Andy Hnilo and Ari Meisel : Less Doing Podcast

Ari meisel's dash less domain.

Okay, so. All right, I think we should be live here. Let's see the top.

Yeah, the top one. Yeah. All right, we are live.

Tag.

Everybody. We'll be with you in just a moment. Just getting set up here.

Hey, eye line over there.

Yes. All right.

How's it going?

Good morning, Andy. Nilo in studio.

It's good to be here. Thanks for having me, man.

My pleasure. I'm glad that we can make this work.

Yeah, me too.

All right, so I'm just gonna properly tag you.

You know, one of the things. And watching as I say it now, you know when you see on Instagram, you see people, certain entrepreneurs, I always pay attention whether or not they spell an entrepreneur right. I'm such a freak about spelling. So watch. Now I'm going to butcher it and spell it wrong. So.

Okay.

I want to make sure I get you. So I. Is this interfering with that?

No, like.

Oh, no, not at all.

Oh, you're in a Facebook live on yours.

Yeah.

Oh, cuz you can just reshare. You can just reshare ours and then it'll stream onto yours. Okay. Yeah. So you should be able to go to our page right now and then you can share it to yours and it'll just go right there.

Oh, right, yeah, done.

So perfect. All right, well, we're ready whenever you do that. So. Yeah, share it.

Looks good. Video looks good. All right.

Okay, so again, welcome. So we've got Andy Nilo of Alotra Naturals here and we're gonna. This will be a fun episode. So we're doing this on Facebook Live. For those of you who are listening in your car on your podcast, make sure to subscribe and check out the other episodes that we have at the Lesson Podcast. But what we're gonna do is we'll talk about Andy's story and about the product and how it's come to be. And then I really want to focus the latter half of the episode on consulting. So we're gonna talk about his. It's a fast growing company. Andy got a small team, which we're going to hear about. And I'm going to give some advice that I think in terms of outsourcing, optimizing and automating everything that you can do to continue to grow this company. So with that, welcome.

Yeah, thank you for having me.

Thanks for coming.

This happened all pretty quickly. I was speaking to my business partner, Dave Asprey, who really just launched or helped me launch alexer naturals in 2014. So I was to tell the audience out there. I was in a large accident in 2011 when I was hit by a westbound heavy vehicle that hit me into eastbound lane. It was in a. An ICU bed with a compound fracture of my jaw. I had seven broken ribs collapsed, a collapsed lung and just extremely banged up. A lot of swelling and my, the left side of my face was just in pieces. So luckily they put me back together and I had titanium plate inserted on top and then one on the bottom to help the bone grow back.

What was your profession at the time?

I was in the entertainment industry at the time and just doing that service, service industry work as a bartender, which I loved and I believed I was going to make it. But I was just waiting for the phone to ring. I didn't have any control over what I was going to do. I was waiting for other people to call me and I was putting in the work, but it just wasn't. It was happening. I was working a good amount, but it just. I wasn't passionate about it, you know, I wasn't passionate about putting in the home, you know, the work that you have to do to be successful in anything. You know, it was like homework for me. If I got an audition for a young dad role or something like that. It's not as exciting as like an athlete role, which I played baseball my entire life and it's just different from that. And actors, that's what I admire about actors. They enjoy the creative process for the most part. The people that I know enjoy the creative process of, you know, becoming that character and really studying and creating a story for that character. And I just, I didn't like doing that. I'm right where I'm supposed to be right now, that's for sure. But I went home after leaving the hospital. I just, I didn't want to use the creams and serums that my surgeons were recommending that I used to accelerate the healing of my scarring and abrasion. So I just did my research and I didn't want to leave the house. So I had a lot of time just to put things together, melt butters down and different ingredients in a cast iron pan, which is now my nightcrank. Seriously, it's just I was doing a lot of research from different extracts, essential oils, cold pressed oils, clays, things like colostrum. So I was hitting my skin cells from the inside, like building my body back for my recovery process through a tonic that I made and then also products. So my job being wired shut, I couldn't eat too much. I couldn't eat at all, period. These first three teeth on the left are all. They're all bonded in because they were just like nubs from concrete hitting them. It was pretty bad. But I mean, I went back with just the intention of accelerating the healing and I didn't like feel bad for myself and I just kind of wanted to accelerate. Took as a challenge just to accelerate and get back better than I was before, in better shape and just feeling getting my zest back because antibiotics, it'll just drain you. So I was on antibiotics to make sure that I didn't get an infection from the inside on the break of my job. But health and wellness became extremely important to me and I became obsessed. And that passion and obsession just led to absolute purpose. And then, yeah, Dave found out about my story, had me on his podcast. It's just, it really. We just went in there to talk about nutrition kind of in resilience and how that that just helps. And you know, a lot of people can relate to being down and out. And I just shared my story and then towards the end I mentioned this mask, this nutrient dense clay mask that I was putting together in my back room or my bedroom actually, that I turned into my lab and moved everything out of my bedroom into my living room. Made my bedroom like a little lab. I bought a mud mixer and started throwing things together. I mean, when.

A mud mixer?

A mud mixer from Home Depot. Yeah. Oh, little Makita.

Oh, okay.

Yeah. You know, it has a little drill bit. And I was just sitting there. This is my little creative outlet. I put on one of those, this little mask, little thing for my eyes too. And I started going to work and I had these windows all around and I would roll up the windows and it was extremely therapeutic for me because it was like little mountain range to look at. I would make these masks, handshake them before that and then blend them. And then I would start handing out to friends who saw me in the ICU and were completely blown away that I was recovering really quickly. I mean, the abrasions were gone within two weeks. The scarring didn't significantly reduce. And I was feeling good. I was feeling good. I mean, obviously there's a lot of swelling. That just takes time. You can't speed up that type of physical trauma with anything, you know, so it's. But Yeah, I mean, three and a half years later, we're in 76 countries and we have 14 SKUs that should be released, 14 products that should be released by May they're done. It's just kind of you want to space out the time to get your product releases.

So what was the timeline of like the accident to other than information? Like full recovery.

Full recovery. Well, I'm still going through it a little bit. I severed a nerve right here. That communicates a lot of.

Well, sorry, when was this? When did it happen?

Oh, the accident was 2000, March 20, 2011. And it's. Yeah, we're coming up on, man, seven years. Seven years. But it's just, you know, it's getting a chance to, you know, I'm sure you can relate just finding something that you're extremely passionate about. It's not really. I know it's such a cliche, but it really does not work to me. I wake up and it's just, I don't know, 60 seconds doesn't go by. Then I don't think about how to optimize my business. And that's what made me think of you. Just how to turn up just certain areas to that. I don't. I mean, it's my baby. I mean, I'm still a little too involved with my employees. I'm still butting in on certain customer inquiries. I love that though. I mean, the only reason you have a business is because you have a customer. I mean, treat them perfectly. Something I can control. And why not optimize that? I just don't want to screw that part of it up. But that's part of the reason why I want to meet with you is because hiring has been difficult. And so I wanted to get just anyone's advice up there. I've never hired before. I fell into the entrepreneurial side of things and running a business. But I just want to learn. I put in the work to optimize every part of running a business and how to streamline things and do things that I'm best at. I'm not the best at sending out customer emails and stuff like that.

And we're going to dig into that for sure. So let's talk about where the business is is now. So you launched officially when you. In 2012?

Yeah, June 26, 2014.

Okay.

Launched and. Yep.

And what did the launch look like? Was it in the store online?

It was so Dave, we put it on Shopify storefront and then also Dave put the Mask on his Bulletproof site as his first bulletproof approved skincare product. And so that was huge. That was really good getting because he had such a trusted following and his attention to detail ingredients and he wouldn't Put anything on there that he really believe in.

Well, let's talk about the ingredients of that. So this is the mask is the big one over there?

Yes, clay mask right there.

So now let's talk about what the ingredients are and what the benefits of a clay mask are.

Sure. So I had been doing a clay mask before for when I was still in the entertainment industry and just to look, feel my best before an audition. And that consisted of four different clays that are still in there. Vitamin C and organic kelp powder. And then after the accident, I just turned that mask up because of just doing a little research on growth factors and vitamin C and just the topical potency of vitamin C in regenerating skin as far as accelerating cell turnover. You know, things like pearl powder and American ginseng, building that blood and increasing circulation to the surface of the skin while lightly exfoliating, then hitting that freshly exfoliated area with really dense ingredients like the colostrum, like the kelp powder and the pearl powder that the geisha has been using for centuries just to even out skin tone.

So pearl powder is not something I've been aware of. Is that supposed to be like a mild abrasive?

It's. What's the. This right here, the particles you can get the particle size to where it's almost. It's a little granular, where it provides a little mild exfoliant. But mine is very smooth. It almost just dissolves. It's in there. I put it in there because for the smoothness of the smoothness effect for the skin. But it also provides a mild bleaching effect where it just really eradicates sunspots. I mean, it's amazing for evening out skin tone, but mostly for the smoothness, the smoothing effect. I mean, it's one of those things you can just put in your hand, empty out a capsule, put a little water in it. I mean, it's undeniably smoother right after. So I knew, I just. That was a little bit of a Hail Mary because I was taking that internally to help for liver cleansing and kidney cleansing.

Okay.

Yeah. And so I was taking capsules of that daily.

I've never heard of using girl powder.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I met with several Chinese herbalists in my recovery, and one of them, mainly gingerbs in downtown Los Angeles. George from Ginger Herbs and then Dragon Herbs on Robertson, Beverly Hills. And I just, I was a sponge, you know, I mean, when you're using yourself as a big, like your own biggest science experiment, I mean, you'll go to any Lengths I was just, I just became obsessed with. All right, well I'm starting to feel better. When you're that down and out and you're just like, you get that little flicker of momentum, like wait a minute, alright. You feel better and then you feel better and better and better. I got addicted to that feeling of just physical, mental momentum of just getting back to getting my zest back. And that's a very important feeling, especially when you're just literally rock bottom and lucky to be alive. So that was very encouraging. So I was like, all right, well I just want to do this for the rest of my life. And then I started to see physical results for the topical, the mask I was putting on. But I never had an intention to start a business. It was just out of necessity for my own recovery. But people who saw me in the ICU were just blown away and.

So where do you source all this stuff from?

So it's for the pearl powder. I use Jane Herbs Pearl powder. I'll tell Synertech Colostrum, first six Hour milking Grass fed Colostrum.

So sorry, back up for a second. That's something I want to talk about too. So you. It's not just Colostrum, it's first six hour Milk grass fed Colostrum. Which I'd like you to explain the benefit of that. But I just. As far as packaging, marketing goes, I find this really interesting. Every time you add adjectives to a product, it seems like it's more valuable. In this case it really is. But you see a lot of restaurants now that have hand cut french fries and I find that it's like hand cut. Why does that make it more valuable? So explain about the first.

Yes, I could go on on that too. By the way, I have an ingredient deck. Like I love it. I mean you see these, not just salt go, you know, mind Himalayan mind.

Right. You know my left handed shirt?

Yeah. There was one that I even before I had business, I would get a kick out of just these little adjectives just to describe. I mean it stands out, it helps your marketing. And I was actually talking to a friend last night about seeing the Wood and Sandalwoods. I mean it's in almost every one of our products. I love it, it's extremely effective. It smells good, but it's very good for the skin. But it's so expensive and so not many people use it. But we don't have the big corporate overhead. So I can just do whatever I want, make products that I love and that I would use. But it's in her specific sandalwood. They grow this one tree a year and I forget where it is. I think it's Australia. And they throw, they definitely throw that in the market. And that's brilliant. They do a whole story on the sandalwood tree and it's brilliant. I mean, I got, I mean, with my Rasool powder, I have to, I mean, I'm doing that I'm going to like, because it's like Atlas Mine and Moroccan Hills. Why not throw it in there? There's a couple things, but, but so.

The clays are all American source.

No, no, no, the clay. Yeah, the Russells from Morocco.

Oh, in Fort Spain.

Right.

And, but so wait, so then your research, how did you come up with like, oh, I'm gonna try Moroccan. You know, it's not like the easiest thing, Right?

Well, in the United States I think they have, I believe it's Redmond clay that you can, you can mine out in, in the United States. I think it's in the Northwest and it's good. But this particular, this particular clay, I mean the particle size, I've been using that clay, the Russell clay, specifically for over, yeah, 10 years. And it's just one of those things that I just didn't want to switch sources up and you know, growing as we grow. And I'm just fascinated by clays. The mineral content. Yeah.

Now I am too. Yeah. I mean, why it's a wire clay.

So good for the mineral content. I mean, as we age, we're depleting vital minerals from harsh environmental pollutants, just toxicities in diet, stress related, whatever it may be. It's one of those things that we need to get naturally. I mean, you can supplement with full spectrum minerals, which I still do, but also you're skimping your blood or stored and you really want to introduce it right back into the system topically. And so with things like the Derma roller, you're able to do that? I mean, my whole treatment regimen is just Derma rolling masks, seal nitrogen cream. You know, it's just undeniably effective in cell turnover and just, just creating a really stimulated circulation to the surface of the skin, which, you know, I mean, I like to just feel my best going into every personal situation, business situation, I mean, for men out there. And it's going to be more marketable. I mean, it's just, you know, staying young and, or feeling, feeling as, you know, as good as you can. And you know, it's not, it's anti aging such a, it's such a popular overused word. I mean, it's like you're going to age. I would say age maintenance is more age. Yeah, yeah. But doing it in a natural, holistic way. I mean, treating your skin like another mouth is the best way that I would like to put it. And I wouldn't put phenoxyethanol in my mouth. I wouldn't eat sodium benzoate. I mean a lot of these all natural skincare brands and it's the whole. From what I'm starting to see, especially with multi level marketing and third party distribution companies, network marketing, where you're recruiting people under you and keep selling and selling and selling. It's like the only way you're going to maintain those margins to be able to do that is just extremely dilute your ingredient decks with the water, the alcohol, the glycerin and you're taking 80%. I just refuse to do that. And I will because I wouldn't use that. I wouldn't use this. I will only make products that I am in love with. So there's a way to stand out, which is great. And that's what we do.

So. All right, so now let's get into more of the business side of things. So what does the business look like now in terms of the team, the distribution, like where is it sold, that kind of stuff. So let's start with the team. What's the team look like? Sure.

So I have a CFO business partner, Steve, who is my second investor to Dave Asprey, who is full time with Bulletproof Nutrition. I'm sure your audience has heard of him. He's brilliant. He's been extremely helpful on the advisor side, consulting, helping make connections that are vital for this. And just having his background as an influencer is huge. Steve's my cfo. I have a virtual assistant director of marketing.

Where's the VA based? The virtual?

Philippines. Philippines. And yeah, it's. Yeah, it's one of those things where there's a time difference, a little bit of a language barrier and say the least. But I mean, a lot many businesses are doing that or using that format, but it's there, it can be. It's extremely cost effective. But at the same time, you know, I need people to sound like me when they're doing certain things. And especially something so important is customer service. So that, that's something that we're seeing hiccups that really are frustrating as a business owner. So.

All right, so yeah, we'll get that.

So the VA and then executive assistant Admin. His name is Rex Picciutta. He's awesome. He's kind of like my right hand man, but. And then we have everything fulfilled out of a warehouse in Hayward, California that uses robots actually to go through and hit our SKUs. And luckily, knock on wood, there haven't been there actually. Well, there have been several hiccups, but it hasn't been. It's been okay. You know, it's. I would grade them 6 out of 6 or 7 out of 10.

Can you say which company that is?

Yeah, Easy post.

Okay.

Easy post.

Okay. Yeah. And then where is it made?

Where's.

Where's it actually made? That's the distribution you said, right? Yes.

The mask is made in Nevada. The pro cleanser is made in Los Angeles. The supplement, Los Angeles serum, night cream, body lotion, moisturizer, all made in Hawaii. Really? Yeah, yeah.

By hand or.

Well, they harvest the beeswax and all the bee products and I think they have five hives. And I went out there, threw on the beehive or the bee suit and got in there. I want to see my raw ingredients. So it's just, it's awesome. I mean they, you know, when I was first coming up with my. Yeah, thanks. No, it's. They're really sweet people. It's a family run business and I just love, you know, when I was first going into making a moisturizer, you know, you talk to these contract manufacturers that. Oh yeah, you know, it's like baking a cake. You know, water glist around like. No, no, that's exactly not what I want to hear. I don't want to be like, I want to create something that's anything like the, you know, you've seen before. And like, oh, no, no, we have honey. What you want. You want what? Nuuga honey. It's been sitting on the shelf like, you know, I don't know where it's been. I want something that's been produced recently. I want something fresh. I want something like. I'm absolutely obsessed with the raw ingredient side. And so if you just add up, you know, a dream team set of ingredients, I really believe, you know, through fine tuning, I believe. I mean, it's not that easy. I mean, this took 22 tweaks to make. I mean, that's 21 phone calls to my chemist and my manufacturer.

Which one's that?

This is the moisturizer right here. It's my second product after the clay master release because, you know, just listen to the customer and just hearing what they want, what they, their what their response is and what they're looking for. And we create products not. Not strictly, not solely based on that, but it has a large influence on our product releases. And we listen for sure.

And so I'm just curious. There's obviously no preservatives, right?

Oh, no, no.

Right.

So what we do, we did add kimchi extract and a coconut filtrate, which is almost like a. Yeah, it's. I would.

Seriously.

Yeah, it's an echo certificate. It's food grade. It's something I would eat. And so we went through all the testing. That's another night turnover. What's that?

That works as a preservative.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Well, because I was gonna say, if you're making in Hawaii and shipping it like in no preservatives, like, does that create an issue? But. Okay, kimchi extract, great.

No, that's. We have all the batch testing. We introduce yeast, we introduce mold. It's a mold inhibitor. I mean, because when you're introducing. When you're touching something, you're introducing your own bacteria to a formula, it's just gonna happen. We actually. Yeah, it's something that I just. I wanted to stay away from and I wouldn't. I flat out. I don't even know if I would have made the product if I would have had to go with something like the potassium sorbate or sodium benzolate or something more harsh preservative. But I'm so glad I found that it's. I mean, it does make sense. I mean, it's something that's. And I can even. Yeah, it's. It's. Let's see, it's lucidol liquid anti cide. I mean, it's essentially like it has a little mild probiotic effect for your skin, which is actually becoming more and more popular in its own right. And for people out there, you get a really good preservative, you're going to preserve your active ingredients as it is, and you can preserve the benefits of those ingredients in doing so. So that's really important too. That's something I kind of left out in the beginning. And it's important to just get the most benefits out of your raw gradients as it is. So you have to preserve them.

Okay, so now backing up again. So essentially operationally, you've got a virtual system in the Philippines and then you've got two admin type people in person with you.

Yeah, one more. We're hiring one more. And we have a director of marketing who is remote and Steve, our cfo.

Okay. The director of marketing. Where's the.

He's in Orlando. He's in Orlando.

Okay.

Yeah.

So that's a pretty small team.

Very small team. And we need to go. I mean, so that's.

Yeah. So let's talk about what. What do you see is that. Well, two things I want to focus on is one is what you're doing day to day right now in the business and then also what you see as the challenge for growing. So what. What are you like day to day? What are you doing? And I know you said you're jumping into things you shouldn't be, so include those. So what are the things you're doing on day to day basis?

Yeah. Okay. So I mean, I have control over info support. Andy. Right. So Alexander naturals our private email address. And so, I mean, I'm obsessed with them. They all come to me, but I mean, they all go through me. I'm MCC'd through all of those, but they all go to my va. And also Rex, my operations assistant.

How do they do that? Are they using Help Scout? Help Scout.

So they go through there and then they're. So our virtual assistant monitors them and through our FAQ response, we get general questions that can usually be answered by her. How often do you recommend using the mask? We get that pretty often. What do you recommend following the mask with questions like that that are usually found on the FAQ sheet, but we're happy to answer them again. So she handles those. If there's something she can't handle or a virtual assistant that she directs that to Rex and if there's something that he can't get, he'll direct that to me. So I'm like the third chain. If there's something those two can't handle.

Could you think of an example? Something that you like would have to be taped all the way up to you.

Yeah. So cystic acne with the mask, that's a tough one. And so would you use that? Because every individual is different. I don't know how their diet is. I don't know. Because that's one of those things with the mask. It pulls a lot to surface. So sometimes you're going to go through a little bit of pulling all of that gunk for maybe use products that you've used before that are a little toxic.

Sounds really gross.

Yeah, I mean, like in a good.

Way, but it's like.

Yeah, but something like that. And I want to. It's very delicate, your skin. This whole situation is so personal to me. So I just want to make sure that the care is given back and responded back to the customer and the potential customers.

So you don't have live chat on your website.

We have to see bottom right.

Yeah, there. But it's not live chat. Right. So they can leave a message.

Right. Live chat it. So what? Here's a question for you. I mean when we're, when our VA is not on, that's what they get. And you know, maybe I need to get a better VA because some.

Sometimes it was so. No, don't worry about that. So there's a system called Intercom. Intercom, which is similar to help Scout in some ways. So Intercom is a shared inbox of sorts.

Okay.

You can use it for customer service, you can use it for a lot of different communications. But effectively you can have all those email addresses come into Intercom and you can have your Facebook message on your business page go in there as well. Twitter can go in there and live chat on the website all comes into one place. You can even have a text messaging come in there, a text based thing and then anybody on your team can answer that question. So what you're doing is you're distributing the ability to answer those. So it's not that the VA is level one, Rex is level two, you're level three. It's a little bit more like you're all on deck as needed. And with three people you can essentially up your response time massively. And live chat is really important. It is, yeah. And the FAQs are a really good one too. Because with Intercom what it'll do is you can have the FAQ and when people ask how often should I use it? The bot in Intercom will immediately be like, I think you're asking about this. And it'll suggest the article automatically before somebody even gets to them.

Okay.

Plus you can do a lot more stuff. So like with your leave a message thing here, which is doing olark, I see that you can't do like specific pop ups necessarily based on if they've been to the website before. There's a lot of benefits and it's got a mobile app. So if you did want to jump in, that's okay. The other thing that's nice about it is that the VA can have an issue with question with the prospect, whatever. And if they have a question for you or Rex, they can ask in the chain there without the person seeing it. You can discuss it right there and then someone can respond and it just, it's huge for communication.

Funny story. Well, luckily it's funny. I mean we. With Health Scout, that's. That's huge. Intercom going to get into that for sure. I accidentally responded in a forward to rec my assistant and it went to the customer. Luckily it was just like, hey, we need to take care of this immediately. And the assistant saw that because some of the. Or not the assistant, but the customer saw that and it was directed with the forwarding through our private email address. And since we're already signed up with Help Scout, there's a protocol that I wasn't assigned to them. That was right at the beginning. So. So the customer saw that response, but that's good enough.

Yeah. Well, so Intercom is a great tool because it's inherently scalable. So you can have three people on it and then if you have 40 people on it, it's the same kind of concept. So we actually use it for teams to communicate and they can communicate internally and externally because one of the things that's really important in most businesses that we work with is to have separation between internal communication and external communication and this kind of bridges gap. So how are you communicating with the VA and with Rex usually is it email or email. Okay, so that's something that would be an issue also. So as you scale, you're going to want a different tool. It could be Slack.

We did Slack. We did Slack. It was just. Yeah, we should, we should just. We should have just spent a day and just gone over it and cleared it out. But we're. Things are slammed right now and I'm just trying to stay on top with things like this, going out and advancing the business through podcasts and different means. But I mean, I definitely need to get more updated with things like Slack Intercom.

Well, so while we're doing this talk, I'm going to give you a thousand ideas so you don't have to worry about that. And then afterwards I can help you with a bit more of a strategic plan.

Sure.

So that it doesn't sound like a barrage of information.

Oh, I love it.

So Intercom would be really, I think, really huge for you guys. And then it doesn't have to be Slack, but there really needs to be a separate tool for internal versus external. Email is a really bad tool for internal communication because a lot of times internal communication tends to be more sort of brainstorming, more longer discussion. Whereas external communication is much more transactional, such as a client saying, how often should I use this product? You give them the answer. Much more transactional. So psychologically you need to have a very. You need to have a separation of where those things happen and then you are able to do it mobile because I know you're traveling a lot and it makes it so that a smaller team can have a much bigger, much more comprehensive presence. So again, Intercom would be really, really huge for that. The other thing with Intercom and Slack is that you can start to integrate a lot of information and data into it. So how are you processing? Like how are you taking orders? Are you using Stripe or Shopify? Stripe.

Okay, Stripe, we have a WordPress WooCommerce site. We have Shipping Easy, which is a format that takes our, takes the orders and sends them off to Easypost. And that's all automated through and then shipped through USPS DHL for international FedEx and UPS. It just depends on location, best rates for that particular. For easypost.

Yeah, and that part's fine. The Easy Trip is for fine. There's another service called Dollar Fulfillment which is really, really good. It's $1 per like per item shipped. What? Yeah, so I'll show you that one too. So we'll talk about, we'll talk about the fulfillment. Yeah but the, the thing is if you're using this dollar.

Yeah.

Dollar phone picked pack shipped for a dollar and there. So this is what a lot of, a lot of the bigger Internet marketing. Not Internet marketing, but info products. A lot of companies are using Dollar Fulfillment. It's a very, very good one. So there's that. And if you're using Stripe, then what's nice is that the Stripe data actually can be pulled into Intercom. So if somebody is chatting with you on live chat on your website, you'll see their entire history right there with the profile.

Order history or website.

No, no. Well that too. And also how much they bought from you. How like if from Stripe and you can even have it show like their most recent order. So all of that stuff is right there as like a customer profile which is. Yeah, it's really huge. And it'll even automatically pull in. So if somebody goes to your website and they pull up on your live chat and they say like hey, you know, how often should I use the product without any other information we'll know where they are like what kind of browser using and then it'll say like you know, leave your email address to get a response later or something. They put in their email address, it'll automatically pull in the data from that. So it'll now know what their name is, it'll know what their Twitter is and how many Twitter followers they have. And like where they'll.

Yeah, and add it to our list.

And add it to your list. So all of that stuff will happen automatically in the background and it would just help you keep track. And again, you need to have these systems and processes in place so that you can scale. It's one of the things that we want to be able to include. Empower the team that's around you so that you can make yourself replaceable.

So.

Yeah. So dollar fulfillment, I think, would be something to consider.

Absolutely. Is that including shipping? No, no, no, of course not. I was going to say no.

No shipping on top of that. But it's a dollar per item.

Yeah.

And they're very reliable. Okay, so where are they based out of? I think. I think they're in California.

Okay.

Pretty sure they're in California. Oh, no. Idaho. Okay.

It's a town I've never heard of.

Hayden, Idaho.

Perfect.

Yeah. So. So they'll do the full film and everything. And so that would be something to discuss as well. And then your. As far as like marketing. Well, I should be backing up again. So what else do you have in.

The VA do you know, I have her go through. I mean, she handles most of our posts, but sometimes, you know, I need it to sound like me. She will just put certain pictures she'll go through. I mean, if I'm going through, you know, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, you know, doing that daily, it's just. It takes me about an hour today to generate pretty good content. I usually do for, like, if it's a post I'm really fired up about and I'll do blog post or something like that. But if it's just general, I mean, I need to post daily, at least on those sites. Just try to get eyes on the site and hopefully cold traffic as well. But if I'm spending an hour, if you think that's worth maybe an hour, hour and a half, it's something that every day for me to do, I'll continue to do it, but I didn't think so either. Sometimes she'll just go through and I'll give her an example. She'll watch me in some of the posts that I do and try to sound like it. I think I have another buddy of mine that has a team following him around and talk that just kind of writes examples of posts trying to sound like him. And she, you know, it's a work in progress. So I've been ending up handling a lot of the posting on those different sites, which is. I mean, it's my. I Mean, still kind of new to, you know, the business is still in its kind of infancy stage. So I just want to make sure that everything is done in my voice, you know, and done correctly, tastefully, not just a picture of a clay and telling the benefits of it. I really want it to be dynamic. And sometimes we use customer pictures using the products, and that's fun, too. Frank's Coffee Scrub did a really good. I don't know if he's still doing it, but that's. That was one of the things that took. Send a picture into Frank's Coffee Scrub. I think it was Frank's Coffee Scrub. And then to be posted in our gallery. It's just a nice way to engage.

Sure, of course. But so it sounds like. So there are six levels of delegation, and the very top level, the service level, is do what I say. Level six is just get it done. There's a couple levels in between there. It sounds like you're operating at a very level one kind of area. So it doesn't like you're essentially just telling your VA what they should post and how there's not a lot of. They're not doing much growth in there.

Right, Correct.

Yeah. So there's a marketplace called Growth Geeks, and they have these different gigs for, like, social media and stuff. And for $349 a month, you can have something managing all your social media, actually growing it.

Wow.

So that's an example.

Yeah.

And there are certain things that are specialized content services that you can actually get done fairly cheaply that you don't want a generalist to be doing.

Okay.

Like a va, and you can still use that to grow properly. So. Okay, so let's keep going. So what else is the VA doing.

Between. I mean, you know, Instagram will go through. She'll go through and comment. I mean, it's just more, you know, you go through and follow certain people that may be in the industry, certain bloggers, wellness beauty experts, things like that. Comment. So then they see Alexa Naturals in the comment string and then hopefully go back to our page and then hopefully go back to the site between that customer inquiries. We were very delicate on what we hand off to. We just hired her. I mean, for the longest part, it was just myself and Rex doing that. I mean, this is up just a few months ago, so we're handling the bulk of that.

Okay, so it sounds like you might not need that VA after this conversation.

Yeah.

Okay. So, yeah, it happens. Yeah, so that certainly happens. So, all right, so now what is the what's another challenge now that you see in the business in terms of growing it, distribution or what?

So affiliate marketing. I would like your advice just on, you know, acquiring a company customer for physical products. We haven't really got into, you know, retargeting. We're introducing auto ship now, which is great. That's subscription. I mean, it came way too late, but it's just, it's going to be introduced, I believe, this week. And I just want to see like what, or hear what you have to say about affiliate marketing and certain payouts. Is it worth, Sarah mask is $59. Is it worth the payout paying $70 to get that customer? We haven't done any of that. It's been pretty organic as far as just doing podcasts with large influencers, giving an affiliate code, having them hand it out, hopefully they promote it and then just watching the growth from that and seeing the response from that and see what, you know, influencers have the best, more the trusted response than others and just kind of gathering data on that and reaching out to more podcasts. But really it's been all podcasts and we haven't even dove into that yet.

Okay, so then when. So if you're on podcast and you're. Are you just telling people to go to Altar national or Altar. That's it.

But I mean, tour at the end. I mean, that's not the only reason I'm doing. No, no, no.

I mean, but. But there's got to be a call to action just to go to the main website.

We'll do a discount code and we'll give an affiliate link to the certain influencer and then that's a good way to track it through that model. And then we'll monitor spikes and traffic and Google Analytics and things like that.

But again, it's generally you're telling people just to go to the main website. Right. There's no special page for them or anything like that.

Right. It's an affiliate link, though, that we'll design that goes to the main website. Right.

But so when they get there, it's not like, look at this one product.

Right.

Okay, so like, would you be more specific?

Like, would you. To a certain product?

So, so here's just ideas.

Yeah.

So one of the things is that you, you just. In the beginning of this interview, you told me a lot of things that I didn't know about. Like I thought I'd never heard of the Pearl Powder thing. And I'm, I'm aware of a lot of this stuff. So I'VE never heard of that. So there's a few different things that you can do here, one of which is education around this and you can offer an educational product. So there's, there's like the famous examples of things is like make sure like don't buy another skincare product until you read this, you know, because this is going to tell you the 10 things that you should be aware of that a lot of skincare products have that ours don't, or not even that. It's honestly, it's much more educational than anything because people might not understand the benefits of clay. They might not understand the benefits of something like pearl powder. And so a lot of people, as you know, are buying products that have things that say they're natural, but they're not and it's bad for them and they're not aware of it. So you can usually attract a lot more people with that kind of information. So like for example, do you have your newsletter?

So what we do is we have an email capture of a 31 page ebook when they. Within I think it's like 3 to 5 seconds as soon as they pop on the homepage. Now that it's very informative. It's good. Is that too much? Are there more? Maybe I should enhance the keywords.

What's the name?

Don't buy another. It's just the natural path to perfect skin.

Yeah. So to me, that's a little too vague.

Okay.

Right. Because it's. I think that there's probably a lot of people that say things like that. It's not specific enough to why. And again, this is something that you can test very easily. You know, it could be like, sign up for this newsletter to get like the 12 things that you should never have in your skin and hair products. Like to have that checklist.

Right.

You know, so that it's not that you want to do like playing with fear, but a lot of times the negative side of things is more impactful than the positive side of things. Yeah.

And again, it's more clicks. Yeah. I mean, I get suckered into it almost daily. Like you're not gonna believe. Click. You know?

Yeah. Right. And then this happened. Yeah. So no, but it's true. Because there are products. I think that you're probably contending with a few things, one of which is that you probably have people who've used a product for a long time and you know, it's good enough, like, why would I switch? But they don't realize that it's actually not doing what they want. And it's hurting them in some cases, maybe because of what's in it, you know. Well, so for example, anything about Kirkland products?

You know Kirkland. Yes.

So how are those in terms of their skincare products?

You know, I don't, but I do.

Know that because it's a pretty good brand.

So it's a decent brand. And that's interesting. I mean, that it's so cheap.

Right.

But they have good almonds. You know, you go to the source. I mean, yeah, it's like the generic brand for Costco. They're solid, they're okay. I haven't looked at their skincare products though. I haven't been to Costco for a while. I didn't even know they had.

Yeah, well, that's the funny thing. So I just, I'm like private label something.

I mean, it's just like. Yeah, like the Trader Joe's Vodka of the Gods, I think they cut into.

Right.

And it's like supposedly Svetka or not Svetka, but absolute.

Yeah, yeah. So no, apparently, yeah, Trader Joe's is like. It's exactly. But so the important. The reason I asked my personal. First of all, people probably laugh if they watch my podcast. I'm kind of obsessed with Costco and as a business, but Kirkland as a brand loyalty thing, they kind of have to have really good products. Because the whole point is you could buy a Kirkland shirt and then be like, oh, they make body lotion. I like Kirkland. I'll try it. There's so much exposure for their brand in that case. But I was just curious if you know anything about Kirkland's how.

Definitely looking now.

I'm sure you do. Yeah, I'm very curious. But. So the point though, again is there's a lot of marketing things that are really about education and that's it. It's just like these are the things that you need to have in your skincare products. These are the things you definitely don't want to have in your skincare products. And that could be a one page PDF lead magnet that you have that people sign up and they get that. I think you probably get a much bigger uptake on something like that. The other thing is on a 31 page ebook, most people are probably not going to read it. And the goal, of course, eventually is for them to get to see that your product is something that is actually a good one. And you're being honest. You're explaining it's not just a sales pitch. You're explaining why it's a good product because it doesn't have all these things in it that are really dangerous for you.

Maybe throw in a discount code if first time customer.

Yeah, that's fine too. But something like that I think would probably be really good in terms of growing lists. And I didn't see the pop up here, but that's just something that's much more prevalent, I would say.

Yeah, it popped up when you went there and yeah, I think he clicked out of it.

Well, but even so, I mean, I'm not like a website conversion expert, but you know, you can have something that just stays right there the whole time.

Oh, really?

Yeah, yeah. So like if you were to go to actually, let's say David's thing, I bet he's got this done the right way.

So the. What And I do have to ask the website, you know, the shirtless photo of me. We're getting a little flack that. And I don't, I, I don't mind at all. I want, I mean as far as like, I just want to get the best website made. I thought that was a clean shot.

Of like, oh yeah, so subscribe to stay connected. So that just becomes more prevalent. It's not a pop up that's going to be there. There's, you know, any number of examples like that.

I wonder if he has a pop up in addition to that.

I think he does. Yeah, I think he does. I would say goop has ads so they're not gonna. Oh, wait, there you go, pops right up. And that's called welcome Map, which means it takes over the screen and then, you know, put the mail in. So you really want to be capturing those email addresses. Absolutely. The best thing that you can be doing. And then you were saying about the website.

What?

Oh, about the shirt listing.

Yeah, so. And I can definitely take constructive criticism for sure. I just, it's just we're up here for media and my publicist told me yesterday it was like it's something that we need to address. She's young from clients, so it's funny.

So I think it shows you a really, really good skin. To me actually having the woman there with you makes it look weird. Like it almost makes this look like it's like it's a product for couples, for things. I mean, that would be my.

All right.

But I mean otherwise you just look like you have amazing skin.

So. Thank you. I mean the reason why she. We wanted to show that it's a unisex skincare, of course, obviously, but.

And you've heard of strong enough for a man but made for a woman, you know, like, so it doesn't, you don't necessarily have to have the woman there to explain that it's unisex.

Okay.

That's just my thinking, I would say. But yeah, again, like, I think you're showing that you got like really good skin, obviously from the product.

So what about. Okay, so before photo in the past we'd had a shot of me in the icu. I can pull it up right now actually, if you go to about us, go to about us in that analyst or natural site.

Yep.

And you see that on the left.

Now I would not put that on the homepage, but that's really. Yeah, okay. I wouldn't put the ICU picture on the homepage.

You should. If you would have seen, if you would have seen our first. That's what a lot of people said. Our first site on Shopify. We used Shopify before we started with WordPress. It was great. It was very clear, streamline the orders pretty quickly and easy to use, easy to code in, things like that. But for a blog format or platform, it was just. Apparently there's more of a space for that in WordPress. What are your favorite sites? Squarespace for making a website. Yeah, physical products.

I mean, Shopify is great. They've got such a good ecosystem and they can plug into all sorts of automations. A lot of the fulfillment houses plug right in. I think Shopify is probably one of the easiest ones.

Okay. And so with hiring.

Yeah, yeah, so. But one of the things on the website, there's this tool called Use Proof. Have you heard of this?

Use Proof.

Now, okay, so this is a really cool thing. So what it does is you get a pop up. This is based on actual sales. So you'll get a pop up here. Sally recently, recently bought your product and if you're on a website, you'll keep popping up. You'll be like, you know, John in Idaho just bought the skin cream. Whatever.

I've seen that on other sites and I like that. Our team just nixed or decided against it because the load time apparently slows it down.

Oh, I mean, this one's pretty good. There's a few like that. This is a relatively new one called Used Per, which that's the one.

I think they use it. I, I love that when I see that. I, as a buyer, I forget who it was it was using that. It may have been natural stacks, you know, natural stacks. I think they use it and I want to get that immediately. And I Also wanted to get a little icon bottom right. Hey, let me know if I get, you know, it's like a live chat. So those are the two things. And like we talked about, we're going to get that with Intercom, but Yes, exactly.

So I'll show you what that was. So this is my site, but there it is right there. So that pops up. You can ask a question and then.

What did it look like before you click on it? Just want to see if it's like catches the app.

But it's just that.

Is that a little envelope? Yep. Okay.

But you can have it automatically pop up with a message.

Do they know it's live?

So it says right here. It typically replies under 10 minutes.

Okay.

But it'll like just like when you're texting with imessage. If we start writing back, they'll see that we're writing.

Oh, the little. Oh, nice.

And if you have FAQ articles, the bot will respond immediately and it'll say like, is this what you're looking for? And then somebody can just jump right in. But it'll ask for their email address. Like you'll start to capture the information right away.

Got it.

Okay.

I like the color scheme, by the way.

That's our choice. Yeah, yeah. So you can customize that.

Not even just the whole section.

Oh yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you. So natural stacks. And they have something like that too. Yeah, we'll see if that pops up. So they have Facebook messenger there, which is Intercom. Will bring in the Facebook messenger stuff too, from your Facebook page. So. All right. So hiring, who do you need to hire?

So would it be just curious, would you do more of a say if it's remote, how do you monitor hours worked? Would you focus more. More on task related?

What are they hiring for? What are they doing?

So this would be someone equal to my other assistant. Rex is more operations. We need. We need a second him. Basically we need a second version of him.

And Rex is in person.

Rex, yes. He's in Venice. They all work. We all work in Los Angeles. Aside from Jesse, he was in Orlando.

And so what is Rex doing primarily?

Rex primarily is expediting orders to EasyPost and say if we have certain bols that need to be listed, easypost is fulfilled. And so if you know inventory, staying on top of inventory concerns Amazon Marketplace Valet being on Amazon in different countries as well. It's a lot of work he's doing, doing that daily as well as customer service fine tuning posts. He's a graphic designer. He's doing A lot of our artistic shots, product shots, but we need him to focus more. I mean, media, the video. I want to build a YouTube presence. I mean, I'm doing quirky stuff all day with derma rollers, masks, night cream serums, you name it. The research and things like that, that I think, you know, they're out there. When you see influencers with hundreds of thousands of subscribers, they. And I feel like we can be one of those, especially because we have a brand. That's what I do. And I really want to expand that. So the goal is to get someone to take a little more responsibility off of his hands so we can focus more on purely video content. Getting really good, dynamic video images, things like that are eye catching. I really like Ben Greenfield's content, love Dave's content. I don't do enough. I don't even think I've done an Instagram story. There are people. People love this stuff in the skincare space. And there's a lot of information that people don't know. And I have a lot of tips and information to give. So I wanted. I wanted to step up our content. And I think Rex can. Want Rex to focus solely on that with me and then have someone alongside him, you know, have him train them and then have someone, and then, you know, it'll be just stand inside each other. But if you were in my. I mean, I know you don't know a lot about my business right now, but if you. Did you have anything. I wake up, I check emails, you know, I'm six to six, take a nap, work out, and then I'm nine to 12 and I do same thing, obsessed. It's just what I love to do. And I just. It's. What would you think that my best. My time is best used to advance a brand and business right now? What would you do if you were me?

Content.

Content.

100% of your time should be spent on content.

Really?

Yeah, absolutely. I would say that you should be educating, you should be promoting. I mean, you should be educating because people have to understand what the benefits of using the product, how to use them, interesting things that you're doing with it. Like what?

You know, oh, it's all day.

It's all.

Yeah, I just had a little camera. I mean, it's like, man, the whole time. I mean, I can't do this. So, you know, as far as, like, you know, actually what you're doing, I mean, maybe I can.

I mean, you look at something, you know, Casey Neistat is.

No.

So Casey Neistat is a vlogger, and he's probably one of the best there is, I think, because he's an actual cinematographer. But you can learn so much by watching four or five of his videos. I mean, I love his stuff. But that alone probably give you some ideas for. For the content. But you could just be. You're living an interesting life. So I think that that would be the best place for you to show that you're going to then have the ideas that then a proper team can execute on. So, I mean, you shouldn't be dealing.

With the operations ideas as far as.

Like, new products, new venues for it, ways to use it, ways to promote it, people who would benefit from it. I mean, like, that's what. You shouldn't be involved in the operation.

Okay, that's great. I mean, that's the goal for sure.

I mean, there's no way to scale a business. If you're, like, involved in the operations, you become a bottleneck automatically.

Oh, man. I mean, I'm changing my. I mean, sometimes it's, you know, it's a little frustrating, but, you know, just responding to emails and there are a lot of questions that my team has.

Yeah, but so then, you know, gather them up and every week do a video, answering questions. Okay, Right.

Okay. So like on the spot, though, see if it's time sensitive.

Well, if it's time sensitive, then you give them the answer. But still, that week you could do like a Facebook Live or an Instagram Live and answer, you know, the five questions of the week or something that people had about, you know, about the product, about skincare.

Oh, and that's content in its own.

Yeah, and then the other thing then is that if you do that video, you have a number of things. So if you can take that one video, you can turn that into a podcast, just strip the audio, make a podcast. You can turn that into a blog post, into 10 other pieces of content, social media posts, all from that one video.

Right.

So you should basically be coming up with innovative ways to spread the word about the product. That's really what you should be doing. And the other thing I was going to mention, also for Rex, you're going to want to take a bit. I mean, you just listed all the things he's doing, but we want to take a bit of an inventory of what he's actually doing and, like, how his time is being spent. Because once you put a process to it, then that's how we can start to offload that from him. He said he's doing graphic Design. There's a company that we use called Design Pickle. Have you heard of them?

No.

So Design Pickle is a wonderful company. It's 370 bucks a month for unlimited graphic design and the design and editing. Yeah. Revisions. Yeah. Wow. So the, and the, the designers are in the Philippines. You get a dedicated designer who understands your brand and that's who we use for everything.

And they're probably rated. You go through them, they're great.

No, no, it's all under their company. So like they will process. So we've, we do all of our infographics, all of our social media posts, images, PowerPoint, everything is done by design pickle for us for 370 bucks a month. So Rex should not be doing that.

They're another handful for sure.

Yeah, that's fine. It's unlimited.

I mean because it's videos and images all day before or after someone's skincare. That's everything. So. Yeah.

And you should have somebody who's managing your social media specifically because it's not expensive to have somebody just doing that and they'll do it really well. The stuff.

That's another question. Sorry.

No.

So if. Would you recommend, I mean with a virtual assistant they, you know, there may be language barrier. I need them to be clean, clear, articulate, crisp with their language and.

Well, I'm not sure that you need a VA right now.

Right. Yeah. Okay, so say with someone with a social media manager, would that be someone that you would outsource that would get.

Someone that was like growth geeks. I was saying before for, you know, 349 bucks a month.

Oh, growth geeks.

Yeah, just for social media and they'll be US based and they will just do social media stuff for you.

Okay.

Yeah. So you can piecemeal some of this stuff really well and have somebody who's just really good and goes deep and that you're not paying full time and then just do that one thing.

So growth geeks and they have say arts, beauty, entertainment, sports, they have people that just specialize in certain.

So there's specific social media gig in there. They'll have experience in the thing that you need. They'll get the right.

Perfect.

Yeah, yeah.

How much a month?

You said for three accounts it's $349 a month. If you need to do more accounts, it's like $449 for four.

But yeah, man, that's, that's sometimes a couple days for us.

Yeah, right, exactly. So. And, and the thing is that most people don't understand in your position is that in your position in terms of where you are with the company, is that you. When you free up an hour of your time, the results are like tenfold. I mean, there's so much that can be done, right? Because you're going to be able to take another sales call or another partnership call or just have a new idea and come up with new content and then we can start spiraling that up because again, that one video could be a month's worth of content. Another thing that an exercise I like to go through with clients is an exercise to plan out your entire year of content in about a half an hour. And so you don't have to even make decisions about it. You know, what you're going to be posting on what days and how, like the arc of things, the events you're doing and how those tie into it.

So, yeah, perfect timing on that one. So, I mean, it's been back and forth. We, we just started planning out our posts for. I'm like, why don't we just spend an hour and get seven done for the week rather than spending 30 to 45 minutes every single day going, oh, the image isn't clean. Fill out the space. Fill out the.

Yeah. So the truth is, you don't necessarily need a much bigger team at all. In fact, I think you could probably make the team a little bit smaller as long as you get these processes in place. And like, if Rex is dealing with easy posts on fulfillment stuff, I'd have to understand more of what those issues are. But I would look at another fulfillment company like Dollar Fulfillment.

Right.

It might be more reliable.

Well, the shipping has been eight to 10 business days, which is just to keep too. Too long.

Yes, that's way too long.

Expedited shipping, three to five. That's not expedited.

No.

Expedited to one or two to three, tops. The rates are okay and then just lost inventory. They're very unorganized.