Speaker 1This is The Road to One Million. I'm Ryan Daniel Moran. All right. So today we're starting kind of a new segment here on the show because when I was building Sheer Strength the first time, version one in 2013, I basically built my audience documenting the journey. And then when I sold the business, I stopped documenting so much. I started teaching a lot more and interviewing, and I love doing that stuff, but I miss documenting. So you are my partner on at least one of these projects, significant partner on one of them. We're equal partners on one, and that's Switch. So let's talk about that today. Let's talk about Switch. For those who aren't familiar, SwitchSupplements.com is our little fun side supplement project where we legit develop the best nootropic. In the world. That isn't drugs. You get like legit. If you're an entrepreneur and you work at a computer, this is specifically designed to increase certain chemicals in your brain that just make you feel like you're in flow. And it freaking works. It is fantastic. And we partnered up a year or so ago, and I thought we'd start by you telling the story of the day Ryan yelled at you.
Speaker 2Oh. I'm trying to pack it into. In the back of my mind, but you're bringing it back. Okay. So which one were your friends?
Speaker 1I didn't really yell, but it was like the day you realized, oh, we're sitting like right on the cusp of something great.
Speaker 2Yeah. Yeah. So I think it was a few weeks ago, and we had a regular Monday. It was like five or six weeks ago at this point. Yeah. Yeah. And it was a regular Monday team call. You know, you just woke up. You never thought that something like that would happen. Making it sound
Speaker 1like it was.
Speaker 2No, no. I actually have the recording of that call, and I watched it.
Speaker 1The day that Ryan stabbed me in the face with a pencil.
Speaker 2What? I never did that. No. Yeah. Well, you say it. Anyway. So we were just, I think how I call it is that we jumped to step seven before we're at step two. Yeah. And you were just waving that flag in my face.
Speaker 1The step two flag or?
Speaker 2Yeah. We are trying to hit step seven, but we're actually at step two. Common mistake. Yeah.
Speaker 1Right. I see it all the time and I make it myself sometimes.
Speaker 2Yeah. Yeah. So I was basically very focused on getting processes and systems and optimizing the landing pages and all of that. But we're actually like below 10 sales a day.
Speaker 1Yeah. Right. We were doing like two or three at that time. Yeah. And I was like, maybe we don't need to systemize how to get three sales. Yeah. Three sales a day.
Speaker 2Yeah. Exactly. And again, just trying to think big picture because it's really fun. And that's what, you know, you think you should be doing. And I was not.
Speaker 1And what do you mean by that's what you think you should be doing? What did you think you were supposed to be doing when we were doing three sales a day?
Speaker 2Getting five landing pages to test, having the team making endless amount of creatives when we are spending less than $200 a day. You know, the things that I was, I was just used to be doing with other brands.
Speaker 1This is what Gary Vee says to do. Like I was, I was on a Zoom call with Gary Vee last week. I asked him what opportunities he saw in e-commerce and he said, make 50 creatives a day to 50 different audiences and scale the winners, which by the way is fantastic advice. Not for Switch. Yeah. Right. Not, not when you're doing two sales a day. Yeah. Either when you're doing several hundred sales a day or you've got capital to test a bunch of things. Right thing to do. But when you're a team of two and a half and you, you know, you're bootstrapping it and you're doing five ish sales a day, probably don't need to make 50 creatives.
Speaker 2Yeah. So how I reframed it is that why we buy is because we have confidence or our customers have need to have confidence, especially when we're talking about a supplement. And I, I realized that's how I interpreted yours. Yeah. And I, I realized that that's how I interpreted your message to me by saying like, we're just, you know, we're just jumping too far ahead and we need to go back to basics. We need to have 50 Amazon reviews. We need to have video testimonials. Like, Hmm. I mean, I'm not sure how do I, like where to even start. So I just, the first thing I did was to plug, and I don't know why that was the first step, but it was to plug the Switch customer support in. And I just went through all the emails that people are sending us. And the most, the most common thing that I saw was that the people who are not buying are people who are not confident in what we have to offer or what they will put.
Speaker 1How'd you know that? How'd you know that they weren't confident?
Speaker 2So if they're asking about, do you have any funky ingredients or would that make me sleepy or would that, does it have too much caffeine or, you know, is this safe for, for, um. Yeah. And, and on the other hand, we had so many people who love their product, right? They, they, they subscribe to it. They, they, they buy it again and again. Um, if we send us those emails.
Speaker 1If we get five sales a day, two of them are going to be raving ass fans, which, which I think what gave me conviction on the brand before I ever met you was I noticed that 30 to 40% of people who took it loved it, which is a very high number. 60% on just about any supplement or like, you know, like I got, I saw a little lift or I didn't like it or taste bad. It does taste bad, but like 30% raving fans on a supplement is ridiculously high. I'm sorry. I cut you off, but that was, it was really good news when, when that happened. So you were seeing that via the email submissions.
Speaker 2We saw the emails. I was getting Facebook messages, but the only thing we haven't done was to communicate. Um, these testimonials and reviews to everybody else.
Speaker 1Now you mentioned that you hooked up the customer support to your phone. Why hadn't you done that before?
Speaker 2I honestly thought that was not what you're supposed to do as a brand CEO. Bingo. I was just in love with that position. I was used to that position that I almost forgot what it is like to be at a grind. Yes. Yeah. And I just had. To be more humble, I would call it, um, and, and enjoy the process or at least tell myself that I enjoy, enjoy the process. That was before it happened. But then I remember telling you that, um, I was so excited about these tasks.
Speaker 1Once you started doing them.
Speaker 2Once I started doing it, like reading those emails, like my team started telling me, Hey, if you want to answer those emails, just let us know. But right now we're like, we don't know that we need to. Answer them or you answer like, you know, let me just answer them. So for a couple of weeks, I was the only one answering emails, collecting reviews. Um, that was my personal email that all the messages, uh, got back to whenever we email our list. So that was one thing. The other thing that I got super excited and was super helpful was to send personalized videos to all of our customers. So everyone who received the product got a personal video from me about three to seven days after they received the. Product. And I never asked for anything. I just thank them for their purchase and ask for their feedback and the results from having, I don't know, maybe 15 minutes a day where just, I was so amazed by how much we could get, um, by with a small task. But I think it's, it's a relatively small task, but mentally it's just hard for you to accept as an entrepreneur, as a brand founder, as an entrepreneur. As a CEO, whatever you want to call it, that that's what you need to be.
Speaker 1Yeah. Very well said that that's the grind. Yeah. Right. When, you know, I first introduced the idea of the grind in 2014. Yeah. And I said, when you're in the grind, your job is to get 25 reviews. Yeah. However you can. That means you need to order pizza 25 times, have the guy buy your product on Amazon and then tip them extra. Yeah. And then whatever it takes, you just gotta get 25 reviews. Now it's more like 50 to a hundred at least. Yeah. Runs pay-per-click ads and actually pay attention to the people who are showing up and people will say, well, I'm not getting much feedback. Are you getting any feedback? Well, you know, a few emails. Great. Send some video testimonials to those emails. Right. And I don't know what I said that clicked for you that you were just like, oh, there's no, there's no like system to build. It's just being in the grind. Yeah. As soon as you have that, it's like, oh, that grind is fricking awesome. Like it's so much fun because all these micro tasks, like building, building a, a system for something you don't see direct, meaningful feedback from that. Yeah. But when you're in the grind working with customers, you just. Exactly. I, I, it's like, it's like why I love coaching calls. Cause I can give somebody feedback and their business changes. It's the same thing.
Speaker 2Yeah. You can see that the expression. under our face, that it's just changing. - Speaking of expressions of the face,
Speaker 1what do you think of the root beer?
Speaker 2it's good it's
Speaker 1a it's good oh that's how an israeli says it's crap i'm sorry you're not a root beer fan not
Speaker 2yet but but i think there there are many things in america that i was not a fan of and i i just had to accept and i'll think of my list soon can you think of any of them
Speaker 1uh the one that i hear the most complaints about is when people say have a good day a good day yeah oh okay like americans say have a good day all the time it drives me crazy i'm like like when i'm in the elevator and i and i went up four floors with somebody and the door opens and the guy turns to me and says have a good day i'm like we did not have a meaningful interaction
Speaker 2okay so i'll tell you my version of it okay so the first time i arrived in austin um i was telling my friend you know people here are so nice i live in la by the way so i was telling my friends people here are so nice when they tell you like have a good morning they actually mean it like they actually want you to have a good morning as opposed to people in la we're like have a good morning you know and you know they don't really want to even interact with you but you just have to because you're american right so yeah that's my version of it
Speaker 1okay right you mean in texas there's they actually mean it in austin yeah that's true yeah yeah that that is true so what what we have not crossed 25 sales a day yet inside of switch but that was like five or six weeks ago yeah we've had some eight hundred dollar days some nine hundred dollar days i don't know have we had our first thousand dollar no we come really close like
Speaker 2that's very annoying like we have eight nine hundred but we haven't crossed a thousand okay
Speaker 1we're we're getting there yeah right yeah and i think we both saw a surge of energy when we launched the second product yeah would you would you grab that for a second for anybody watching yeah for product placement so we we we you disagreed with me actually several people yourself even inez was very upset with me that i put my foot down and named it kill switch and then well you liked kill switch but you didn't like the tagline yes you thought i was too aggressive yes and inez thought i was too aggressive with the kill switch name but i put my foot down and i'm glad i put my foot down yes i'm glad to so the the product is called kill switch sleep like you're dead and originally inez was like don't call kill switch that's so aggressive and i think you nudged me you were like entrepreneurs who have their minds racing all the time want to take something that's going
Speaker 2to knock them out yeah yeah that's what i want right i tried so many things and yeah i mean it's again just talking to your audience if that was a product for like moms or you know just general popularity like you see all of the other supplements and drop yeah yeah and it's all so soft and it's all so like dreamy and fun but it's happy z's yeah but you you look at it he's like wake up it's not gonna work it's not gonna work right um and you can't go wrong when so true right i mean it might taste good
Speaker 3kill switch yeah sleep like someone shot you in the face that's what i'm that that's what i need yeah do that for me yeah
Speaker 2um and yeah and when it does what you know you promise um it's that's where you build a brand yeah a very good brand
Speaker 1and it actually does i mean i can't tell you how many i get facebook messages from people that are like dude i thought you're a kid and about kill switch yeah i slept for nine and a half hours yeah i almost went to the emergency room i slept so long like stan at the nft event like slept through the first meeting yeah his first time trying kill switch and he's
Speaker 3like i i i i overslept we know
Speaker 1stan it's four o'clock in the afternoon yeah so
Speaker 2that's that's where i i figured like we have to communicate those testimonials yeah totally it's i believe that this procrastination of trying to do other things is just you being some like the there's some um i would say low confidence in what you're doing i get that but you're afraid of the response right 100 it's
Speaker 1it's an avoid it's like a it's like a the brain's creative way of procrastinating yeah to avoid looking stupid yeah it's
Speaker 2like asking you know everybody how do i look today right and then you're afraid of the answer yeah right um so so you just don't
Speaker 1ask yeah and the funny thing is that's so true and like i've done it too because if you're afraid of If you are working on something, then you always have a reason and excuse of why the business hasn't taken off. Yeah, exactly. Like, how's Kill Switch going? How's Switch going? Well, we're working on some processes, right? It's just a way of buffering the answer, which is not well.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah. And I think you asked what got me so, like, what was the aha moment when we had that conversation? And I think that's something in those lines where you said, it might just be procrastination. I said that to you?
Speaker 1Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 2So I started journaling about that and starting, I think that, you know, entrepreneurship is just the best self-development program out there. Of course. Right? And I was starting to see, like, is this really procrastination? Like, what am I trying to avoid? What am I trying to not do? And it's not just. You know, sending emails. It's not just doing videos. It doesn't take so long. It's just about probably the response is something that you might be afraid of, right? Yeah. And when you said, you know what? I don't care about the response. I will take that as a self-growth experiment for myself. It's not even the brand. It's, like, me. And when I started doing it, I changed my mindset around it. Suddenly, I couldn't care about the result. I only cared about, like, I want to overcome this procrastination. That's beautiful. And when I overcame it, suddenly, it's not even getting 25 reviews. It's getting just three reviews because those three reviews will get you the motivation that you need to get the other three reviews.
Speaker 1That's right. That's how it builds. And that's why the grind is the best part. Yeah. Because you get a dopamine hit for every review. Yeah. A dopamine hit for every piece of feedback. Yeah. You don't get that when you're building processes for things. Yeah. You don't.
Speaker 2Or not even, you know, checking Shopify stats because it's just numbers. But when you have one-on-one interaction with customers, that's just so fun. And I just decided that I will flip my schedule. And so far, it was up until that call, this was the last thing that I would do. And I will never get there. Like, 4 p.m., 5 p.m. And, you know, I'm, like, swamped. I, like, wiped out. Now, that's the first thing that I do in the morning. And when I do it, I get immediate success out of it. Because I get those replies. And then it just gives me so much energy for the day. Totally. That's so fun.
Speaker 1That's what's so great about the grind is you don't have anything else to do except that. Yeah. Like, I think about capitalism. I was thinking today what I should be focusing on. Like, I know the answer, but my brain has to ping pong, like, around nine different projects and nine different things. And the team of seven and the Capcom. Like, I have to ping pong around to find what I need to focus on again. But when you're starting a new brand, the only thing to do, the only thing to do is talk to leads and to, like, talk to customers. And turn them into reviews and to show everybody else the reviews. Yep. Yep. And when you do it, oh, look. Six weeks go by and you got 50 reviews, which no one cares about except you. But it's just enough to move the needle to, like, 10 sales a day or 15 sales a day. When I was writing, I got this piece of feedback from a member of the incubator. When I launched my book, I was on a coaching call and I was sitting at 55 reviews. On my book. Maybe three, two weeks after launch or something. So, May of 2020. And I was on this coaching call and I was like, hey, everybody, how many of you bought my book? Wave at me. And, you know, 30 hands go up. And I was like, first of all, thank you so much. It means so much to me that you follow my work, that you paid the $26 to buy my book around launch day. Okay. Did you find it valid? Leave your hand up if, like, it inspired you in some way. Hands stay up. Would you do me the joy of leaving me a review? It would mean the world to me. I understand this is an ask of your time. But please do it. I would love to go from 55 to 60 reviews. And it did. And, you know, today has, between Audible and Amazon, it has, like, almost 4,000. Wow. But someone told me that they were on that call and they said. But watching Ryan have to go into the dirt and beg for reviews like everybody else made me say, well, I mean, if he's willing to do it, I guess I should be willing to do it too. That's a good point. And if you just took on the challenge of, hey, you have to go get 100 reviews, how do I do that? I don't care. I don't care how you do it. Well, can you tell me how? No. Just go get them. You'd figure out a way. And most people just don't figure out a way and they come up with complicated processes and they wait for the machine to kick in. It's like, no, just go talk to people.
Speaker 2And you're doing that. That's the only thing that you also can't buy, right? If you want them to be authentic. You can't buy. I mean, you can technically buy Amazon reviews if you want to be in the gray line, but it will never work as someone just flipping. You can't buy Amazon reviews if you want to be in the gray line, but you can't buy Amazon reviews if you want to be in the gray line. You can't buy Amazon reviews if you want to be in the gray line, but you can't buy Amazon reviews if you want to be in the gray line, but you can't buy Amazon reviews if you want to be in the gray line, but you can't buy Amazon reviews if you want to be in the gray line,
Speaker 1but you can't buy Amazon reviews if you want to be in the gray line,
Speaker 2talk about how I like it just because it just doesn't sound legit but well it's
Speaker 1just like me saying that my son is the cutest three-year-old in the world yeah but I legitimately think so but this is
Speaker 2why we have so many video testimonials and collect so it's not Ryan and Tom are saying this is everybody else no but really I mean we thought that I mean if I would know that would probably start with kill switch as our first product on switches it's amazing but I think he'll switch just people know why they need to take it and they can easily feel if it's working or not right like did I sleep through tonight did I not sleep through
Speaker 1tonight actually will you give me the bottle real quick so I had this was the first product that I had I didn't know another formulation like I was not involved in this formulation process and when you sent me the lineup it was like I kind of cocked my head to the side because it was like nobody had done it like this before I can I've obviously I've been in the supplement world for a long time and so I know a good product when I see it and this one I had to put my pen down but hmm that's interesting because it was different and I wasn't sure if I would like it and the first time I tried kill switch first of all I thought it was it tasted great which I wasn't expecting because on switch tastes so bad yeah it tastes like a donkey pooped in its egg no a monkey pooped in its own hand and then ate it and burped the monkey not a
Speaker 2donkey that's important
Speaker 1no analogies perfect but but it was something some crossbreed between a dog it doesn't matter anyway so and then and then I went into about was like actually this is this is really this is really interesting and then I started tracking it with my or ring and you start trafficking it with your whoop data yep and we were like oh we have something here because we can see it in the data yeah and that was really exciting just from a formulation standpoint which oh by the way just marketing tip if you can show something that is demonstrative meaning you can show proof of it working within a few seconds meaning something gets clean are you sure before and after photo of a diet like anything that you can demonstrate those are the highest converting ads so when we saw that the whoop data was incredibly we're like oh we have something demonstrative that we can run as ads yeah but I was curious I've I've never got to ask you this question why you went with tart cherry in the formula
Speaker 2yeah so the formula later that we were working with he was very convicted on tart cherry as the source for melatonin so
Speaker 1that that is that converts into melatonin yes whereas most sleep supplements are just straight melatonin exactly yeah so my interpretation of this is that your body converts it slowly which means that like if I take regular melatonin I wake up in the middle of the night and I'm like ready to go like at three o'clock I fall asleep but I wake up at three o'clock but this is is it true that this just get gets converted slowly as a result of being tart cherry I don't want
Speaker 2to be mistaken and just stay we're not doctors but just as a disclaimer I'm just how do you say it I'm just I'm just some
Speaker 1dude that you follow on the
Speaker 2internet exactly yeah so I what I know which is the important part is that whenever people take melatonin they report they feel groggy they wait they have weird dreams they wake up in the middle of the night and
Speaker 3he's allergic to bullshit he's like he's like those claims about sleep I'm allergic they're pitching kill switch now I'm not again
Speaker 2anyway so and people actually some of them didn't know that we have melatonin like I love it so much I slept through the night but whenever I take melatonin I just feel really groggy and I just actually we have melatonin in kill switch but like oh no way i mean i i felt really refreshed
Speaker 1in the morning but is is there melatonin or is it just the tart cherry that gets converted into melatonin b option b okay yeah so so there there's not straight melatonin in here there's tart cherry which converts as like or after 30 minutes of being in your body starts to convert to melatonin which i would think not a doctor i would think would convert more slowly which is why you don't have that crazy experience like you
Speaker 2would have i tell you one other fun fact about it when we were shopping for a different manufacturer he asked us like why do you use tart cherry i mean you know it's so much harder to source and it's way more expensive and like people don't really care if they have melatonin or tart cherry yeah from a marketing
Speaker 1perspective it doesn't matter people don't know about it yeah
Speaker 2yeah and i was like you know it just works so well and people love it that i don't want to change anything even if it means like you know we're spending a few cents more on on this specific ingredient yeah um so yeah i mean it's it's easier it's cheaper it's to have straight melatonin um and maybe if i would know the difference ahead of time i would just choose melatonin uh but you know if you hadn't known the
Speaker 1difference is that what
Speaker 2you said if i had known the difference like if the formulator would say or the manufacturer would say this version cost x and this version with the tart cherry cost a dollar more yeah yeah i was like yeah it is significantly more just take the regular melatonin you know um but yeah i just it this one
Speaker 1just works so well it does i mean even inez has said she can't take melatonin and she didn't know there was melatonin in this and she took it and yeah she now swears by it and carries it around with her yeah so we're excited to document it we're gonna we're gonna be doing this this series where we're just documenting what's going on in our projects what's going on with our businesses switch sheer strength and the other projects that we have going on so if you enjoyed this format let us know in the comments or emailing me at ryan at capitalism.com tomer good to see you man onward thanks for doing with you you hated it that's that's bullshit marketing right there from tomer sneeze please
Speaker 4if you've read my book listen to the podcast or watch any of my youtube videos and you're asking yourself where the heck do i start where do i begin my journey to my million dollar business we got you today my team and i just completed a new kickstart class called five days seven figures this is the best on-ramp class for any of you who are ready to begin your seven-figure journey in this five-day class you're going to choose your ideal market what products to launch come up with a plan to get each one of them to 25 sales a day and you'll know at the end of the class exactly what your business is going to be how you're going to get it to a million and exactly what your next steps are to get it off the ground it's a five-day class it costs a hundred bucks and when you're done a member of my team will get on the phone with you and review your homework directly with you when you're ready to start go take a look at the video and i'll see you in the next one bye take the challenge at capitalism.com slash five that's the number five five days seven figures capitalism.com slash five
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