Hunting Influence

Key Takeaways:

· Joe started his entrepreneurial journey when he first saw a TechCrunch article called Startup Weekend· Joe’s educational background was in mechanical engineering. He travelled to Japan for a year and that was when he was exposed to different activities such as poker, which started to shift his mindset in terms of learning how money and leverage worked. · When Joe started his first company, he was unable to find developers to work on his idea as no one was willing to see the end product built out from start to finish · Joe decided to learn how to design and code at the same time, dedicating 8 to 10 hours a day purely to this. · Joe’s first idea was called Walter Reed Consulting, where he would code websites for other businesses and charge a monthly fee · Joe first learned how to use PHP and then Ruby on Rails, learning from Michael Hartle’s tutorial. Joe wanted to learn how to build something from zero to one· Joe also started learning how to design, reading books such as Don’t make me think by Steve Krug. He really immersed himself in the design thinking methodology.· For Walter Reed Consulting, Joe would conduct cold calls, attend networking meetings, and even drove to someone’s house two hours away to sell them on a website for a $600 a year charge· Joe eventually transitioned from Walter Reed Consulting and looked into building an actual product. He heard about an opportunity from a contact about a Startup idea called Chisel which was a social network for salespeople where if you are a VIP shopper, you get a certain type of treatment.· Joe went door to door, trying to talk to fashion boutiques and checking if anyone who was selling things that have different customers they want to keep in touch with · Chisel eventually went through seven pivots, where Joe took the business into different industries such as targeting car dealerships, design communities, etc. · Chisel did not end up working out which led Joe to starting Mighty Scout which is a platform to track influencer campaigns. This idea stemmed from people wanting to grow their Instagram followers and keep track of what’s going on with their campaigns as well as being able to see the analytics · Mighty Scout initially started off as a discovery platform to help people find influencers to work with. · Joe realized that many people were using several different platforms to keep track of their campaigns such as Google Drive. He saw an opportunity to bundle everything up in one easy place and make the process super easy for people to do. · When Joe has customers request additional features on the platform, he employs a backwards feedback loop approach where he determines how much they are willing to pay for those features. If they aren’t willing to pay, then it is likely not a big enough problem · Joe works very closely with customers, hopping on calls, recording them, and then trying to find common threads to address the issues.· Joe’s customer base is roughly split between brands and agencies. By focusing on the brand first, when agencies then use the product, they find it easier to use as they can manage multiple brands more efficiently. · Joe’s favorite accomplishment and moment with Mighty Scout is their feature which allows for tracking story posts, even after they disappear. He would get customers saying that they would spend nights and weekends having to wait for the story posts but for Joe to be able to solve this issue makes him feel very happy. · One of the biggest changes Joe has seen in the influencer marketing industry is the evolving tactics. For example, Joe finds the gifting strategy to be very interesting as you give out products to influencers without asking for anything in exchange or return. So you’re finding the people that actually care about your product or actually like it, and it’s a more two way opt in, because now the influencer gets a chance to try the product and determine whether they want to collaborate with the brand. · Joe see’s himself in the next 5 to 10 years pursuing other technologies that help make peoples lives easier and less stressful by automating manual/repetitive tasks
Quickfire Round: 

Joe’s morning routine 

· Going for a run and meditation 
Joe’s content that he listens to or watches the most

· All in podcast and David Sachs for SAAS related content
Joe’s favorite book of all time

· The goal by Eli Goldratt

Joe’s favorite purchase of $100 or less

· Tri blend t-shirts
Joe’s favorite place he has ever been to

· Tokyo, Japan

Joe’s advice to give to someone looking to build their own influence

· Keep practicing and combining different skills to become naturally good at something. 

Quotes:  

“Focus on creating a wedge in the market and evolve your business over time” 

“The most important thing to ask customers how much they are willing to pay for additional features. If they are not willing to pay big enough, then it’s likely not a big enough problem” 

“Always ask for feedback on your product and slowly over time, your efforts start to compound”

Summary:

In this week’s episode of The Hunting Influence Podcast, Aaron is joined by Michael Siegel, Co-Founder and CEO of Decocrated Curated Home. 

Michael discusses how he built and scaled Decocrated from what started out as a small mom and pop shop picture framing business into the industry leader in the home décor subscription box space. Decocrated has won the award for the best home décor subscription box three years in a row. Michael also discusses his advice for building a great team, the obstacles he faced with events occurring such as the mortgage meltdown in 2008, and how he has used influencers to scale his digital marketing efforts. 

Key Takeaways:

· Michael started in the home décor industry in 1996 and tapped into an existing business with his partner. He started in the picture framing business and moved that into the large-scale hotel production business. · Michael worked in various jobs throughout college, always with an eye on learning and improving his skills, working on communication, and on marketing and sales · He always had dreams of being in marketing and grew up during the times where Nike was doing creative advertising. He got exposed to sports advertising and the whole marketing world which intrigued him to get involved in the industry · When Michael was 20 years old, he was the head of marketing and sales for a Startup company that was in the space of teaching and working with golf professional and their students.· After that, Michael worked with his friend and got into the picture framing business. It was his friend’s family business and was a small mom and pop shop. Michael did outside sales and marketing work for the company.· Michael helped grow the company, as they started selling to bigger and bigger hotels and started securing some properties in Las Vegas and New York. One of Michael’s first big accounts was Oakwood corporate apartments which is the largest corporate housing company in the United States. · Michael then helped to land Home Depot and Costco, and eventually started to grow the business into all of the big box retailers in 2008. This was the eye-opening launching point and Michael’s big break. · Michael and his business partner had to constantly challenge themselves to create new and different channels of diversification. They had to pivot their business during the 9/11 attacks and also during the mortgage meltdown in 2008. · Early on, Michael was still in the world of retail, looking for ways to diversify there. He managed to get one retail customers and then quickly ended up with 20 retail customers. They were the biggest names in the industry with Nicole’s, Michaels, Home Goods, TJ Maxx, etc. At this time, Michael’s main products were artwork and mirrors. · Michael started expanding his product line and started to build product development teams, design teams, sourcing teams, etc. · Michael has been in the room with several large retailers and experienced buyers who has been trained on how to see through anything and negotiate. Michael believes the most important thing is to just really be yourself. He believes that if you’re yourself in these meetings and you are authentic, you will win people over. · Michael transitioned into e-commerce in 2013, after working with retailers successfully for five or six years. Michael tried to keep an inventory free business, essentially producing on demand so that it is simpler for the books and for financials. · Michael is always looking for the next thing. He always asks, what’s the next thing that going to help him grow and in a lot of cases, help him survive and navigate through roadblocks that keep coming up, whether it’s a crisis, a mortgage meltdown, etc. · Michael’s company started listing products on wayfarer and on Amazon, via drop shipping. However, he recognized that with Amazon, they own the customer, they own their information, and their ability to sell them other things. Michael wanted to eventually transition and saw an opportunity to own their own group of customers and establish a direct-to-consumer product line · Decocrated is vertically integrated in ow they manufacture and see their product lines. Michael’s challenge was to keep a price point that was value oriented and he believed the best way to do that was have a subscription box for Decocrated.· In order to transition into the subscription box, Michael parsed out a team of four or five people that were involved in the name creation, logo design, sourcing, packaging etc. He utilized a lot of the talent available to the company internally, avoiding having to spend a huge amount of money bringing in outside people. · Michael believes that the thing that has helped his company the most is that the product and brand is amazing which helped them overcome their shortcomings on the marketing side. · In order to build a great team, Michael focused on culture. He believes that some things can be taught, whereas other things cannot. For example, you can’t teach commitment, you can’t teach loyalty, you can’t teach collaboration with people and being open minded. · Michael mentions how influencers have been a big part of Decocrated’s marketing strategy and many influencers have become long term brand ambassadors because they love the product. · Michael’s goal in the next few years is to take the every day person who is looking for convenience to be able to decorate their home with ease. The value of Decocrated’s membership is not just the subscription box, but it is the whole value of the savings that one can have with all of their home décor. Quickfire Round: 

Michael’s morning routine 

· Working out with Peloton or Lifting

Michael’s favorite place he has ever been to

· Colorado for skiing, hiking, and other outside adventures

Michael’s favorite brand 

· Amazon 

If Michael had to choose one line on a billboard, he would choose:

· If it’s to be, it’s up to me

Quotes:  

“You always have to create diversity, always have to have people around you that are willing to pivot and change” 

“If you’re yourself in business meetings and you are authentic, you will win people over” 

“If you’re not thinking about the next day, you’re going to get swallowed up” 

 

Summary:

In this week’s episode of The Hunting Influence Podcast, Aaron is joined by Ucef Kaawach, Founder and CEO of B. Easy Social. Ucef discusses his entrepreneurship journey from a young age where he pursued drop shipping for his clothing brand, flipping items on Kijiji/eBay, and starting his own Amazon FBA Business where he generated over $100,000 in revenue after only one year. Ucef also discusses all things influencer marketing, such as how to find the best influencers and what things to look for, his advice for managing paid campaigns and negotiating with influencers, the biggest misconceptions of the Influencer Marketing industry as well as his experiences working with large influencers such as Floyd Mayweather and Kendall Jenner, and why Influencer Marketing is considered word of mouth on steroids.
 
Key Takeaways:

· Ucef’s parents were entrepreneurs through his entire life, often buying bars and flipping them. They tried to steer Ucef away from entrepreneurship saying its too much work and not worth it · Ucef’s perspective on entrepreneurship completely changed after reading The Business of the 21st century by Robert Kiyosaki. It was the pivot point where he got involved in network marketing and was introduced into the whole world of entrepreneurship · Ucef’s first entrepreneurial experience was in business school where he came across drop shipping. He enrolled in Mike Vestil’s course and launched his first drop shipping store called the 96 club, where he sold clothing for those born in the year 1996. He didn’t get any sales but it was a great learning experience and introduction into the entire industry · After starting 96 club, Ucef tried flipping stuff on eBay, Kijiji, and also investing in penny stocks by watching YouTube videos from Tim Sykes. · Ucef eventually came across Kevin David who had a course on how to sell products on Amazon, also known as Amazon FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon). He invested all of his money at the time into the course. · The course taught Ucef how to go from knowing nothing about selling on Amazon to being an expert on the topic, covering everything from how to set up an LLC, how to set up a business bank account, how to sign up on amazon seller central, how to start a brand or a company trademark, how to find suppliers in China to get products manufactured, etc· Ucef launched his first Amazon FBA product which was a jumbo squishy toy for kids. Ucef found that three individual squishes were selling well but weren’t bundled together. He differentiated himself by bundling the products together and generated $1400 in sales on the first day· In the first month of Amazon FBA selling the jumbo squishy toys, Ucef did $36,000 in sales. · Ucef launched three more seasonal products that were strictly for Christmas, ending up doing $40,000 in one month · Ucef found the logistical and supply chain aspect of Amazon FBA to be stressful, therefore making a shift to starting his own influencer marketing agency called B. Easy Social  · Ucef was invited to be brought on a social media content creator during one of his client calls. He joined as an influencer marketing freelancer where he would be communicating with influencers, closing deals for promotions, and more. He tried it out and loved influencer marketing ever since then.  · Ucef’s first ever campaign run when freelancing was with a company that had a budget of $10,000 per month. He managed influencer promotions month after month and reached out to influencers in the urban community and hip-hop niche, closing deals with YouTubers and getting some ad integrations on their channels. · Ucef eventually had too many clients reaching out to him so he decided to create a company and slowly build a team. Ucef still got a lot of clients through Upwork since he was high up in the keyword rankings for the services he offered. He would get three to four requests a day from companies wanting to work with him. · With B. Easy Social, Ucef was running paid influencer campaigns with budgets ranging from $10,000 a month to budgets as high as $300,000 a month. He would look at the clients KPIs such as brand awareness, conversions, traffic, and then utilizing that information to find influencers who would fit with the brand and entire messaging. · Ucef found that the best results came from Instagram story campaigns and YouTube ad integrations. He has tested a lot of Instagram posts and has never seen amazing results from it as it doesn’t deliver high conversions or website traffic. He finds Snapchat stories also work very well · In order to find the best influencer, Ucef ensures that the candidate is an actual influencer and that they are truly influencing their audience to pursue an action. Whether it’s a fitness influencer who works out and encourages other people to work out or a basketball influencer who is teaching people how to play basketball. · Ucef believes that too many people just look at the vanity metrics of an influencers engagement rate or follower count, rather than focusing on the entire community aspect of what community is the influencer building. · Ucef mentioned how vanity metrics are so present in all of the software’s you use and in the influencer marketing industry as a whole, with people saying you have to be over 3 to 5% engagement. Although this is an important metric, Ucef believes that you must realize that influencers are real people and real people are following them for reasons. Figuring out what those reasons are is the key to finding successful influencers. · Ucef finds that reading through influencers comments and seeing the engagement of their audience is a good indicator of whether an influencer is worth the investment. Ucef will also look at the influencers profile on other social platforms such as YouTube to see if the engagement is similar · Ucef has average cpms for certain platforms like Instagram, which is 10, and YouTube which is anywhere from 10 to 20. He uses these average cpms to roughly estimate how much to pay an influencer. However, he has had great campaigns where the CPM was 100 due to the ability of the influencer to build a community. Therefore, when it comes to influencer payment, there are a multitude of variables to consider.· For negotiation with influencers, Ucef finds that the best tactic is communicating the idea of possibly working together in the long term if the partnership goes well. · Ucef’s favorite campaign was with a tech company based out of the UK that had a budget of $300,000 a month since he worked with large influencers such as Kendall Jenner, Scott Disick, Floyd Mayweather, Black Chyna, and more. · Ucef’s favorite influencer he worked with was Faze Sensei as he seemed so down to earth and could have charged a lot of money but simply liked the current client’s products at the time which was embroidered hats. · Ucef believes the biggest misconception about Influencer Marketing is the amount of communication that goes into getting in contact with influencers in the first place. · Ucef believes that the way the Influencer Marketing industry has changed the most is in terms of consumers becoming a lot more aware of what was happening with influencers and how they would pick random products to promote because of the amount they’d get paid. The whole industry as a whole become more transparent and authentic as a result, with influencers now wanting to work with brands that align with their audience and their core values, instead of just working with brands for the lump sum of cash. · Ucef see’s the future of the Influencer Marketing industry headed in a direction where companies are running ads from influencers Facebook accounts with content that they’ve created, also known as whitelisting. 
Quickfire Round: 

Ucef’s morning routine 

· Meditation and taking 30 minutes to relax uninterrupted  

Whose content do you listen to, watch, or read the most? 

· Tom Bilyeu · Gerard Adams · Gary Vaynerchuk 

Ucef’s favorite book of all time

· Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn 

Ucef’s favorite hundred-dollar purchase 

· Blue light blockers from eyebuydirect

Ucef’s favorite place he has ever been to

· Bali, Indonesia 

Ucef’s favorite brand 

· Apple 

Ucef’s advice to those looking to build their own influence

· Be authentic and be yourself, people can tell when you’re trying to just garner an audience for the sake of garnering an audience. Just do it for the right reasons. 

Quotes:  

“Influencer Marketing is just word of mouth on steroids”

“I just want to have fun with entrepreneurship and enjoy the process, because I’m realizing that the process is all there is. And as much as we want to get to the destination, once you’re there, there’s just another destination that you’re moving towards”

“When it comes to Influencer Marketing, I feel like a lot of people just look at the vanity metrics of someone’s engagement looking good. But they totally miss the entire community aspect of what community is the influencer building and influencing” 

 

Summary
 
In this week’s episode of The Hunting Influence Podcast, Aaron is joined by Adam Silverman, CEO and Head of Talent of Hot Dot Media. Adam Silverman discusses his journey as a serial entrepreneur from a young age, talks about the future of influencer marketing and where he sees Hot Dot Media in the next few years, his tips and tricks for increasing the reach and potential virality of TikTok videos, and his advice for those looking to build their own influence. His most recent venture, Hot Dot Media, gives brands who are looking to promote their business an easy platform that gives them the tools to be able to meet, talk and get to work quickly. It was recently acquired by Wondr Gaming which is a publicly traded company that builds partnerships and fosters community within the gaming and Esports industries by creating and acquiring new assets.

Key Takeaways:

• Adam grew up in a family where both his parents were entrepreneurs with his dad having a variety of ventures like car washes and gas stations and his mom was a realtor. Throughout his whole life, he has had an entrepreneurial passion as it stemmed from his parents.
• His first real taste of entrepreneurship was in elementary school where him and his friend would buy toys from FAO Schwarz in New York City and resell them to friends at recess.
• At the age of 14, he started a more substantial business called Silver Sells, where he would take a variety of different products ranging anywhere from kitchen cabinets to Gucci purses and liquidated people’s belongings that they didn’t like anymore.
• Had several failed ventures along the way. One venture Adam started in high school was purchasing a machine from China that would waterproof iPhones before it existed. Although it wasn’t a success, he learned about his passion for business being able to get up every day and stand behind something that he really enjoyed.
• In University, Adam was selling a product that was difficult to sell through conventional channels like Facebook, Instagram, or Google. He had to go through alternative marketing outlets that were untapped such as Reddit and Quora. He learned that in order to obtain results, it was just a matter of communicating effective stories. 
• Adam graduated from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario. Adam was a part of the Western propel community which is an incubator for student start-ups. He worked on two large scale projects which were a Kickstarter campaign for an energy gum as well as a food delivery app for on campus food delivery.
• He took his experience from the Propel Entrepreneurship Centre and transitioned that into an internship at Bancorp where he started doing influencer marketing on a full-time basis. He got his first taste of influencer marketing and how to work with influencers. 
• Adam noticed the rapid growth of TikTok early on and how content creators were growing their followings exponentially on the platform which wasn’t achievable on Instagram. He took advantage of this opportunity and founded Hot Dot Media, reaching out to several influencers on TikTok and determining what brand deals they currently had.
• Adam would message hundreds of influencers on TikTok trying to figure out who the best creators for each particular campaign are. Once the content was created, he would leverage and reshare it on platforms like Reddit.
• Hot Dot media has worked with both small and large brands, with the smallest campaign having 7 influencers and the largest campaign having 15 million influencers for one deal.
• Adam’s mentioned several tips and tricks for increasing the reach of TikTok videos. Auto generated captions is one way he was able to substantially increase his ability to have client’s videos go viral. Another tip for successful content is giving users some type of prompt to interact with the post such as asking them to comment an emoji. 
• If certain content does not perform as expected on TikTok, Adam believes that there’s always an opportunity to put paid dollars behind it and repurpose the content, using it as a video asset moving forward. 
• Adam wants to start providing influencers with equity deals and further revenue share based on the results that they are able to drive in the next few quarters. 
• Adam believes in being creator first and empowering creators in the sense that the price they ask for is the exact price they get paid. He believes this establishes a great relationship with the creators and the brands. 
• Adam’s favorite campaign was with a creator named Philip Vu. Adam saw Philip grow from 100,000 followers to over 500,000 followers on TikTok in the past year alone and he is one of those creators that is a great storyteller and creator. 
• Adam believes that Influencer Marketing should always have the human element to it for the screening process of connecting brands with creators rather than it being fully algorithm based.
• The acquisition of Hot Dot Media by Wondr Gaming was perfect from all regards according to Adam, as his company is getting a technology arm where they can now launch NFT’s and also have a gaming rewards platform which can enable creators to generate additional streams of income. 
• If Adam could go back in time and do one thing differently, it would be to focus heavily on his operations and make sure that they are scalable. He recommends to think about what are your core operations, what you actually need fundamentally to operate your business, and really making sure that it is well put together so that your offering is extremely clear when you pitch to clients. 
• Adam believes that the biggest thing that will change in the next one to five years is the speed at which influencer deals are happening. Adam believes there is no reason that real time bidding can’t occur with influencers as long as they have availability. He wants to decrease the amount of time it takes to go from a campaign all the way through to execution, taking it from a week right now to eventually less than one day. 
  
  

Quick-Fire Round

Adam’s morning routine 

• Oat milk latte, double shot of expresso, and drinking a lot of water

Erik’s favorite resource 

• Podcast called 20VC with Harry Stebbings
• Blitzscaling with Reid Hoffman

Erik’s favorite book of all time

• Art of War – Sun Tzu

Erik’s favorite hundred-dollar purchase 

• Bonsai Plant

Erik’s favorite place he has ever been to

• Tel Aviv, Israel

Erik’s favorite brand 

• Bang & Olufsen Headphones
• Saeco Coffee Machines

Erik’s advice to those looking to build their own influence

• Don’t hesitate on reaching out to people through a cold email. Persistence is the key to success. If a brand doesn’t respond right away, keep on messaging them. Be persistent without being annoying and keep on following up until you get a definitive no. 

Quotes: 

“Persistence is the key to success. I always tell creators that if a brand doesn’t respond right away, keep on messaging them, you want to be on top of inbox at all time. Until somebody says, I’ve had enough of this or has given me a definite no, I keep on following up because it just means that I haven’t got that definite no yet”

“If you can find a very great storyteller and amazing creator, their ability to drive results is really unlimited”

“You always want to make sure in entrepreneurship that you’re very confident in what you do. I would recommend to everyone to think in greater depth about figuring out your core operations, what you actually need fundamentally to operate your business, and really making sure that its well put together so that your offering is extremely clear when you’re going to pitch your company”

In this week’s episode of The Hunting Influence Podcast, Aaron is joined by Erik Rivera, Founder and CEO of Honest Paws. They discuss the art of bringing order in entrepreneurship chaos, and the core principles for entrepreneurial success, and the biggest challenges in CBD for the pets business.

In this episode of Hunting Influence, Aaron is joined by Austin Maxwell, Co-Founder at Kanga Coolers. They discuss the Kanga Coolers origin story, the Shark Tank experience and their relationship with the shark that did the deal: Mark Cuban.

In this episode of Hunting Influence, Aaron is joined by Eric Bandholz, Founder of Beardbrand. They discuss why Beardbrand's motto is "keep on growing" which refers to both your beard and yourself... the single most impactful moment in Eric's entrepreneurial career and Eric's biggest hiring lesson.

In this episode of Hunting Influence, Aaron is joined by Nick Hamburger, Co-Founder and CEO of Quevos. They discuss Nick’s Shark Tank experience (SPOILER: they got investment), how he managed to launch a brand whilst still in school, and how to succeed as a young entrepreneur.

If you enjoyed this episode then please either:

• Subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts
• Follow on Spotify

If you enjoyed this episode then please either:

• Subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts
• Follow on Spotify