He Lost 90% of His Revenue Overnight — Then Built an 8-Figure Brand

within 30 days were the number two seller in the entire category. There was a stationary brand that had gone viral on TikTok shop and so I was like, all right, God, that's my sign, thank you. I'll take it. What's unique about TikTok shop that I think anybody coming from the Amazon ecosystem needs to experience a massive mindset shift. The Amazon model is just like, it's breaking. The most valuable asset that I'm obtaining is these relationships with these creators. That's what the Chinese competitors, they can't replicate. Let's take our top selling, like, wedding designs, turn them into recipe cards, throw them up on Amazon and low in the hole, they sell out. There is not one single creator that we could find that was interested in your product. - What's up guys, welcome back to TikTok shop secrets. I am so so pumped today to have my good friend, Josh Hadley here. Thanks so much for being here, man. - Hey, Fernando, excited to be on your show. Last time you were on my show, so do the little podcast swap thing, I like it. - Exactly, yeah, I'm so excited. I think we both been in the Amazon e-commerce space for such a long time. And I think you bring a ton of great perspective. And so for everybody that doesn't know Josh, he's the founder and CEO of Hadley Designs. Today, figure e-commerce brand he built with his wife from a single product to over 1300 SKUs on a portfolio that's spanning everything from Amazon, Shopify and TikTok shop. He's also the host of the e-commerce breakthrough podcast where he interviews a ton of eight nine figure sellers and really kind of shows a lot of best practices on how to scale from like seven to eight figures. So thanks again, man, thanks again, man for being here. - Hey, excited to be here and shout out to what you're doing here on YouTube. One of the action items that I have for my team that works on TikTok shop is they are watching one of your YouTube videos every week, breaking it down and then saying, like how do we apply some of these things into what we're building here? So you're a wealth wisdom. - Thanks, man. Yeah, I appreciate that. That makes me a little bit more nervous now every time I record a video. But thank you. So yeah, man, like, why don't we start from the beginning? You know, you've obviously built how do you designs from a single product to like now an eight figure brand, which is, yeah, pretty amazing. Like I'm curious, like, what were you doing before and like kind of how did this brand end up starting? - Yeah, so I was the kid on the corner of the street with the candy stand growing up. Like from a young age, like there was just something in me where I just wanted to make money. I wanted to have my own business type of thing. My parents weren't entrepreneurs, but they were supportive of me, you know, always asking to go go to the store, go buy some candy. It was literally like, I'd be selling popsicles, snow cones, so to lemonade, like it wasn't just a lemonade stand. It was like, depends on the time of the year. I was like even selling Christmas ornaments and hot chocolate. So like that was my background growing up. Now, when I got to college, I had no idea what to major in. And I knew I loved business. And so I ended up studying finance for my undergrad, but still had like no idea of like who I was, like what type of job I should come out of school with. And so I ended up doing my MBA immediately following my undergrad because, hey, I had a pretty sweet gig as the co-chairman of the Utah Entrepreneur Series at the University of Utah. So it was like, it was kind of like a shark tank model, but only for like college students throughout the state of Utah. So I had like really good connections and it was a great thing. I had a scholarship as part of it. So I was like, let's keep this thing going. And I have no idea what I want to do for my career yet anyways. So let's hang out with more entrepreneurs. So thus I did my MBA and did that. Now let's fast forward. So between years one and two of my MBA, I interned at American Airlines in their MBA leadership development program. And I was like, okay, this is fun. This will allow me to see like different aspects of a big corporate business. And so I got a full time offer to come back and join them as soon as I graduated. So that's what moved us originally from Utah to Dallas, Texas. And that's currently where we're at now. And so really what's funny enough is like, as soon as I started with the American Airlines, like three months in, I was like, yeah, I'm not a corporate guy. There's this is not me. And so I was listening to a bunch of different podcasts, how to make money blah, blah, blah. At the time it was, you know, selling Amazon, FBA stuff, everybody was pitching those courses at the time. So I had tested out so many different products, but at the same time, my wife, like, 'cause we graduated at the same time, she came out of school and she studied early childhood education. And she's like, I don't wanna go back and be a preschool teacher. So, but I've always been interested in art and graphic design. Do you mind if I just like play around with that? So I was like, sure, go ahead. I've got a good paying job, like give it a year and let's see what happens. So she started designing custom wedding invitations for people. And, you know, long story short, a friend referred another friend and I'm like, that's a business and we can make money out of this thing. So that was kind of like the first thing that I did was try to launch a bunch of random stuff on Amazon. Nothing really took off in a meaningful way, but I helped my wife build up her wedding invitation business. And that we had, like, we had built it up so much at the time, like I was running Facebook ads and do they were probably cringy. If I were to go back and look at them, it was like, shoot and fish and a barrel. And so we had like a six month wait list to work with us. And we were charging a few thousand dollars to have back at like design and print their wedding invitation. So it then led us to like the manufacturer that we had been working with for our wedding invitations. Finally, one day, like the idea finally clicked, it was like take these capabilities of like all these like wedding clients that you've been working with, your manufacturer, see if you can make something work on Amazon. And so one of the funniest things is like these brides would ask for recipe cards for their bridal shower is like an activity for their bridal shower. And people would ask for them, I was like, you ain't paying a thousand dollars for us to design a recipe card. So like, what do we do? So that's where the stroke of genius came in to say, but let's take our top selling like wedding designs, turn them into recipe cards, throw them up on Amazon. And let's see what happens. And lo and behold, they sell out. And I was like, holy crap, this is a heck of a lot better than dealing with one off clients. And so we pushed the pedal to the metal. That was like 20 fall of 2016. We tested things out. Fall beginning of 2017. We went all in on Amazon. We did a million bucks our first like full year on Amazon. And like the rest was history. Like we just like retired the wedding side of the business. But that was like the foray into, you know, Hadley design. So originally Hadley designs was a wedding invitation business. That's wild. That's cool. Actually, I don't even think I share with you. We used to spray and pray a bunch of different categories. But I don't even remember if we've launched it, but we did look at wedding invites on Amazon along. This is probably, yeah, like 2017, 2018. And I can't remember if we live in a launching it. But I remember loving the idea of like, oh, what manufacturer you can do a million different designs. But that's so cool. Like, yeah, how you guys started. And I'm always impressed by couples that are able to like work together. Yeah, it's cool to see like what you guys have built, especially you just from her wanting to kind of mess around with, you know, Photoshop or whatever. Yeah. And I think like in Fernando, I know you've done this kind of like what you work with your wife, right? Yeah. She helped me a lot in the early days of HiVHQ, like a ton. And I help, I guess, like a little bit, kind of like the back office stuff for her business. She does more influencer marketing. I got shot out Esther and MavenReach. But yeah, now we're working pretty separately. Yeah. Well, for us, like, I think there's no better, like, my favorite thing on date night is like talking business. So I think like there's a bunch of people that are like, oh, I can't think of anything worse. Like I want to leave, you know, things at the office when I check out. And it's like, dude, my brain is on 24/7 with the business. And for my wife and I, like we have very differentiated roles, right? I think like there could be toes that are stepped on if like she wants to be the CEO, but I'm the CEO, like, and then you're, I think there could be friction there. But it's like she doesn't want to be the CEO. She wants to create beautiful like designs and products. I'm like, great, I don't want to do that, right? And so I think it works. It ends up working perfectly. So shout out to the couples that make it work. I think it one of the, oh, I had Evan Dash on my podcast. So this is the Dash companies, right? This is like all of those like the waffle makers, the Mickey Mouse waffle makers, all of that stuff. So billion dollar brand, right? Anyways, he's built it alongside of his wife. And he's like, it's the best thing in the world because like whenever we'd have to go travel, we were traveling together. So it was like, we were traveling and vacationing while building the business all at the same time. And I could totally relate with that. So yeah, and then again, right off the end of the tax right office is nice for sure. That's cool. Yeah, I love that. And so like fast forward. So you know, you start the business. I guess like this version of the business in 2016, 2017. Like when did you guys get on to TikTok shop and like tell me about like the early days of shop? So before I can tell you about TikTok shop, I have to tell you when we got slapped upside the face. So this was 2020, right? And COVID. So what do we bet? What have we been doing for the longest period of time? Lettings, party invitations, you know, bridal shower invitations, etc. So as soon as COVID hit, we watched our business that like 90% drop off like overnight. As soon as like everybody starts staying home, nobody's gathering. So like everything dries up for us. And you know, I think a bigger challenge is you're watching all of your friends and all these other groups just absolutely slaying it right now. Like their biggest problem is my ship stuck at port because like everybody's bringing over so much freaking inventory. And I'm paying four X prices to bring stuff over. And it's like great problem to have great. But ours was not that way. And we had to actually like pivot the business at the time. And this was a very difficult time. And I remember for me, what one of the hardest parts of this time is like we had just closed on our quote unquote dream home. on February 28th, 2020, right? And so we had the highest mortgage that we had ever paid and all the sudden the business that was bringing in the revenue was just completely goes upside down. And so for me, being a man of faith, the first thing I'm doing is I'm obviously praying. And I remember there was a time while I was praying and just asking for help and trying to figure out what is the next step, what do I do? And I just remember a feeling of it's all gonna be okay. And that was my only answer that I got. But I knew that things would be okay. So being the entrepreneur and I think any entrepreneur can relate to this, like you have to be resilient and you have to be adaptable because markets will always change. There will always be a black swan event that's unpredictable and you just have to pivot. And so what was actually trending well at the time, obviously was a lot of homeschool material. And so funny enough, I looked at a very competitive category and these were like the educational posters. And I looked at it, people had thousands of reviews. Literally 5,000 plus reviews. And I was like, I don't know if we could get into this category, but man, there's a lot of sales happening right now and this is kind of like our last ditch effort. Like I don't even know what other products. Maybe we just need to go find some other industry to work in or something. But sure enough, my wife creates these educational posters and they begin to be like within 30 days we're the number two seller in the entire category. And we're launching with zero reviews. There's no like we're not trying to gain the system. Like people just love the design because like here's the good news. They're just a ton of Chinese copy cats copy in each other. So at the only advantage people had was just like laying the price game or hey, I'm not giving you 10 posters. I'm giving you 50 posters, right? And this is like stupid, like they think that's how they get value. But like we went from like a differentiated like design aspect and like obviously like more accurate information on the posters and things like that. And so sure enough, like we became the number two seller within 30 days. I was like, oh my goodness. So A began to breathe life back into the business upon which we doubled down more into like the educational space. So let's now fast forward to like, all right. So where does this these educational posters come back into play here in 2024? And funny enough, it's like I think these educational posters are meant to be like my lifeline or something because in January of 2024, like the business broke again to a point where I had $30,000 sitting in the bank account and I had a $300,000 credit card payment coming due because that's how we pay our suppliers. And I was like, oh crap. And we had to and we had to pay our team members. And so we had a fun payroll. So the first time ever in the business and we'd been in business for over eight years at the time, I had to reach into my personal bank account to be able to fund payroll. And that was an extremely poor feeling. Like, I'm losing if I'm having to do that, right? And again, it came to a point in time where I was like, I had nothing else to do other than to pray and be like, okay, God, what is the next step? How do I get out of this situation? Because like the Amazon model is just like, it's breaking to the extent of just like every margin compression, the only game people know how to play is just lower prices, which just isn't an interesting game to be in in business overall. And I was like, this is just broken. So what do I do? And we had previously in about December, so about a month earlier, we had tested out TikTok shop. We went with some agency. Don't even remember their name at the point at this, at right now. But like, they're like, oh, we could get you onto TikTok shop and like people are gonna start crushing it, right? 'Cause it was brand new at the time. It was in December 2023. So sure, we paid a few thousand dollars every month for a couple months and they came back and they're like, I'm sorry, sir, but there is not one single creator that we could find that was interested in your product. Not one. Nobody is even interested in a free sample. And, but there's some people that would be willing to talk about if you want to pay them a few hundred bucks or a thousand bucks is like, that's freaking UGC. Like, that's influencer marketing. Like, that's not what I understand TikTok to be. And so we just like, wrote it up as a loss. But while I was in this like time of like, trying to figure out like, what do we do next? I was traveling to a hockey game, playing an old man's hockey league on the weekends. So like, 10, 30 at night, that's the one game times or so it's late at night. So I'm alone in the truck and I turn on a podcast and it was, you know, Bradley, son with Helium 10. And there was a stationary brand that had gone viral on TikTok shop, you know, over Q4. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. Well, why did they have luck, but we didn't, right? So it was like an interesting like story. But then on the way home, again, randomly thumbing through a bunch of different podcasts, land on one. And what is it? It's another brand stationary space, same category, crushing on TikTok shop. And so I was like, all right, God, that's my sign. Thank you. I'll take it. And I was like, but what sucks is like, I have to go figure this out. And so at my journey into TikTok shop was, okay, let's open up TikTok shop. Let's figure it out. There was very little like YouTube content at the time. So it's like, literally me just like, stumbling my way through. And I was like, I don't know. Let's do a bunch of targeted product campaigns. Okay, great. And sent off a bunch and it was me. I was so paranoid about like suspensions and stuff that like I refused to use a bot. And so I was manually DMing all of these freaking creators like hours on end to try to get people and sure enough. Like we had a ton of people that wanted samples of our product. So who knows what in the world that other agency was doing. But within 30 days we went viral with those educational posters that saved us back in 2020. They again became our lifeline support. And what's funny is like, there had been a bunch of copycats that had copied us with those educational posters because they'd been alive for four plus years at that point. And we were starting to lose like the best seller ranking and all of that stuff, just natural, Amazon's like a melting ice cube as soon as you launch something. But as soon as we did that, that kicked up to become a number one best seller again on Amazon and it's maintained that since then. And so anyways, that's kind of like a long answer to your question, but like it's funny enough, it's like that single product just like kept being our lifeline over and over again. - Wow, that's an amazing story. Yeah, and I can totally empathize, we've been there several times, probably two or three times where it's like, yeah, we're literally on the brink of going out of business and then, yeah, somehow figure it out and are able to turn it around. And so, yeah, hopefully that normalizes it for everybody listening. But yeah, it just does, it happens. And there's all these kind of blocks one event that you can't really prepare for sometimes. That's cool. And when we're doing the research, it seems like you were doing some kind of like creator outreach outside of TikTok shop, is that right? Like did they get that correct? - No, so we were actually just running exclusively just through TikTok shop's portal. So I was running just targeted product collab. So the only thing I was doing is just like, I would search for like the type of creators, like teachers or homeschool moms or whatever, then I would like save that list of creators. And then I would then go take that created targeted campaign, go and like re-add all of those creators that I saved and I would just do that. Like rent something, rep, and then I would message all of these creators as they would like talk to us back. But like I was like so paranoid because like at the time is like, well, Amazon will suspend you for this. And I was like, surely these bots can't be PC compliant with TikTok shop. I mean, sure enough they are. And we're heavy users of bots now, but. - Right, right, right. - It's just very, very manual. And it was just in TikTok shop. - Oh, wow. Yeah, okay, that's really helpful. And so I know you guys have had a lot of success, getting multiple products ramped up, which I think is pretty incredible. A lot of other brands aren't able to do that. So I'm curious like, how do you decide what you guys are gonna push next and like are there specific signals or yeah, I guess how do you think about that? - I think what's been interesting is I've always seen this, like what's unique about TikTok shop that I think anybody coming from the Amazon ecosystem needs to experience a massive mindset shift. And you can tell me if I'm wrong, but I think too many people look as though they're gonna just like copy and paste their Amazon listing. And it's just like, well, just reach out to a few creators and like somebody's gonna go viral with your product. That's, they think it's as easy as that. And I've always been under the mindset of the most valuable asset that I'm obtaining is these relationships with these creators. And so on Amazon, like your skill set is like arbitraging keywords, paper click campaigns, profitability, like by low sell high, right? Like that's the name of the game. You don't have to deal with many people on Amazon. Well, I think it's the complete opposite on TikTok shop. It's like now you've got got to get really, really good at managing relationships at scale, motivating people to want to work with you. And so that's the way I've always seen it. So from the very beginning, anybody that ever wanted a sample, we got their phone number and we got their email address. So even the person that went viral the very first time for us, it wasn't me going back into TikTok shop to like DM them and thank them. It was like, I literally had their cell phone number and said thank you, right? And it was that that is compounded over the years of just like building relationships with creators. And I'm happy to say like it was just like a week ago that again, one of our top affiliates just on a call with them. And I was like, tell me like shoot me straight. Like she was, she attended the the goalie Gala, right? Early that year. And I was like, tell me, how do we compare? I mean, you're working with some big brands, but like how do we compare? She's like, to be honest with you, I don't have a better relationship with any other brand other than you guys. Like it's an intimate, I know you guys care. I know that you guys are watching my content and she's like, that's why I keep working with you. It's not even about like, obviously they want to make money, right? But it's not even about that. I am a big fan of your products, and I'm a big fan of what you guys are building. And that to me is like, that's the competitive mode. That's what the Chinese competitors, they can't replicate that relationship that I have with these creators and like our brand story. And so that's what we've been like really sinking our teeth into. So how did we get other products to like pick up? Well, it's this relationship with creators to say like, hey, by the way, we have these. And oftentimes the creators would like find our products. We weren't even like trying to push them or sample them. They would buy them on Amazon, create a video for them. And like this happened like at least three to five times where like the product, we're not even pushing on TikTok shop, but is listed on TikTok shop, but we're not sampling it. And it would pick up and they picked it up because like somebody bought it and then it would create this massive flywheel, right? Oh wow. So that is kind of, it all starts and ends with, at the end of the day, I think like these personal relationships with creators and maintaining that. Wow, that's incredible. So like, yeah, it's wild to me. They're not even requesting a sample because I guess they're not, it's not available for sampling. So they're just going buying it on their own and then making the content just because, yeah, they're excited about the brand and the story and everything that you guys have built. And like they're taking the risk, not only in their time, but also their capital, right? And wow, I love that. I'm curious like how much time are you dedicating towards like meeting with creators each week or each month or how do you think about that? Yeah, so I personally don't. I will probably be doing more of that. That's what I would like to be doing more of. But my wife currently runs like a weekly creator call. So she will jump on with our creators, 815 every Wednesday night on repeat and just like talk to whoever wants to show up. And then outside of that, we have an affiliate manager where like his entire job all day long is just like messaging our top creators, making sure they feel supported, letting them know of new products and just like constantly, like and then surprising and delighting them, right? Like giving gifts, my wife's great at this. But like over the holidays, giving them like a gift basket and things like that. So it's like going above and beyond and thinking of those types of things. So there's not a lot of like one-on-one meetings that happen with the creators, but every day we have an email that goes out to all of our creators. We have our WhatsApp group where we're always posing a question or sharing, you know, shouting somebody out in there to like keep the momentum happening. And then there's constant like one-off DMs with creators there and that WhatsApp group. So that's kind of like what that relationship building looks like for us. - That's amazing. That's cool. Yeah, I think you guys have done it to like a really amazing level. I mean, obviously there's like the goalies that are throwing their gollas and everything else, but yeah, I think there's so much to learn from that in terms of like yeah, you don't need it to throw this like crazy party, but it's just like ultimately like, yeah, just giving personalized gifts and like being thoughtful just goes such a long way to like really building a really ship. Actually, I met them. One of the affiliate managers, I won't say who, but it's a top supplement brand and we were talking about they hosted their first event. She like saw one of her creators and then the creator started crying. Like as they like they saw her for the first time and then she started crying and it was like this like beautiful moment. She was telling me about of just like, you know, the creator had like quit their job and I had changed her life and then like, and this was like the point of kind of like the creator manager that like had kind of like fostered, yeah, like the relationship and getting her to that point and I was like, oh, whoa, like we've got a long way to go. Like in terms of like I guess how deep of a relationship a brand can build with a creator, but I love that you guys are doing that. And so yeah, maybe like piggybacking off of that, like what does your team structure look like that's working on TikTok shop at a curiosity? - Yeah, so we have first kind of like an operations manager so he's kind of my guy that's gonna be managing the ads, making sure he's pulling it like setting up the connection between like Amazon and TikTok shop and fulfillment handling all of that. And then he'll set up like the pricing and the reports to make sure like, hey, are we, you know, run ourselves off a cliff financially or you know, are we doing, are we doing all right? So that's kind of like an operations guy and then I have an affiliate manager whose day today is just like reaching out to new creators, supporting them, motivating them whenever they, you know, post a new video and cheering them on, just continuing to like incentivize them. We run contests every month to just like try to incentivize more and more engagement from the creators. And then we have an affiliate recruitment specialist that is managing the bots, managing all the DMs that we get inside a TikTok shop. And then approving like now we can be very selective with like who we want to approve for samples. And so it's going through the hundreds of sample requests we get per day and then like only choosing like the top 10% that we actually think like produce good content, they have good GNV history and have a chance to like actually generate volume for us. So that's it. Three, three people right now. - Oh wow, impressive. And when you run a contest, you could have mentioned that, like are you doing, I'm assuming you're not doing like the Lambo and like Miami apartment kind of style. I don't feel like that fits your style. I'm curious like, yeah, like kind of what are the triggers and how do you think about setting that up? I would love to offer a Lambo if a creator was generating that much GNV for us, but our product category isn't as wide as like a goalie type of thing. But for us what's worked is just like really small incentives go a ridiculously long way. And what's been really interesting is for a lot of these creators just covering like their gas money for the month is like a massive like benefit or you know up it to you know covering their mortgage payment for the month. So when you can make it more like it could be as small as like, hey here's a hundred bucks to cover gas. But like when you attach it to a theme right that they like resonate with it'd be like, oh yeah, that would actually save me a bunch of money. Not having to buy gas or you know cover my mortgage for the month. So it hasn't been like crazy like amounts that we've thrown out. We've done like AirPods and stuff in the past that like I think like the gift item aspect like funny enough like a lot of the creators weren't even interested in those like they wanted like the hard cash. But we're thinking of more like creative things like what type of like experiences could we provide to people I think would be an interesting one to dabble into. But they haven't been overly like they're not wild. But what some of our best performing contests have been, hey just like GMV ladders right? It's a post X amount of videos and achieve X number of GMV and you get a hundred dollar bonus at this tier, 200, 300, 400, 500, a thousand dollar bonus right? So it's like incentivizing them to just like keep going, keep going, keep going. Some of the worst contests that we've ever done have been like was one of the first contests. I was just like this is a volume game. And so I was like the most videos wins, you know like a thousand bucks or something. Like the amount of crap videos that we got that were like two seconds long. And it was like barely featuring the product and stuff. And I was like well this sucks because you technically tag the video you technically met all these requirements. Somebody had like 200 videos in a month that like drove zero dollars in GMV, but they had the one that won, right? And it's like you suck. But so like since then we've had to refine it to be like, hey you know there does need to be like a GMV threshold. You have to make me and things like that. But those are some of our learnings from contests. - That's smart. And so like for instance, do you want me asking like what percentage of the GMV are you reinvesting into the prize? Like if it's like, let's say a thousand dollars in GMV then is it like 200 bucks or 100 bucks or? - Typically around it'll average between like 10 to 15%. - Okay. - Is what we tried to shoot for. - And then what's like the threshold that you think about for like the number of videos? - So to like reach the top tier, we're gonna ask for at a minimum like one a day, right? So 30 videos. - Got it. - So we're wanting and again, some of our top creators will do 60 videos in a month. So that's what we're like, that's what we're trying to push towards. And fun fact, like even the way that the Yuka contest are set up is like I worked with Jeremy to be like, I'm using contest and I'm manually, I was manually tracking people's freaking videos like on spreadsheets beforehand. And so I was like, you've got to have a contest feature over here. So that's what I did there. So I'm curious like, is that what you have in mind for I know you have a software that does like outreach? Are you managing contest from that? Because I think like there could be a massive value ad for you there. - You know, we started with affiliate outreach. Now we're way more into like the profit and analytic side. So yeah, we don't do the affiliate outreach as much anymore, but yeah, it's more like, the work that we're doing on the affiliate side is kind of more understanding it. Like we call it creator intelligence, but overall like, who are your top creators? That's easy. But then like who are the fastest growing? Who's going dormant? So you can kind of reengage them. Who maybe did one video that was really strong so that you can maybe reengage them or try to do like a 10, 15 video deal or like helping you identify which creators to put on retainer that kind of stuff. So that's kind of what we're doing. More like P and L stuff, like overview, broken up by product, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, that's more like. - That's more like a massive gap in the market right now. - Yeah, we saw like it was going to be like a really, really competitive race, probably maybe race to the bottom since I know some people are releasing outreach for free. And so I was like, okay, like I don't want to be in this race. Kind of like what you were saying earlier about like, yeah, Chinese competitors, it's just like ultimately. It's just so red ocean. And so I figured like this would be a better move. I'm curious like, I know that we've talked about this in the past and so for retainers. I know last time we spoke, you guys don't do retainers. Is that still the case today? - Still the case today. Yeah. But there's been some times where we've dabbled into it. There's not like, like a full-fledged program behind it right now. So, couple that we've experimented with, but it's not something that we've doubled down on yet. So, no, it's all commission based right now. - That's awesome. - What are you, what are you hearing? I'm curious like from the brands that you're working with, like what do you see, like are you seeing more things gravitating towards retainer model? Are you seeing it gravitate away from retainer models? What are you seeing on your side? - I'm seeing for the most part, moving more towards retainers. - Yeah, I think it just helps with the consistency, rewarding, like keeping that your top creators engaged. Yeah, I don't think it necessarily makes sense if you're cold start brand. I think I've seen less contests interestingly enough, but I do think contests are super effective for hype and for like a new launch. And so, I don't know if it necessarily makes sense. You guys are kind of wide in terms of like, you're hitting a lot of different skews at the same time, which is really impressive, where I think a lot of the time I see like for consumable brands, like they're going really in on one product, maybe there's a distant number two, but yes, and then they're just kind of like really focusing a lot of the energy like around that one product specifically. But yeah, generally that's yeah, kind of what I've been seeing across a lot of the brands that we work with. - Yeah, actually doubling down on the analytics, I'm curious like, what are you paying attention to like each week or each month to know that it's on track or off track kind of curiosity? - Number one is number of samples, new creators that we're giving samples to. So that's an easy one. Number two is like, what number, how many videos are we getting for each of our different, like we have like four or five different levels of creators that we have? So it's like for each bucket, how many videos are we getting for our brand evangelist or for brand new creators? And then we're trying to map that all back to, you know, what is the level of GMV per video for each of these buckets? So for me, I don't see it as like, all creators are in this one bucket. It's more laser targeted approach to, there's a strategy for my brand evangelist, there's a strategy for brand new creators, there's a strategy for those that are like, up and coming creators that we're working with. So really it's like honing in on the number of videos and GMV being produced by the creators that are in each of those buckets. - That makes sense. That's really cool. Yeah, I like that. It's, yeah, it's a really, yeah, interesting way of looking at it. Yeah, well, I think we should be a little bit more granular in terms of, yeah, byproduct. And I know something we talked about like a little bit prior to the column, I'm curious where your thoughts are, but so you guys are repurposing a lot of this content on meta now. Like how are you guys structuring it? Are you incentivizing it? Just overall, how is it performed? - Yeah, so I think like first and foremost, this is where most brands get into trouble is that the creators get pissed off when they feel like you're stealing their content, right? And you don't want to do that. And so one of the things that we have is like, when somebody requests a sample, so for example, a few weeks back, we're at the LA fast-moss TikTok event, right? There were like over 300 creators that were interested in working with us wanted samples. In the form that they filled out, like we specifically say like, hey, if you want a free sample, then you're going to grant us usage rights, okay? And, but if you don't, like we have refundable samples, okay? And so sure enough, there were a couple people that went the refundable sample option, but then the other 298 people just said, yeah, sure, that's fine. And so then what we're able to do is we have those usage rights. So if something does well, or is performing relatively well on TikTok shop, we'll then take that and we'll spin that up on meta. And so that's basically what we've been doing. So I see TikTok shop being a really good, like, testing ground at scale. And if something does really well on TikTok shop and has a good hold rate or a good hook rate after two second watch time, like inevitably, it's like, it's been very rare to have something perform well on TikTok shop, but not perform on meta. Totally. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And so you guys now repurposing that and driving the traffic to Shopify or back to Amazon or where you just Shopify. Yeah. And honestly, like that's where I look at like the overall creator program as I look at it. I think it's going to evolve quite a bit. I think that yes, we've built a good following around TikTok shop we'll keep doing that, but I want to get my creators like giving them commission on all of the Shopify sales and giving them commission even on the Amazon sales. So turning this more like that's the vision I have is this isn't just a TikTok shop playbook. This is a affiliate marketing playbook that spans all of the sales channels that we're operating on. And that's where I think like the creators would be even more incentivized to work with us to say, hey, like you actually get a participate in all the upside wherever the customer ends up shopping because right now you're not capturing that commission. Totally, that's really cool. Yeah, I know Hudson from Comfort and I know that's why he's like famous for his just like he's really, really taken care of the creators and incentivizing them regardless. Yeah, and obviously that's worked out super, super well for them. So I think that's really smart. Dude, this is amazing. Yeah, I've learned so much. Yeah, and so I'm curious like where can our listeners kind of follow you and see what you're up to and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, so the best place if you want to follow me personally the best place to do so is on the podcast, e-com breakthrough that's e-com with two M's and I have wicked smart people like Fernando on the show all the time, sharing actionable strategies and then follow the brand at HadleyDesigns.com. Dude, thank you so much again for coming. I really appreciate it. Always a pleasure. Thanks. If you've been getting a lot of value from the show, it would mean a lot to me if you could leave a quick review on Apple or Spotify. It helps more people find the podcast and it lets me know it's worth continuing to pursue. Thanks, guys.