Launch and Scale®

Regardless of where you are in your online journey, at some point, you'll want to increase your reach by getting your product into retail and other distribution. In this in-depth interview with Sarah Shaw, we go through best practices when approaching retailers for the first time, as well as how to make sure that even when your product is on shelves, that it's selling. As a bonus, we explore how she's had her clients' products into the hands of both A and B level celebrities like Blake Lively. 

Transcript

Hey guys, welcome to Launch and Scale. This is episode seven. In this episode, we are taking a look at what is the best route to market for your product. A while there are several types we could talk about, two that I come across most in the eCommerce space is do you launch your product on Amazon first or do you launch on Kickstarter first? This is the question that was inspired by Stein Devolder. He asked, really, what are the benefits of first launching your brand on Kickstarter and then going to Amazon instead of just launching your brand on Amazon? And so that is an awesome question. I wanted to dedicate an episode to that. And keep in mind if you guys do ... If you have a question that you want to be answered on the show, you can do so by going to khierstyn.com/ask, how you spell that is K-H-I-E-R-S-T-Y-N dot com slash ask, and you'll be able to ask a question through a voicemail or email it in and then we'll be able to cover it on a future episode. So which one should you start with? Should you do Amazon or should you do Kickstarter? And I think that really depends on where you're at in your journey. If this is your first product, then the question is going to be, do I start on Amazon or do I start on Kickstarter? But what if you are already selling on Amazon? What does that look like? So I get, I think my audience is an even split between those that sell on Amazon and they're looking at building a brand off of Amazon for reasons I'll get into in a second. But then I have first-time product creators that want to get their product online and they're like, do I do Kickstarter? Do I do Amazon? And so we'll get into that, as well. In terms of benefits of Amazon, Amazon is a global marketplace, so it gives you the same benefits as Kickstarter does in that it gets your product in front of people that otherwise may not have known or caught an opportunity to learn about your brand. So I think that way, as a marketplace, it is extremely powerful and you should, if you're selling a product online, you should absolutely be on Amazon. But having your product exclusively on Amazon has its drawbacks. Where Amazon could be a really great place to get started online, if you white label a product, whereas you go to Alibaba, you find an existing product and then you put your label on it and create a brand and sell that exclusively on Amazon. That is a great way to get into selling online. However, it has its drawbacks because as you start to scale on Amazon, you don't have complete control over your listing. Essentially, Amazon owns all your customer data. So you don't have a direct way to contact your customers. And you are very susceptible to price wars on Amazon. Where when if you first go into a category where it's very profitable and there isn't a lot of competition on your product, very soon, competitors are going to come in and start undercutting your prices, which means it's a very quick race to the bottom for you. With Amazon being a go-to marketplace, it is a great place to get started, but it's extremely competitive and it is very volatile. So you can get your listing shut down at any point. You don't own customer data. And it's really not, it's not safe, essentially, to have your brand only on Amazon, in my opinion. And while there are ways around it, I believe the best way to build a foundation and a legacy for yourself and your family online is to have complete control over where your product is listed. So that's why I, regardless of whether you're on Kickstarter or Amazon, you 100% need to have a spot where your product lives online, be it your own website. So regardless, again, Kickstarter, Amazon, you need to be building yourself a spot offline. So the reason I get a lot of Amazon guys coming to me is that they understand the risk they take by only selling on Amazon and they want to be able to expand, to be able to scale and build a brand. Because building a brand, if you go back to episode...

Not having a strong understanding of who your customer is, niching down, and focusing on who you want to serve is by far one of the biggest barriers to success on Kickstarter (and launching products successfully) that I see. Struggling to find your niche or narrowing down your message can seem limiting, but trust me, it’s the opposite. Ever heard the phrase: “If you end up trying to reach everyone you reach no one”. Here’s a test for you to see how focused your niche and message are.

Transcript:

Hey, everyone, welcome to Launch and Scale. This is episode six and today I'm really excited to dive into a topic that comes up on every single phone call I have with you. People that are really looking to launch products, be it Kickstarter, Amazon, or just online, in general. And that question is how to discover your niche, or even if you have an idea of who your customer is, how do you narrow it down to the right one that's going to resonate with your product to make sure that you have maximum success when it comes to your product launch. So in this episode, we're going to be having a deep look into what that looks like and why it's so important with your launch and how even having the wrong niche or not focusing on this can really bomb your launch. Before we get into that, this episode is brought to you by Launch and Scale. It is a group program that helps take creators and anyone launching a product from zero to getting them funded on Kickstarter and be able to create a foundation for a strong E-commerce brand. I've been working on Crowdfunding campaigns and product launches for the last four years, and I've raised multiple six figures with the clients that we've worked with. So to find out more, please do head over to khierstyn.com that's spelled K-H-I-E-R-S-T-Y-N .com. Click and if you want to book an actual session with myself, or the team, please do go to khierstyn.com/schedule, and you can line up a time to talk about your product launch needs. Apart from that, how do we pick a niche for our product and why is this even important to begin with? When it comes to having a strong launch on Amazon, Kickstarter or any really online marketplace that looks to rank projects and products based on popularity, it's important that you come in with an audience of people ready to buy your product because it helps you rank on the site. With Kickstarter specifically, if you've followed my work on the Crowdfunding podcasts or even just the talks that I've done and stuff like that, you will know that the biggest mistake that people make when it comes to Crowdfunding and product launches, in general, is they assume just because Kickstarter has this huge audience that all you have to do is rock up, and you're going to raise $100,000. It's quite the opposite. You do have to prove to the platform that you're popular and worth being shown to other community members. And the way that's done is by understanding how the algorithm works. And so right up until now, you may have an understanding or whatnot that you need an audience of people ready to buy your product as soon as you go live. But when we go into looking at why product launches underperform, so not do as well as the person-creator hoped, it's generally because they're niche, and the audience that they built up or the person that type that they were trying to sell their product to was actually misaligned and it was wrong. So when comes to niching down, I wanted to have an open, honest conversation about this because this is somewhere that first time creators, and even if this is your second or third product, you may, if you're struggling to sell and you're struggling to get a good conversion rate with your sales, it is most likely because the product offering that you have is not in alignment with what the niche is that you're going after. So how do you get it in alignment? The first thing to know is that the mistake that most people make is they don't want to...

Transcript:  Hey everyone, welcome to the Launch and Scale podcast. This is episode five, and I'm Khierstyn Ross. This episode is brought to you by the Launch and Scale program, which if you are looking for a done with you program that is a proven step by step system and support that we have put together to get you the support that you need throughout your product launch, be sure to head over to khierstyn.com/schedule and book a strategy session with myself, or my team where we're going to be able to help you map out your roadmap for your campaign and ultimately see if the program is a right fit to get you the support you need to smash your product launch goals. Khierstyn Ross: In this episode, we are taking a look at ... Essentially this is really the first interview that we're doing for launch and scale, and I've been friends with Marcus for the last four years. Marcus Rader is the CEO and co-founder of Hostaway, which is an enterprise solution in the travel space. We'll get into that a little bit more. But really what this interview focuses on is how they were able to go into a market, property managers and assess where the solution is and ultimately create an MVP around customer needs and customer interviews. And so, we're going to talk about that process of how he went from the conception of an idea to an MVP and really how he was able to scale that very quickly over the last two years to a company that has raised multiple millions of dollars through VC and angel funding. But they're now, they work out of five different countries with over 38 employees and growing. Khierstyn Ross: Hostaway, is now one of the fastest growing enterprise tech solutions in the travel space, and really stoked to cover this interview because it does really cover that fast growth period and how he was able to iterate based on customer feedback in the field. And so we have a lot of juicy tidbits to go into it. So I'm really stoked to launch and kick off our official first interview of the podcast. Khierstyn Ross: If you've been a listener for a while, you will know that this show has evolved from Crowdfunding Uncut where that was primarily interview focused, and what I'm looking to do with this show is have a range of teach you the stuff, answer your questions, but also bringing on valuable guests from different niches that have either a great results or they're doing great things. And I have Marcus Rader from Hostaway, which I'll get into what Hostaway is in a second. But Marcus and I have known each other for about four years now, I think. And we met when mutual friends brought us to a baseball game, and ever since then, we've just been friends hanging out in the startup space. Khierstyn Ross: What's been really amazing about Marcus is I've seen him move to Toronto from Finland and start Hostaway from nothing to over a two year period, maybe two and a half, bring Hostaway from nothing to one of the fastest growing tech travel on enterprise solution software on the internet and in the world, which is just fascinating to see his journey. And I thought, what better way to kick off our first interview of this show than get into the mind of someone who has taken something from nothing to 38 employees in five different spots over the last two years. So, Marcus, I'm really stoked to have an officially recorded conversation with you and instead of just over beer. So welcome. Marcus Rader: Well, thank you. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be on the show. Khierstyn Ross: Yeah, we're still good. So, let's give some context, what is Hostaway? Marcus Rader: So, Hostaway is a software service platform for vacation rental property managers. So software as a service is a concept where you buy a piece of software as a subscription model. Typical examples include Salesforce, HubSpot, Zendesk, even Stripe. What our software does, it allows vacation rental property managers to grow faster, so through our one in all solution that's completely cloud-based,

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Launch and Scale podcast. This is episode four, and I'm Khierstyn Ross. In today's episode, we are going to be taking a look at what is my recommended software stack to use when building up an engaged audience for your product online. And this question was inspired by really Fernando Perez. He emailed in asking how we can incorporate click funnels into our overall plan? So I'm going to spend the next few minutes of this episode really diving in to help you simplify that process because I know that when you're getting started online there could be some confusion as to which software solution do you actually need and what is it for. So, when you are building up a targeted audience of people to reach out to when building up that audience in anticipation for your product launch or even a new business that you have, you can have contacts in different areas. You may have friends and colleagues on LinkedIn that have messaged you to say, "Yes, I really want to help support you." You may have people at work, you may have people from an existing customer base or email list that all say yes, "I'd love to be kept in contact and let me know when you're launching." And the problem with that is if you look at managing communication between multiple platforms, you may get overwhelmed because some people are your friends and you may think that they need different information on the product then a new email subscriber, and how really do you compartmentalize that data? So the answer is that you want to have one central spot online where people go to sign up for information to get updates on your product launch. So that's the very first thing is any communication you have, don't complicate it. You want to have one universal spot where everyone goes to not only learn more about your product but be notified when you're live. So you want to have one spot online. This is a landing page. So a landing page is going to be a one-page website with a little bit of product information on your product, of course, and information on when you're launching, and you want to have this website on a domain that is relevant to the product you're launching. So it could either be yourproductname.com it could be yourpersonaldomain.com if you don't currently own something that's having to do with your product, but have one central spot online where people go to subscribe and join your mailing list, so that's one thing. One kind of software we need to look at is what to do to build a landing page? That's phase one is landing page software. And the second one is when people actually go to this landing page online and they like your product information and they want to join your mailing list to stay up to date with your launch updates and get notified when you're live then you need to have a spot to actually organize and manage those email addresses. The thing is that when you are managing multiple hundreds of people that want to stay in contact with you, think of how crazy that's going to be to try to manage all that communication in Gmail. It's going to get lost and it's just going to be a bit of a nightmare. So you want to have, the second kind of software you want is an email CRM system where when someone inputs their email address on the landing page, that that landing page software will push that email onto a list in a software that will keep that nice and organized. And so that's where we get into an email CRM system as well. And then when you actually go to email your full mailing list, you can do that from one spot where you can automate emails and do a bunch of cool stuff. So those are the two kinds of software I want to look at is what is the recommended landing page software we need so that you can go in, don't worry, you don't need technical coding skills to do this. There're a lot of really simple, straightforward solutions that give you landing page templates you can use. So the first one is what is my recommended

Welcome to The Launch and Scale Podcast. This is episode three and I'm Khierstyn Ross. The first thing I wanted to cover in today's episode is that Launch and Scale is now available on all major podcasting platforms. So whether you are Google Play, iTunes, Spotify, or Stitcher, then you will be able to find Launch and Scale by just doing a quick search on those platforms. And please do subscribe and leave a review, an honest review if you are enjoying the content as it does help the show get found by other people. In today's episode, we are ... Well, I'm going to be covering a question from Tony Hawkins, which he wanted to know how do you go at it alone? What are some best practices for who to hire and when to hire that very first person when you are a solo entrepreneur and really looking at launching that first product, what does that look like? And to answer that question, unfortunately, there is no one right answer that fits everyone because the reality is that who your first hire really depends on what your strengths are as a person, on your budget, on ultimately what your goals are. So this episode is going to lay out a framework for how you can identify, really, and for your unique situation, who that first hire should be and when the heck you should actually bring them on. Before you look at what you need to outsource and who that first hire needs to be, you actually have another question that you should be asking yourself. Now the difference between ... A big difference between people that succeed and people that don't seem to get anywhere is that the ones that succeed actually know what they're working towards. And they know how to measure progress towards that goal. And before we can really look at what to outsource, we first have to make sure that what we're actually focusing our time on and the activities that we are looking to do on a daily basis are actually going to get you towards where you are trying to go. First thing I want to do is I don't want to look at what to outsource. I want to look at defining where you're going. So the first step in figuring out really what to outsource is asking yourself, what are you trying to achieve? Now, it's important to pick one goal. What is your big, wildly important goal? And that is the thing that really you will start to define things that you can measure your success towards. So here's an example. In the crowdfunding space, if your goal is to raise $50,000 on Kickstarter and six months from now, then that is your big goal. Your big goal is to raise $50,000. But then how are you actually getting to that point? So when you set that goal of $50,000, the next thing to do is to break down that goal into one measurable thing that you can do every day to achieve that so that every day when you wake up or at the end of every week, you can look back on the week and say, "Great, I specifically made measurable progress toward my goal because I did this one thing." When you look at this, I would look at, okay, I have a goal of $50,000. What is the one thing I can do that is going to move the needle toward getting me toward that goal? Okay, build my audience. Okay, cool. So I need to find people that are going to pledge toward my Kickstarter campaign in six months. But the problem with setting the goal as build my audience is it's not specific, and it's not measurable, and it's too ... Not fluffy, but it's just it's not a smart goal. It's not a goal that you can track whether or not you're actually moving toward it because build audience is really not specific. So when you take ... Number one, we've established the big goal, which is raising $50,000. But then you want to use the question, what is the biggest, I guess, the best thing I could do that's going to move me toward that is build my audience? Great. Or find people to pledge my campaign. They're both in the same. But what is a metric or a key performance indicator, AKA, KPI's that you can use every day so that if

Hey guys, welcome to the Launch and Scale podcast, I'm Khierstyn, this is episode two and this episode is covering how the heck do you know if someone really wants to buy your product before you sink thousands of dollars into it. Which is going into, how do you validate your ideas quickly and move on to ones that are actually going to sell for you? This is a question that was posed by Brett Buxton, so this is a question that he emailed into me after I asked everyone on our email list, really, what is the question you want me to cover in the new podcast? And so I broke his question into two episodes where we covered the first part of the question in episode one. So, if you missed that in terms of the debate between do you develop a Me-too, or a brand type product, head over to episode one and grab that.

Today's episode is going to be focusing on how to really validate and give you confidence in your idea, prior to sinking thousands of dollars into it. As a recap, here is the question that Brett asked. "If we're all hoping to avoid the price wars on Amazon as a seller, how can we be sure people will want what we decide to make? I know myself and a lot of others rely heavily on Jungle Scout to tell what and how much is selling on Amazon, and when I first started the Me-too product thing. I still look at Jumbo sales numbers when developing my new product and tried to give the market what it seemed like it needed, based on personal preference and examining reviews of other products on Amazon. Beyond that, though it's a little bit of a crapshoot. Would love to hear some input on this."

So, Brett, great question. In terms of how to make absolutely sure your product sells before you sink thousands of dollars into it, while you can gauge market interest online by looking at Google Trends, you can look at similar products that are selling to yours on Amazon and look at the reviews. Ultimately, if you are bringing a proprietary product to market that is a new version of something that already exists and something that you patent and something that has IP that you own, versus doing the white label side of things by slapping your brand on to an existing product, that information you get from Jungle Scout, Amazon and others like Google Trends, is really limited.

So, how do you know that people are actually going to buy your product? A few weeks ago now, I was going through Netflix late on a Saturday night, we'll say, and I came across a documentary called Mad Men. It is a behind the scenes look at Steve Madden, the fashion shoe brand as of a couple of years ago, was doing over a billion dollars in sales in the fashion industry. And because I didn't know much about this brand, I know that I like the shoes, but in terms of the founder, I hadn't really heard much about him, so I press play. And within the first few minutes of the documentary it shows their office in Brooklyn, I think, New York, and there's something that they did that really stood out to me.

It's really the reason, in my mind, why Steve Madden is such a powerhouse of a brand and why they've successfully brought products to market over and over and over again, that have been best sellers. And what it comes down to is Steve Madden, when they get an idea for a design, so their head of product design gets an idea, or Steve feels inspired by something he sees on the street, then they bring it back to their office. They sketch up a prototype of this new design that was inspired, and they have two choices at this point.

If they think, "Wow, this is a great shoe and it's going to be a best seller," they can go and create 10,000 units of this thing right off the bat, and spend thousands of dollars and start to plan to roll it out into their stores. But doing that, they don't have actual concrete evidence of whether the shoe is even going to sell. They get great ideas all the time, but how do you know that all of their ideas are good.

Hey, guys. Welcome to episode one of the Launch and Scale podcast. If you are confused and wondering why there is an episode before this, that is the overview episode. That is a way to give you a flavor of the show and see if this is something that you want to give a shot and listen to. If this is your first time listening to the show, be sure to head over to khierstyn.com/podcast and subscribe to the show, and if you like what you hear, please do leave a review, as it helps other people find the show. If you cannot find my name, it's probably because you can't spell it. No one can spell my name properly, but that's the fun in this. My name is spelled K-H-I-E-R-S-T-Y-N.com. I'm just stoked about this episode. Last week, I emailed the Crowdfunding Uncut family, which is the name of the old brand. That launch and scale evolved too. I asked them what do you want to learn in e-commerce? Here are the name and the topic of the new show Launch and Scale. What is a question you'd like me to cover? Brett Buxton is one of the people that emailed in a question, and actually, his evolved into a two-parter. The meat of his question is covered in episode two, so the next one, which is how to make sure people actually want your product before you sink thousands of dollars into it.

Brett, where he's at in his product cycle is he is an Amazon seller that is now creating a proprietary product, so a product that is his own. It's not necessarily a white label product or a commoditized product like on Amazon because he wants to actually build a brand around a product that he owns the IP for. His question had that in there, so I was like that would actually also make a good branch of an episode. I'm going to read his question in episode two because his question is heavily related to product validation and being sure that someone wants your product before you actually go and sink money into it. For this episode though, the question really is do you have a me-too product or do you have a brand? Because frankly, in my mind, I think that you cannot have both at the same time. I think that one should evolve into the other or you make the conscious decision to go with one and grow into it as you go. Let's start by looking at what a me-too product is.

A me-too product is as it sounds. It's like a knockoff or it is a white label version of something that's already selling. If you are someone that wants a me-too product, you would generally go to Alibaba, look for the manufacturer of that product, and then slap your brand name on it and then start to sell that product. With me too products, typically you'll find them on ... in my world, it's Amazon sellers that start off with the me-too products. There's nothing wrong with me too. I think it's an excellent gateway plan to learn the ins and outs of manufacturing and bringing a product to market. It does have its downsides, which we'll talk about with the what is a brand in a second, but me too products have one thing that I don't like, and it is a race to the bottom. In my mind, you sell a product or a service based on price or quality. With Amazon, with me too products, unfortunately, it is just so easy to sell based on the price that you, by actually being a best seller in a product, may have another seller come in and undercut your prices because they've found a way to manufacture and create your product better and faster.

So, it's a quick race to the bottom of the price war, which actually is a detrimental long term strategy because if you have a product that's selling really well and you have healthy margins and everything is great, any day some other seller can come in and undercut your prices in half. Suddenly, they start to take all the traffic that you got, and it's dangerous because at that point you're going to be ending up slashing your prices if you are only selling to people that value price over value. With that quick race to the bottom, unfortunately, your prices,...

Hey everyone, welcome to the overview episode of the Launch and Scale™ Podcast. I'm Khierstyn Ross, and I am so excited to be officially kicking this off. For those that have been following the Crowdfunding Uncut podcast for a while, you know that I did that for the last three years where that podcast focused really heavily on how to bring physical products to market through the Kickstarter route. Over my last four years being in the trenches with creators, really bringing products to market, managing very large crowdfunding campaigns of multiple six-figures, and advising E-commerce brands on how to bring new products to market, I felt that it was time to evolve the brand. And really evolve the conversation to taking everything I've learned from the Kickstarter route, and bringing products to market successfully, and really applying that to any product launch online.

Because what I've noticed is with Kickstarter launches you have one chance, really, to make a great first impression. You have one chance to position your product properly, one chance to make sure that your message is right, the pricing is right, and not only that, but that you have an intimate understanding of why your customer is going to buy this product so that you can have a great sales message, a great video and all that. What I've found is that with Kickstarter campaigns, because it is, traditionally, people have a very high failure rate on Kickstarter whereas the success rate on Kickstarter's about 37%. The big factor with that is to make sure that you not only have an audience of people ready to buy your product when you're live but the other side is making sure you have the right audience because you want to make sure you're building up the right audience of people that are actually going to resonate with your product and love your products so that they buy it on your Crowdfunding campaign when it goes live.

And so because of that and because of the whole getting to know your customer and how much it builds into positioning your product properly, I find that the work that we've done and why I have such a high success rate of campaign success on Kickstarter is because we do a lot of due diligence leading up to a launch of who is your customer. Let's prove that hypothesis through Facebook marketing, let's prove that hypothesis through customer interviews through a structured beta test, which we talk about in episode two, and through different things like that to really make sure that the assumptions we make about our product and who is going to buy and why people love it, we make sure that that is market tested and proven so that when we go to spend so much time and resources launching this product that we get it right the first time.

So, I've found that after working with beginner brands who were using Kickstarter for launch that first product versus an eCommerce client that maybe selling a dozen or so products on Amazon and they know want to build up their audience using Kickstarter as an addition platform, I noticed a trend in that the things we do so early stage with beginner brands to really scope who the customer is, market test demographics and make sure that they are predictably setting up the way we position our product. I realized that that in a lot of the eCommerce brands like the current ones that we approaching me didn't have that locked in. So, I thought, okay, well, I want to take this conversation more mainstream and everything that we have done with Kickstarter campaigns to make sure that we have a six-figure launch, to make sure we are positioning the product and the message we have really resonates with the person we put it in front of.

I wanted to take that conversation more so that people who are looking at taking their product off of Amazon and selling on their Shopify site or building a physical product or even looking to create that round two of a product for a launch, if you're on the Kickstarter...