakers talking about how she’s crushing it on TikTok, doing seven figures a month in TikTok sales and it’s helping her Amazon business as well. Came home within a few weeks, launched on TikTok and now he and his wife are doing exceptionally well with their brand on TikTok. We talked about that journey and what you need to do and how you can succeed when it comes to selling on TikTok shop. Enjoy this episode with Josh. Hey, what’s up everybody? Kevin King here, you know one of the number one questions I get is how can you connect to me? How can I, Kevin, get some advice or speak with you or learn more from you? The best way is with Helium 10 Elite. If you go to h10.me/elite, you can get all the information and sign up for Helium 10 Elite. Every month I lead advanced training where I do seven ninja hacks. We also have live masterminds every single week. One of those weeks I jump on for a couple hours and we talk shop, we talk business, do in-person events. Helium 10 Elite is where you want to be. It’s only $99 extra on your Helium 10 membership. It’s h10.me/elite. Go check it out and I hope to see you there. We’ve got an amazing guest today. Josh Coleman is on the AMPM podcast. How are you doing, josh?
Josh:
I’m good, Kevin, how are you doing?
Kevin King:
I’m alive and kicking man. I’m just just got back from my CMS train trip through the Canadian Rockies, and you know, August and September in Austin, Texas is bloody freaking hot, so I’m looking for more excuses to get the heck out of town. You know I came to know you through the Helium 10 Elite those of you that are listening you know this podcast is put out by Helium 10. And you know I do the Freedom Ticket course, but also Helium 10 Elite is something that’s been around since. Just to give a little background for those of you listening since 2017, it started out as called the Illuminati Mastermind. February of 2017, I remember it was Manny Coats and Guillermo, the two original founders of Helium 10, came to me and said, hey, we want to do this $400 a month mastermind and bring in all these tactics and crazy stuff and show people how to just blow up their business. So we did that and we still have great stuff. It ended up being changed to the name to Helium 10 Elite in 2019, shortly before they exited the company, and now it’s still going as Helium 10 Elite, so you can pay an extra little bit on your membership. It’s the next level up and then you get a bunch of stuff. It’s not just the monthly training with me, but there’s weekly calls, there’s additional features and software tools and additional limits. It’s really cool, and so Josh is actually in the Helium 10 Elite and he was. It comes on a lot of the calls, at least the calls. I’m on a call once a month and we go for about two hours and they’re just basically masterminds, little brainstorming sessions and people helping each other out, and Josh is always on there delivering some value. So I said, hey, man, you got to come on the podcast and let’s try to help some folks out. So I’m glad you’re here.
Josh:
Hey, thanks a lot. Thanks for having me. And you know I know it’s not, it might be put on by Helium 10. I know it’s not necessarily like a a pitch for it, but look, the Helium 10 Elite group in general. My first Helium 10 Elite event was the day trip up to New York for the quarterly in person first time it was ever in New York and it was with Lizzy Elizabeth and learning. You know what opportunity laid it lied ahead in TikTok shop. So you know the rest is history in a lot of ways. It’s just fascinating how that kind of stuff comes together.
Kevin King:
Were you doing TikTok before you went to that event where Elizabeth talked about what she was cause she was saying, like laid it out, like here’s how I’m doing, what was she doing? Like a million dollars a month or something like that, or something crazy. So you weren’t doing any TikTok before that.
Josh:
We didn’t even have a TikTok. So my wife, you know, has built the brand from a design perspective and everything. So everything was her like idea and vision. And you know she pulled me in by saying you know, there’s tools like Helium 10 that you can do like tons of data analytics. And I was like, okay, I’m in, like I don’t know what that means, but I love math and data and everything I took math in school was a big nerd still am but really enjoyed that part of it. And so she would say I want to serve this audience. And then my role in working with her was to say, okay, well, here’s where this audience, in my opinion, based on the data, wants to be served right now. And she would be like, really, I feel like I want to do this first and I’m like, okay, but they don’t want that right now. So it was a good back and forth and so she started designing products and then we launched our first product on Amazon, basically July 1 of last year 2023. Yeah, 2023. And we had gotten into selling on Amazon because she found a course on Facebook that we can maybe come back to later. But it was basically leaving that, coming into Helium 10 Elite and being able to get hoped we’d be able to bring some value, but to get sharing with some of these people and seeing what they were up to. We wanted to expand off of Amazon because diversification in any business is paramount, adapting in any business is paramount, but you have to start somewhere. So we started on Amazon, had the biggest pool of customers, right, a lot of data, but we didn’t have a TikTok account or anything at that point, and so you know, I think we had a hundred followers by November 1st, right. So you know it was baby steps, it took a little time, but that was day one.
Kevin King:
Yeah, Because Elizabeth. So if you started selling in July of 2023, I think she spoke in what October at the Alibaba October yeah, so you got on it right away. You’re one of these that immediately implement. A lot of times, people hear stuff and they’re like that’s cool, but they don’t take action right away. So you took immediate action if you had a hundred followers by November, cool, but they don’t take action right away.
Josh:
So you took immediate action. If you had 100 followers by November, I was the person. So Jenna and I got married in Chicago in July 11th of 2008 and 7-11, easy to remember and it was actually the day the second iPhone was released. You can look back at dates in history and 7-11-08 was the second iPhone came out and I was in line in Chicago early.
Kevin King:
On your wedding day.
Josh:
Yep, early adopter. Well, I mean, let’s be real, Jenna was like you guys need to be dressed and ready by 3 o’clock in this place and I was like, okay, well, that means I need to start getting ready at like 2-15. So we were all just hanging out and so we went and waited in line and stuff. So it was just funny how, yes, I’ve always been like a tried to be an early adopter. You know, you could be first or you could be the best. Might as well just be first and be the best at it and then stay the best over time, instead of having to pick one. Be the best at it and then stay the best over time instead of having to pick one. So that was why we jumped on it. Not a lot of markets, I think, will just start from nothing, like TikTok shop did, and be able to have the success they had.
Kevin King:
Are you doing this you and your wife doing this full time now. Are you still working another?
Josh:
Yeah, I mean in terms of the time I spend in a day. Let’s say that you know there’s 40 hours in a day. You know I spend about 26.
Kevin King:
How do you get 40 hours in a day?
Josh:
I can’t tell you that.
Kevin King:
I need to know that hack I need to know that hack. Come on, Josh.
Josh:
This is definitely what I spend most of my time on and, frankly, it’s because it’s so enjoyable. So it’s definitely been a very different experience. This office did not used to have pink journals and leaf and stuff like that on the walls, but it’s awesome. I get to be home, I get to see my kids all the time, I get to be able to be present, and Jenna homeschools our kids as well, and so we actually get to be together and that’s all been a blast. So, yeah, it’s definitely our full-time thing.
Kevin King:
Were you in e-commerce before this, or are you doing something totally different?
Josh:
No, all totally different. I did not know anything about like the ins and outs of e-commerce, except how to buy things on Amazon.
Kevin King:
So your wife, stumbled across some sort of course or something wasn’t Helium 10, it was something else online and said hey, this looks like an opportunity. I’m homeschooling the kids. Can you give me something to do from home and you’re working another job. I’m assuming at that time and a lot of people would say this was just a little over a year ago a lot of people would say it’s too late to start Amazon now. There’s a lot of people out there that say, oh, you missed that. You missed it. You know you got to do something else, but you guys are some of the newer ones to it and you’re already. I think. You told me you’re going to be hitting seven figures this year.
Josh:
Yeah, and I think the key is and again, this is one of the things I’ll say a lot of people, I think, concern themselves with top line numbers and, while they can be helpful, we’ve already hit seven figures. But, as I try to remind people, in revenue it’s not like. Sometimes people are like oh yeah, I’m seven figures, but as I try to remind people in revenue, it’s not like. Sometimes people are like oh yeah, I’m seven figures. I’m like, okay, so let’s say, on Amazon you’re running maybe 15, 20% maybe especially. So you have to keep all that kind of stuff in context. So I always try to be careful when people are like, oh, yeah, revenue, it’s like, yeah, revenue is great, but revenue, my dad always used to tell me when I was a kid. He said you know, revenue doesn’t buy you coffee in the morning from Wawa. I don’t know, you guys in Texas, I don’t think, have Wawa, we have Buc-ee’s. Yeah, there you go, you have Buc-ee’s, which is like a mall, but um, but yeah. So she stumbled across the ad. Actually in September of 22 was when it kind of piqued her interest, right. So that was when it was like, oh, there’s, you know this Amazon thing and I think very quickly have learned that there’s a lot of groups out there selling the dream and selling the 1% as if it’s how it works for everybody, and I think that’s kind of a shame. And that’s, in a lot of ways, how it kind of worked out with us, because it was crazy to see the experience. Jenna jumped in, was trying to learn and she was really focused on, from day one, building a brand, building an audience that she wanted to serve and naturally, a lot of places target product research first, like find a keyword that that to me, on Amazon, has become much harder because China, the next day, will, will make that same thing that you made, that you’re doing well with, even if it doesn’t have a lot of competitors. You, a brand is actually value, a product is not. And so she was really focused on, like building the brand. And so then I was learning, like the supply chain, the manufacturing, the, you know, shipping, all these different things and this, this group that she had found, you know, had calls every day, which were some of the great things you know. They provided a lot of like information. So some of the conversation you know I was on and I was like no, that’s not a thing. Or like, oh no, it works out like this you do this and then you sell it and basically you buy three months of inventory and by the second month when you get it, your second month of sales pays you back and then you can make your next order from free cash flow. And I was like that’s not a thing, if it is. I’ll be welcome to be proven wrong, but that was you know. Look, that was sad because that’s out there. A lot of people are doing that and I think it actually is causing some of the challenges that I think are overblown in terms of like Amazon’s too hard to do now or that time has passed, type of thing. I think it’s really just the way that may have worked in like 19 and 20 or before. You can’t just say that that’s going to work for everybody that does it and they’re just going to look up some keywords and have a product manufactured and it’s just going to run on its own. That worries me.
Kevin King:
No, that model used to when I started selling around 2015 as an FBA. I’ve been selling since 2001 on Amazon. But the FBA model that most of us know 2015, and that was the way it basically worked, but it’s evolved now. It’s a long-term play. If you’re trying to quit your job or make a living out of this, good luck. It’s going to take a while. So a lot of people are like I want to quit my job next month. I’m going to start an Amazon business. Unless you’ve got a lot of money saved up in the bank to live off of, you’re not going to be taking anything else for a while. I mean, if you just need some weekend party money or some money for a vacation, you might be able to take a little bit out here or there. But if you’re going to try to live on and support a family, it’s building a brand and it’s a long-term play, especially in light of what’s going on with Shein and Timu and Amazon. It’s direct stuff that’s going on now, where they’re going to be shipping directly from China a lot of the lower-end commodity type of stuff. It’s going to put some people out of business. I think you’re going to see some big sellers that aren’t staying on top of this and aren’t adapting, going out of business, sellers that aren’t staying on top of this and aren’t adapting, going out of business. I know the group that you’re talking about, but you just any training that’s out there, no matter who it is, you got to make sure it’s current, and there’s so much misinformation on YouTube, so much stuff that’s old, that worked, like you said, five years ago, so you got to get your head down into it and learn. I mean what have you seen? Like is that why you guys kind of joined Helium 10 you were looking for something different Elite. I mean looking for something a little different a little bit more or what was it.
Josh:
So naturally we were like okay. Well what we really want is something where we can actually share you know back and forth because we were doing things from the beginning that we felt once we launched that were working really well and so we wanted to kind of see what people who had built beyond just Amazon had been doing and also learning from the people who had been doing it. You know, like you said, since you guys have been doing it in 15 and I know you did stuff before and like even the newsletter and the mailing list type of stuff that you guys did you know business is sale. Like in in a lot of ways, like there’s, there’s things are only so complicated right, we make them a lot more complicated sometimes, but at the end of the day, you know we’re trying to find people that had been there. When, when the coach slash teachers in a program don’t do what they’re teaching or coaching, really that’s hard to to like give them any credence, like, in other words, like I’ve listened to your stuff and Bradley stuff on Youtube and things like that, since we started even looking into this stuff for fun, like I would just watch and learn and listen and everything, and you have credibility because you actually do it, and that was really what was missing, and so we wanted to be able to be with a group that actually did it and I think that first meeting in October was why it became so fascinating, as it was like, yes, this type of thing, this is an action oriented. You know, yes, this type of thing, this is an action oriented. You know, I’ll never forget the picture of Lizzie with the, or Elizabeth with the uh USPS truck out front of her house, like loaded with stuff that she was shipping, like from her house, and she was, like you know, smiling with her husband or whatever in front of it. And when things started to pick up on TikTok shop, I was like, you know, Bradley, Bradley, will you try to get a picture like that, like I, like it was like a, you know, be able to, because it was a way, you know, to say thank you to the group, like I give complete credit to the, to the group being willing to share and things like that. And that was what we were looking for and and and we found it and you know we’re excited about it. It’s been fun.
Kevin King:
Is your background? Do you have a background in any marketing? Or you said you went to school and studied some psychology or philosophy or something, or what’s your background?
Josh:
Yeah, I studied finance, but I took math and philosophy for fun, I don’t know why. I just liked learning and continue to and met my wife at school at Villanova, and then she got her master’s in education, her master’s in business, and she’s far more educated than me, but that was our background. She did marketing, then went back and got her master’s and her master’s of education and then began teaching. She was in her student teaching actually when we got pregnant with well, she got pregnant with our twins, and so that was in, you know, 2011. And so that we decided, right after we had the kids, to move across the country with four month olds, just for, you know, a fun challenge. But we moved back to the East Coast at that time. And, yeah, so my background has been in all sorts of different types of businesses, but one thing that I’ve seen from all of them is when you are a solution oriented provider and you actually are providing value, and then you have a group of people or an audience that you’re providing value to, that’s kind of step one. And then step two is to have people who are kind of singing your praises is maybe too much, but who are willing to share right In a lot of industries they call it salespeople people, right, but like that’s what sales? Everyone is in sales, whether you know in in some way. And that was what was missing from e-com for me is I was trying to find out where the sales people were in terms of like in a traditional industry, there’s still the guy that that does the sale or helps find the customer, or whatever. It was like business development, and that was what TikTok shop brought to the table. That, I think, totally changed the entire landscape of e-commerce is because they call it enlisted the army of people who had customers in a way. They didn’t sell anything yet, but they had customers these influencers and moms and different people who had followings.
Kevin King:
They had what you said earlier about the gurus teaching Amazon. They had trust, which is critical, and so a lot of people get into Amazon. Like you said, business is selling. If you can’t sell, you shouldn’t be in business, because by selling that doesn’t mean necessarily picking up the phone and calling someone trying to convince them to buy something. That’s one form of selling, but marketing and sales are two different things and a lot of people they get them mixed up or intertwined. But you’ve always got to be selling and a lot of people get into Amazon because they don’t like selling. They’re like I can just stick it up, I can do a little bit of marketing and create a pretty package and stuff like that and just stick it up. And Amazon’s got all the customers coming in. But it’s gotten to the point, like you said, where that model yes, the Cabin Zone has the customers coming in. It’s the shopping cart of choice. But you’ve got to sell people now, especially with how competitive it’s gotten and with the tighter margins, and TikTok has become the number one place to do that. I mean, I saw some figure. I think TikTok did $15 billion in sales last year through TikTok shop, which is a significant amount of money, but that’s not pocket change. But let’s put that in perspective. Amazon did that in two days in prime day, yeah. So, yeah, so that that’s still peanuts compared to what what Amazon can do. But TikTok is growing, but how much we don’t know exactly. Nobody I don’t think anybody’s even estimated. I have to go like actually, look, now you got me curious. Is someone estimated what that? Okay, 15 million was on TikTok and TikTok shop, but how much was on Amazon or on Shopify, by someone seeing it on TikTok and going and buying it? You know, a lot of people will probably talk about this in a minute, but a lot of people say the flywheel on TikTok is not TikTok shop, it’s 70, 80, 90% of the sales are happening on Amazon. So you might be able to say you know safely to say that that 15 million that was on TikTok shop might be another 30 or 40 or sorry, not million billion another 30 or 40 or maybe 50 billion on Amazon as a result of TikTok. I don’t know, but it’s got to be somewhere in that range.
Josh:
It definitely has a flywheel effect in a big way. And what we’ve done and what I would encourage people to look into, is like, when you have something like that, that you know margins are better, all these different things are are better, instead of you know, finding ways to just, uh, oh, look, you know, I, I don’t want to do as much like samples or I want to have lower commission, I just want to like take in that profitability. You know from your experience. You know adapt or die. So it was driving traffic to our website, it was driving traffic to our Amazon. So what we did is take the really high margins that were available, especially in the beginning in TikTok shop, and basically just invested them into Meta, the website, Amazon, real content that helps conversion and helps validate again higher priced product, because our product is almost double any of our competitors on Amazon, if you can call them competitors. But that’s a big thing is you have to have that brand growth, because TikTok shop is again only one leg of the table right. So you gotta like take advantages when one is strong man. I’ve always been of the mind that expand that and take advantage of it while it’s there, because you know it’s not, it’s not all, nothing’s gonna be so good forever. It’s always going to have to come back to earth at some point. And so, yeah, we tried to really take advantage of that and drive traffic and learn on Meta to where Meta alone could be a standalone profit center for us. And what we found now is fascinating. Kevin, we didn’t have any dip in TikTok shop sales during Prime Day and we didn’t have any dip in Amazon sales when TikTok shop had their deals for you days promotion. And we’re running like back to school sale right now and Amazon doesn’t have anything and TikTok shop doesn’t have anything. And I was looking at it today and both of them are business as usual. It is all different. It’s fascinating how these are really just different pockets of shoppers. As much as anything else. It’s not just the same shopper that’s going to shop you on all platforms. It’s really different groups of people. They may see you on multiple or they may trust a platform more.
Kevin King:
People live on typically live on one or two social media platforms. They may have accounts on all the top 10, but you know, I don’t know last time. I have a Twitter account, but I can’t remember the last time I went to Twitter.
Josh:
I did last night to watch the, to listen to the interview.
Kevin King:
Or I might have. Yeah, someone links me over there or something, but I don’t. It’s not like a first place, but I go to TikTok for entertainment or for just if I want to chill or can’t sleep at night or something. I just need 20 minutes of something to take my mind from wondering or whatever it’s, instead of turning on the TV. It’s a play on my phone for 20 minutes. Just I want to clarify something. When you said you took all these margins, it’s not so much that the margin is necessarily higher on TikTok. I think what you’re referring to is in the beginning. TikTok was subsidizing, where they were actually reimbursing you for shipping and they had reduced their commissions dramatically. And so is that what you meant when you had those higher margins? I just want to clarify that, for people?
Josh:
No, that’s a great question or clarification. So that was why I was saying yeah, they were temporary too is any logical business person has to understand. There’s no way they were just going to willingly lose money forever. But their investment in finding sellers again, investment in sales was to find brands that would come onto the platform, and one way they did it was provide shipping subsidies and lower platform fees. The fees were 2% when we started and they gave at least six months notice of when they were going up. But that six-month period of time, you know, at 2% and shipping subsidies, the margin is there. Now, when we do cash flow projections and things, they do a good job in reporting of showing you where some of those subsidies and TikTok-funded things are and you can easily just back those out so you can get numbers that are more realistic in terms of those net cash flows going forward. Right, because, like I said, revenue is like you know, that doesn’t get you any breakfast or anything. Revenue just is ego as much as anything else. It’s obviously important. You have to have revenue, but you know there’s a lot of businesses that have a ton of revenue and lose a lot of money.
Kevin King:
Yeah, I know a lot of seven, seven figure sellers that don’t have two nickels to rub together. So, yeah, don’t get misled by by that there’s. There’s people that do half a million dollars a year in gross sales, that are living a comfortable life and there’s people that are doing a hundred million dollars in gross sales that are stressed to the nines.
Josh:
Yeah, absolutely.
Kevin King:
So what do you think it is about inspire and they still have inspire. It just has not taken off. You know, it’s kind of like a Instagram slash, TikTok kind of a mesh up, and they just haven’t gotten it to get some legs and so, as a result, they’re like, okay TikTok’s got this cover, throw in the towel, let’s join them. And just recently, TikTok and Amazon joined up to where you’re going to be able to connect your two accounts and actually order within certain categories. Initially, I’ll probably expand out to everything, but in certain categories initially order within the TikTok app. And TikTok also knows that. Hey, some people are like why would they do that? They have TikTok shop, don’t? They want to get that commissions, but they don’t care where they make the money. They can make it off advertising, they’ll make money either way. And they know, just like what we were just saying, that some percentage, whatever it is 70, 80% of the people don’t go to TikTok shop. They go to Amazon to find the product. So they’re like why don’t we take that too? Exactly, make it a little easier. It’s just super smart business and for both sides. What’s your opinion on what’s happening there and what? Where do you see this going and how do you think it’s going to affect everything, especially in your business?
Josh:
Yeah, no, it’s a good question and, frankly, we’re all on the same page here. That these are hypothesis, you know type responses. I obviously don’t have any special information and I never really like to trust people who say that they have all of the special information, right. But uh, in terms of that decision by TikTok shop, I thought it was brilliant. And for Amazon, I think you know the the good thing there is it is a little bit of a win-win because their influencer program struggles, right, naturally, it just struggles to really pick up, and that’s because people on Amazon know what they’re shopping for. And a lot of times people that are on TikTok don’t know that they’re like don’t know they’re not even shopping really, they’re looking at something or whatever. They’re gone there for entertainment. The fact that there is shopping and everything like that it’s not there to trick them. It’s just the people who are on the platform are on there for a different reason, like I don’t necessarily up. The only time I really like pull up Amazon as a shopper and browse is like Black Friday or day like special deals, where it’s like hey, you know, I was looking for that, you know, solar battery for the camping trips and like let’s see if those types of things are on. Like that’s the only type of time I necessarily like browse I usually am shopping for something, whereas on TikTok shop it’s not the case. So I think it was smart for Amazon to do what they did. I think that if you look at TikTok, TikTok business or TikTok ads for business has been around since way before TikTok shop and as a separate team entirely. So, like our reps at TikTok, we have an account rep, a fulfilled by TikTok rep specialist, like their inventory and logistics. We have an ad specialist. Okay, and then an influencer specialist. So if you look at that, the ad specialists in a different profit center, entire, like they have no insight into the shop and vice versa. Because the ads people you can run insight into the shop and vice versa. Because the ads people you can run, you can use videos or content that you have permission for or that you create for shop, like TikTok shop ads, send them to your website, do an email collection campaigns and now you’ll be able to purchase, you know, from Amazon in app, as an example, TikTok for business, the ads. That’s a really smart idea if you’re TikTok, because Amazon is kind of white flagging a little bit that they recognize they’re not just going to go build an influencer hangout that people are going to want to be on. So you can’t beat them. Join them.
Kevin King:
There’s a lot of speculation now, too, that this might be a first move. I don’t know if this is. This is pure speculation by some people not necessarily my opinion but they think that this might be a move where Amazon might be the one that ends up buying TikTok. If you know, because of the issues that are going on and I, with TikTok getting banned in the US, you know that’s probably still a ways out. There’s going to be some court battles on some of that, but we’ll have to see how that shakes out. But that’s some people’s thoughts is it might be a move in that direction.
Josh:
So, and I would say that there’s no chance it happens, which means probably 80, 20, it does Right. So that’s the thing is. It’s a fascinating thing that’s out there. I think that anything is possible, obviously, that goes without saying. But that’s what’s so fascinating about this industry is, if you’re totally focused on the brand like I kind of had said in the beginning, that you really need to be focused on who you’re serving and then meet them where they’re at, serve them with what they’re looking for at the time, if you have your eye off the, where is the customer that you’re saying you want to serve, that you’re researching how to serve them best, the where is that customer located? Think about how much that’s changed since you started and now, even in the past two years, if your not, you know, ear to the ground, you got to be at least researching constantly with all these different things going on, because if someone could predict it how it was all going to shake out, they would.
Kevin King:
You look at like the Ninja, what’s the slurpy machine? I think it’s something it’s like a 300, it’s 299 slurpy machine by Ninja. You know the guys that do the blenders and all that kind of stuff. It was sitting on Amazon for a while and just doing okay, it’s a 300 item, expensive item and you know they’re doing their advertising, their PPC they’re rocking along. They went on. I don’t know if they instigated it or if it happened organically, but some TikTok people’s creators started picking up on it and started pushing it and they can’t keep the damn thing in stock now and that’s a $300 item. So TikTok is not just $5 combs and brushes and little makeup things, it’s moving the needle on expensive stuff too.
Josh:
Yeah, and actually they’re moving to this new model at the end of August called co-funded free shipping, where they’re going to give the customers free shipping but it’s going to be co-funded means you fund it and they help a little bit but the point is for Amazon but basically that the if you have FBT right, if you have warehousing with them, it’s far better. You get a much more advantageous deal on the economic side of things. But the threshold is now a minimum of $30. Right now it’s $20. It’s going up to $30. I think, looking at the Shein, you know Timu type kind of situations and saying like you know what I would say there’s probably plenty of data that would show that people make large purchases like single item large purchases because remember when you’re buying it from a video it’s usually not going to that storefront and seeing what else they have and all that kind of stuff. It’s usually you’re buying whatever is in that video, like that Slurpee machine, for example, in a one-click type of fashion. $30 and up to have that free shipping type of thing. That’s a much higher minimum than I think people would have expected and to me it’s just a response to what they’re seeing other competitors do. They’re trying to go down market. TikTok, I think, is seeing opportunity in higher priced individual items.
Kevin King:
What type of commissions are you seeing right now? I mean, I know everybody’s. Always I see a lot of people that get even in the Helium 10 Elite. They get stingy sometimes, like I don’t want to give away more than 10, 15%, I’ll give away my Amazon referral commission. But sometimes I think people don’t think outside the box enough and like sometimes it’s worth giving away a 30 or 40, 50% commission, especially at a launch. Can you talk about what you would recommend and how people should actually look at rewarding these TikTok creators?
Josh:
Yeah, and so I think that was where maybe my previous backgrounds drove how I looked at the economics with those. Because look, in a lot of businesses, salespeople make a pretty healthy portion. In my opinion. Any business I was ever a part of, I hoped our top salespeople made more than all the management, right, because if they were crushing it, everybody else was happy right, like the company was doing well. So my biggest thing upfront with we were trying to just have the thing that made us different was over communication with our creators, right. So when we first would work with them and we were launching product, you know, we had a 30% commission typically for our products. We had a 30% commission typically for our products and we would tell them if someone created a video and it started to get some views and started to get sales and everything, the ones that did a larger amount of sales we would start a direct one-on-one relationship with. And we were very clear with them that hey, look, the reason this works like this is because TikTok’s not charging as the platform fees, like we all know they will like all of these things, and so we just always try to keep it heads up that, like we know, those things will change. You have to understand going in like full transparency, like we can’t sustain this type of payout forever, but it’s very important for us when launching a product and things. So we were always very open with them. And then one thing we did is we looked at the sales that were attributed to their organic content versus the sales that were attributed to ads that we ran on their content, and we would actually pay them the difference early on because TikTok shop’s attribution was having a huge problem. And so it would say, like this one creator one time was like oh, it says I got two sales last week and I was like okay, well, it says we had 32 from your video, right? So, in other words, the attribution was kind of, and so that little bit, though in the beginning, has gone a long way because creators that you know still work with us. That really, you know. They like Jen they know when I’m talking because it’s like four word answers, but like they love Jen because, look, that was huge for her. She was all about like making sure everyone knew everything was out on the table. I think it goes all the way back to the courses that are out there that people are teaching and everything that it always feels like a gotcha, like, oh, there’s that $40,000 expense, I didn’t. It’s like one of those like, oh, there’s this expense, there’s this expense. I think in a lot of ways the people who got cheap, it’s all relative, because if they went from 30 to 20, but didn’t communicate it, people posted like hate speech on them sometimes because they were like this brand is just all about the money, like they don’t care about. And if you went from 15 to 12, but but we’re fully communicative, upfront way before, no problems. So on our better selling products, like one of our products that sold 35,000 units, like on TikTok shop this year since January. That one is 10%, so it’s lower now. But we have a group of creators that’s been with us really since the beginning that we honor those original commissions for and we view it at the end of the day as like that we gave them our word what we would keep their commission at, and so we have. When we launch new products. We typically start out around 30. We usually start out around 20, an open plan that anyone can sign up for, but then we start sending targeted invites to creators in our in our niche or whatever, for 30%. That’s typically how we launch product at this point.
Kevin King:
So if I’m I’m listening to this and I’ve been selling on Amazon, I’m one of these all right, I was waiting for TikTok to fix all the problems. I’m now. I just heard what you said. I’m going to go ahead and get started, because I think I’m missing the boat. What do I do? I sign up for a TikTok account. If you’re selling in the US, you got to be US-based or US-based company. There’s some rules around that and, even though a lot of people don’t realize this, us is not TikTok’s biggest market. It’s Indonesia and Southeast Asia. It’s a much bigger market than here, but irregardless of that. So if you’re going to sell in the US, there’s some rules and requirements. But let’s go past that. Assume you’ve met all those. You can look those up if you’re listening. But what do I do next? I got my account set up. I have my products, I’m doing pretty good on Amazon. What do I do?
Josh:
Yeah, no, it’s a good question. I think the first thing nowadays is that, just like any it’s funny you said this in one of the first Helium 10 Elite things I was at said don’t just throw yourself around on different platforms, yourself around on different platforms. Each platform takes a unique investment of time usually most and money and making sure you know those two investments before you make them is really important and I think that target has moved since day one. Obviously with TikTok shop, where I would just be like get a shop, put the product up, start DMing creators right.
Kevin King:
So how do you? What does that mean? When you say, start DMing, Am I? If I’m selling, I’m selling soccer balls. I don’t know, I’m just making up something. What do I? Do I start looking for other, go into the TikTok creator center and start? Or do I go searching on my own, like find people who are soccer people or that fit my avatar? How do I do that?
Josh:
Yeah, you can basically search their creator library by demographics of their customer, of their viewers, and you can do all of those things. You can sort them by how much GMV or sales they’ve generated for brands. You can look at a lot of data. But I think now that all that data is there and there’s so many creators, people get way too in the weeds and get themselves hung up in that we have a creator that has 25,000 followers that has 11 million views on one of our videos. Right, like people are trying to like, oh, we want to see this much GMV. I think, really, the audience is most important. If you have like former soccer players or whatever it is right you can just search on TikTok, frankly, and then what I’ll do is I’ll search on TikTok for our really targeted ones and then I’ll look up to see if they’re in shop, because not everyone is a creator yet. Really, it’s crazy, some of the size influencers that I would define as influencers that aren’t even set up to be a creator yet they’re just influencers. They still do their paid collaboration type of thing, but they don’t have the ability to post product links in their videos because you have to go through a process on the creator side to do that. So some are just not there. So I look on TikTok in a lot of ways, but I think what’s changed the most is that a lot of the good creators have like the equivalent of like a lawyered up. They all have agents. Now, right, they all have agents and agencies that they’re working with who are bringing them brands and products to promote and even though they may make a little bit less commission than if they just field offers on their own, they’re getting. So, let’s say, TikTok shop sales have doubled first quarter versus fourth quarter last year. Let’s just make an assumption Fourth quarter last year they were X, now they’re double. The number of creators is like 10 to 100 X. So that increase in creators doesn’t equate to the increase in like sales. So all of the good, not all of the good ones, a lot of the good ones are with an agency and they can’t just go promote whatever the heck they want, and so making an investment in an agency that will help basically guarantee a certain amount of content made you’ll send samples out to 50 people or something like that, right, and have these things, have the videos made to really get a sense of what’s going on, kind of like the old giveaway method in Amazon or the price cut PPC top of the search launch in Amazon today. You could look at any of these things, but to me that’s the highest probability of success. Launching on TikTok shop is really getting picking a product, not 50, not 10. Shoot again you’re talking about. If you’re an Amazon seller already. I’d pick your hero product. I wouldn’t be trying to do this with all these different products. Pick one, you know. Get 50 videos out there from good creators through an agency or something like that. Make that investment upfront instead of death by a thousand cuts by. You know we see comments of like oh, I sent this to a creator and they didn’t make a video on it. So I’m filing a ticket with TikTok and I’m making sure that and I’m like yeah, you’re wasting your time, just move on. Like some people aren’t going to post the content. Like, just move on, get over it. Like it just is the way it is. That’s what I would tell someone. The way it is, that’s what I would tell someone. Make the investment upfront, get with an agency. We’re not one. So again, this isn’t like a plug, but we’re certainly not one. But now we’ve worked with four on different campaigns because they can do custom campaigns for you and you got to get a sense of what’s out there and then you can look at the data and then you can start to make database decisions on who you target.
Kevin King:
So the agency is picky on what they take. I mean because if I’m emailing, if I email a thousand creators, those thousand creators, like you said, their inboxes are flooded. So you standing out is a low percentage versus. They go to the agency. They probably are sending them something through WhatsApp or text and it’s going straight to them. They’re getting it, but these agencies aren’t just going to take anybody. So if I reach out to you I know there’s three or four you’ve mentioned them in Helium. If you’re a Helium 10 Elite member, we’re not going to give them to you here, because that’s for the Helium 10 Elite. Josh has actually said these are the ones you should use. So those of you that are listening to their Helium 10 Elite go back and listen to I think we talked about that last and in the July roundtable with myself. So go back and listen to that but you can do it and you can find a bunch. But so these agencies, though they’re not just going to take every time they gonna hear you, right, they’re being picky too.
Josh:
They’re being flooded, yeah I would say the things to look for are that $30 threshold right, because now, now that 30 threshold is going to become important, because a $28 item with $7 shipping is $35, $30 item with no shipping right. So you got to be able to do some math. I would really focus on a product that’s $30 or more and I would focus on a product that you have at least thousands of. If you have 500 of something and you’re trying to test the market and you give 50 to 75 away as giveaways and one person makes a successful video you’re out of stock immediately. So you got to be careful. They’ll take inventory first. Now a lot of the agencies. They want to know that you have 5,000 pieces of something so that if something was to go well, because even though they’re making some money up front, they’re getting a piece of the commission right. So they’re getting a piece of the commission, the creator’s getting the majority of the commission, but like they don’t do it for the flat fee up front, they do it for the commission too. So they want to see, you have inventory, and one of the companies that Elizabeth worked with was one of the first ones that we tried and they said no, in December. And they said you know you don’t have enough inventory. And I was like oh, wow, ouch. But like they were nice, but they were just like you just don’t have enough inventory. What if? And then that agency actually is one of the ones that we still work with and has been responsible for finding some of the better influencers that we work with.
Kevin King:
So you’re taking a risk they have their standards. If I’m going on TikTok and I don’t, because you don’t know what’s going to happen, and so I’ve got to take a financial risk with my factory and get an extra thousand, 5,000, whatever number of units. You said you sold 35,000 of all yours so far this year. And what if I put something out there and it just don’t work? Now I’m stuck with stuff. So I mean there’s a financial risk there. Is there ways to mitigate that at all or ways to leverage that? Or for someone listening, that’s why you say hero product and that’s kind of proven. Maybe that’s one of the reasons you’re emphasizing that.
Josh:
And the fact that it’s an Amazon seller that we’re talking to in that sense, because you know you can use your Amazon inventory to fulfill. You know you can do those types of things. So if you are, if you have a hero product at Amazon, most likely you have a good amount of supply there. Or you know, in today’s day and age with all their new fees, maybe you have it at an interim warehouse or something like that and you can fulfill it directly. But yeah, normally you don’t have to send that inventory to TikTok but just to have it. So that’s why I kind of say a hero product. I wouldn’t recommend someone test out the world of e-com by launching a product and ordering 500 units. That’s kind of my point with the whole TikTok shop thing is that would worry me, just because you got to look at the life cycle, how long it’s going to take you to ramp up manufacturing, whereas if you have a hero product on Amazon that you can test on TikTok shop, that you can make at least some investment in getting samples out there, through an agency perhaps, and you have inventory at Amazon or at a warehouse, or a lot of people that are bigger sellers that have hero products use like SKUdrop or something like. They have kind of like layered inventory for situations like this, and that’s how you, to me, set yourself up for success on TikTok shop. It’s not just throw it up there and get sales, even though it was at first.
Kevin King:
SKUdrop. For those of you listening, he just kind of threw that out there. SKUdrop is an Australian-based company Australian slash Singapore-based and what they do is they hold your inventory in warehouses in China and then they ship it across. They have weekly shipment so you can stage it. So instead of shipping everything here and having to pay higher rates, you can almost like do just in time and they’ve got a whole system. So it’s SKUdrop.com. If you want to take a look at them. They’re really good guys. I’m actually speaking. The owners of that company also do the Southern Seller Fest show. This year it’s in Singapore. So if you’re listening to this and you’re in Southeast Asia, I think it’s November 19th and 20th or 20th and 21st it’s second half of November. I’ll be over in Singapore. It’s being put on with Amazon and the guys from SKUdrop. So that’s a great resource that he just kind of casually dropped there. What is your opinion on where this is going with TikTok? Do you think it’s going to disappear in two years? Do you think someone’s going to come in and buy? Do you think it’s going to get dumbed way down and become a TikTok light, or what do you think is going to happen, and does it really even matter?
Josh:
I don’t think it matters. I think that influencer sales, creator driven sales will differentiate by saying people earning commissions, selling product on a platform like TikTok shop whether it’s called that or whatever it’s called, you know, shoot, whether Elon Musk buys, who knows? You know, that type of platform is the way that e-commerce will continue to evolve and things like live shopping and things like that that TikTok is going to continue to really push hard on is that they want to be ahead of the game because they have the right audience. So to me, where it’ll go is the audience of people that wants that type of experience as a buyer will only grow because why not I mean not get that, you know social proof and that validation of someone else using it. That’s like you. I think that products versus brands will do just fine on the traditional platforms, but I think you’ll see more of the mass production, a lot of competition from China type products on Amazon and products that really stand out or brands that stand out that might be more website-based. Now there’s plenty of brands that are website-based, that crush it, don’t even sell on Amazon. I think you’ll see brands like that sell on TikTok shop before they’ll ever go to Amazon, and so, whether it’s called that or whether it becomes multiple platforms like some of these other ones, there’s some that are being built. Some are out now because they’re calling different people who are now selling on TikTok shop saying hey, come sell over here. We’re going to build an influencer-based sales marketplace. That, to me, is the future. Whether it becomes part of Amazon because they buy it or whatever, I don’t think is actually even relevant. I want to be selling where creators are selling and where the target market that we have is hanging out.
Kevin King:
So you said you’re. I think if I do the math right, you have 13 year old twins., so I did them Okay.
Josh:
12. Yeah, you did the math right. They’re not born till the very end of the year, closer to the end of the year.
Kevin King:
So 12 and a half year old twins you’re homeschooling them. Is part of that curriculum how to be a creator, because so many of the kids at that age right now it’s not. I don’t want to be a doctor. I want to be a lawyer. I want to be an Instagram influencer or TikTok creator.
Josh:
So we’re big experiential parents in a lot of ways. We also have a 9-year-old too, just turned 9, and I’ll give you a little, a funny little. So when I was a kid, Pokémon cards were huge, right. So we figured out that they used to have those Holofoils in them, right, the like reflective. So we figured out that if we used an ammunition gram scale and weighed the pack, that we could tell which packs had those special cards in them. So we went to my dad. We were like I don’t even know how old, but we went to my dad and said, like we think we should buy, you know, bulk packs from the manufacturer at 275 and list them on eBay in sets of 10 and we can guarantee or money back the the stated odds for the pack. So in other words, we weren’t doing it and then selling 10 that didn’t have Holofoil. We were doing 10 pack of 10 for a hundred dollars and it was like three and 10 had odds of a Holofoil and we couldn’t tell which one was in there. Shoot, we might’ve sold somebody like the most you know worth, the most card ever, but like we did that and we were able to commit that they would get the odds that the that the manufacturer says are the odds. And then, basically, we did that and then, once we had, like, made the money back, then we were able to open all the other ones and then we like made a complete set and we did all these other things and it was a blast. But we were always like very experiential kids in terms of art, my parents, and then so we’ve been the same with our kids, and so, you know our daughter we let them be like pseudo creators and teach them how to do it, like they can use CapCut and these types of things, so much better than me. Oh my gosh, it’s hysterical. Like that, Kaylee, my daughter will come show me a video and I’ll be like, oh yeah, let me see, whoa, how did you do that? And so you know, they are learning it and I am always a big fan of learning things. Even if you learn that you don’t want to do it, at least you learn, you know, at least you were able to experience it. And so our youngest has no patience for anything like that per se, but my one of the twins loves to make highlight reels right of sports. My daughter makes these Cap Cut videos, and so they know that at a certain point they’re able to get faceless Instagram accounts to post what they’re passionate about. If nothing else, the main reason is to understand how that type of stuff works, but I think it’s a fantastic skill for kids to have to understand how it works, because how else are you going to do something that you haven’t ever done? It goes back to the most original thing. You want to have tried it or done it before you’re trying to tell everyone else how to do it.
Kevin King:
Well, josh, this has been great. We could keep talking for a while, and that’s what we do in the Helium 10 Elite. That’s why I wanted to have you on, because it’s always fun talking to you. You always add some good value. I appreciate you coming on here. If someone wanted to reach out to you or find out anything about you or follow you on somewhere, what would they do? Or do you just want to kind of in the dark shadows over there and just talk to the Helium 10 Elite?
Josh:
No, it’s Graceful by Design is the name of the brand, and when you message Graceful by Design on like Instagram or TikTok shop or Facebook or whatever, it comes to my wife or me, right, well, we don’t have like, nobody else gets that message. So if anyone has questions or whatever, we’re happy to at least, you know, try to try to help if, if we can because we, you know, we’ve always loved doing that wherever we can. So, yeah, those, those methods of contact are they only make it to us? So we don’t, you know, they don’t make it to like the fleet of customer service people that we don’t have.
Kevin King:
I appreciate it Josh, this has been great. We’ll talk to you. I guess on the next Helium 10 Elite.
Josh:
Uh, call sounds good, Kevin, thanks for having me man. It was nice chat.
Kevin King:
For those of you that are in Helium 10 Elite already, you know Josh. You know this is the type of stuff that we talk about in the weekly meetings and we share a lot of valuable information. As you can see, Josh is doing very well on TikTok, creating a brand with his wife, and that’s what Helium 10 Elite is all about is to help you take your business to that next level. It’s not the beginner stuff, it’s the next level. Once you’ve established and you’ve kind of got things rocking and rolling on Amazon, what do you do next to actually up your game? And that’s what Helium 10 Elite is all about. You know all about. Also is my newsletter, Billion Dollar Sellers. So if you’re not a subscriber, check out BillionDollarSellers.com. It’s a free newsletter that comes out every Monday and Thursday. It’s not some sort of marketing email with a bunch of spam. This is a newsletter with actionable tactics and the latest strategies on what’s working now on Amazon. So check out BillionDollarSellers.com. Also, next week in Austin I’m having my Market Masters Think Tank. We’ve got several of the Dream 100 will be there, several Helium 10 Elite members. We have people sitting in think tanks for two hours working directly on their business. It’s going to be some amazing stuff. You’ll probably see some posts and some comments about it, but it’s something you might want to consider down in the future or next year when the next one comes around Big difference maker in your business. Before I leave you today, I’ve got some parting words for you. One of the shows that I like to watch is America’s Got Talent, and a few years ago there was a young singer on there, a young girl named Nightbird, and she was fighting cancer and she’s since passed away. But she came on and sang a very beautiful song that she had written and in her little pre-interview before she actually sang with Simon Cowell, she said something that I’ll never forget, that I actually wrote down, and she said you can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore before you start living. You can’t wait until life isn’t difficult or hard anymore before you start living. So, hopefully, enjoy yourself, make the most of this world and those around you, and we’ll see you again next week.
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