He Made $50,000 In 24 Hours (No Ads)

$50,000 in sales in one day from doing one thing without spending any money on ads on a brand new product that didn't even have reviews yet. Today we're going to break down the strategy. You're going to learn exactly what he did and you're going to see how you can use the exact same strategies to launch any product in any market and get sales quickly, even if you're launching a brand new product. Quick backstory the person you're about to meet. Jake, read my book, 12 months to 1 million. And he used that formula to launch his brand and get to about $50,000 a month in sales. Then my investment fund put capital into his business to help him grow. And I told him, I said, you know, if you run this playbook, you're going to be a $5 million business over a couple of years. He believed me. He did the work and now he's pacing about $5 million a year. In just two years after we invest, he's been growing faster than ever. So I wanted to share the strategies that he's using right now with all of you who follow my content. As a result, you're going to see how to launch new products, how to get sales really quickly, even if you don't have any money to spend on advertising, and how a business grew from a six figure company to a mid seven figure company. And I want to share this with you because I want to invest in more businesses like Jake's. Jake takes a good amount of his sales on Amazon, not all of them, but a good amount of them. And the game on Amazon is changing really quickly. The people who are following the playbook from 2013, 2014, they're really struggling right now. But there's a new way to get a ton of exposure and sales on Amazon that I think is easier than how the game was played back a few years ago. And if you know how this works, then it's faster and easier to get sales on brand new products, even if you're starting from scratch. So now Jake and I are gonna break apart his strategy so that you can use it in your business and to launch new products.

So, Jake, obviously the community is somewhat familiar with you and your brand and they know that you're a part of the capitalism fund. I was hoping that you could zoom back about six months and talk about what has happened a little bit over the last six months. We spoke yesterday and you said that you've sort of stabilized around $250,000 a month in sales, which is the envy of A lot of people in the room, but that's about a stable, sustainable place for you to be after all the things that have happened over the last six months. So why don't you give us a quick update on what's been going on?

Yeah, for sure. I think one of our biggest hurdles was just getting over the success of our initial products and just really branching out onto some new hero skus to really just diversify the business. And that's been the challenge this year, is just creating things that our customers want that isn't something in a totally saturated market. So we've had a good bit of success with that with some car seat products that we released, and they released in about May. It's been long time coming. And we had some success getting them off the ground with some virality and some big external traffic to really boost the numbers. And it's finally stabilized where we want with a lot of room left to push them.

And when you say stabilized, I mean you're still fighting to keep in stock with a lot of these products, right? So, like, your overall business numbers have stabilized, but still there's upside to go because you had a hard time keeping stock on some of these new products. Is that correct?

Yeah, that's absolutely correct. We really have no idea where we're actually gonna stabilize that because we had the good problem of all of all of our inventory flying right out of stock. And we're in the process of getting them all back in right now.

So let's talk about how you got those secondary products to hit liftoff. Cause you said you were doing some off Amazon traffic, you had some virality hit, and you've done some things a little bit sneakier than other people. By sneaky, I mean like under the radar stuff than what most people would look at right away. So you had your one primary skew that was driving a lot of the business for a good year and a half or so. You started releasing these other products. What did you layer into the strategies that have been helping see them get liftoff?

Yeah, in all honesty, and I'm asked this question quite a bit too, is how relevant still is 12 months to 1 million. And in all honesty, like, I'm obviously a huge fan of the book, but it's not only more relevant now, it's more necessary than it's ever been, taking those steps to essentially build your audience so that you can drive external traffic. Because what we're discovering is that it's almost more important than say, PPC on Amazon itself. Like the, the Changes in the algorithm on Amazon, I'm not sure exactly what they are, but we're seeing massive, massive rewards from driving traffic outside of Amazon to Amazon and the ranking is holding just after we get that initial boost from that traffic. So we didn't necessarily have specific strategies outside of anything normal, which is, you know, a lot of influencer work, a lot of social media work, keeping up with the customer.

But the underlying strategy was let's drive outside traffic to Amazon. Correct?

Exactly. Yep, yep, that was the number one goal. And we were able to do that by fortunately working with some influencers and some creative content strategy to make something have crazy liftoff and go viral. And I, yeah, I wish we could clip in just like the clip because it's so funny. It's like not anything crazy, it's like just a mom saying like, oh, Amazon finds here's the product and just installs it and it's like, oh my kid loves it. It's like a 10 second clip. And because of the product itself, it had a lot of engagement around the video. And just that little clip I think is at over 11 million views right now. And we're still seeing, it's been a couple months now and we're still seeing just crazy rewards for that traffic. Held the rank. Amazon seemed to understand that that's what customers wanted just from that initial burst and they've really rewarded us for that.

Did they even link to the listing in the video or did they have to find it in your bio? I remember it not being a very optimized process.

Yeah, because we didn't even know she was gonna post. Like I had been talking to her and she made some content for us. She was nice. She like asked if she could, but I didn't really pay a lot of attention to it. And she just took it upon herself to post because normally I would have probably driven the traffic to my website depending on when the product launched and what it was, but she literally just linked in the comments like not even anything in her bio, just like link the Amazon listing right in the comments. And just from that alone it just took off.

So let me put this into a little bit of a digestible takeaway for those of you who are watching. So first of all, what Amazon rewards now, the most from everything that we can test is outside traffic. Outside traffic that converts to a sale. Now from what we can tell, they may or may not be agnostic to where it's coming from. Google Ads and email list, YouTube. But, but Amazon seems to be rewarding the Lift that comes from people sending to the platform. And so we still have a lot of people who are competing for Amazon pay per click and for ranking of organic keywords. But you can write your own check, you can write your own path by creating your own outside traffic.

Jake recently launched a new product that got about $50,000 in a day or a day and a half. So we're going to break apart exactly what he did. And spoiler alert, he did it with no ads, he did it with no big audience. All he did was create a partnership with a very small content creator that was perfectly targeted for his ad ideal audience. And as a result of that one post, things got out of hand and he sold a bunch of new products.

Now Jake has been doing a bunch of different things to drive outside traffic. One of those things really, really hit. And that thing was not the video.

That anyone on this call would have.

Predicted was the one that would go insanely viral. Now let's break that apart a little bit. Jake, if I remember correctly, this. Well, just this creator, I don't even want to say it's an influencer that I think 2,500 followers or something like this. Is that right?

Yeah, that was the craziest part. She was by no definition an influencer, maybe a micro influencer, but under 3000 followers just on Instagram, I believe, not much reach at all.

Yeah. And so let's break apart a little bit about why this did so well. Because it wasn't necessarily the content, it wasn't necessarily the audience. We tend to think that it may have been what happened in the comments that made it so effective. So share a little bit about that story.

Yeah, it wasn't exactly intentional, but I knew this was going to happen and prepped my social media team to prepare for this because we were essentially disrupting a very stagnant market. As in, these are car seats. Obviously, safety is the number one concern. Parents are just kind of set in these same ways where they just listen to the car seat manufacturers, but don't necessarily understand that the car seat manufacturers have to follow regulations outside of what they would just like to do themselves. So we kind of brought attention to this.

I had some car seat products that we have crash tested and proved by any definition to be safe. And that was kind of what we centered this product around of like, hey, there is a safe way to make sure that your kids can be entertained in the car seat instead of just sitting there doing nothing the whole time. And that sparked the debate of, you know, half the parents Saying, no, we don't think so. Our car seat manufacturer wouldn't like this. And the other half saying, you know, taking more of our side of like this seems very practical. This is safer than just handing your kid anything randomly in the car anyway. And it just, the engagement just went nuts for this debate. Like it was just a total disruption.

So it was the comments that kept it at the top of the feed that got people engaged, got more people into the conversation, and then this fire just kind of got stoked and, and blew up. And it's funny, we don't think about this as business owners often, but this happens to us as consumers all the time. We're brought into a conversation about whether something is right or wrong or left or right, and we get sucked in. And then we watch the video. Right. And then we might take an action based on that video. When that video hit, what was the peak of sales? I know they've come down and you've been out of stock for a little bit now and you've been fighting that war. But what was the initial burst in sales that happened when the video hit?

Yeah, unfortunately we didn't get to see exactly what it would have done because it just completely ran us out of stock. In the first day and a half, I think I had like just shy of 1500 units or so in stock and they were gone in a day and a half. So it was like I had some other SKUs that were also similar. So then they started buying those. So it, it worked out well all around. And I think it was like 50 grand in like a day and a half or something. Just for the, the One video.

Yeah, and that sounds great on paper. Right. And of course Jake and I were both excited when this is happening, but there are also very legitimate problems that this causes too, like how fast can we get back in stock? How big of an inventory order do we need to place in order to maintain this momentum? And then there's just the very natural reaction to a bunch of people are shitting on my product in the comments. When first time that happens, that don't feel good. That is, that is tough. So tell me a little bit about where your mind was going when all of this was, was happening.

Yeah, I've never really experienced anything like that too much. So there were definitely some mental health breaks involved where it was just like, I'm going to quit reading these for a min a minute. But yeah, talking to you guys really smooth things over. It's just like, this is good. If anything, just keep the Debate going, like you said, to reassure yourself that you're not doing anything wrong. And as long as you're sure of that, there's, you know, that's what people do on the Internet. They're gonna talk about your stuff. So, yeah, no matter what it is, that's just. It's gonna happen, so prepare yourself for it. It's not gonna explode at levels like we experienced right off the bat. But you'll need some thick skin and just don't let it bother you and you'll be all right.

Haters leave comments, but buyers take action. They buy your stuff. If you follow this strategy or put anything out online, you will get people who give you crap. Ask me how I know or just read the comments in any of my videos. It's a necessary part of the process and it can feel uncomfortable, especially the first time it happens. But as Jake observed, the haters actually fueled the fire and helped him make even more sales.

So, Jake, obviously this is sort of lightning in a bottle. It's not something that you can necessarily plan for, but it's certainly nice. We're not going to say no to a video going viral and giving us tens of thousands in sales over the course of a couple of days. We're not complaining, but we also don't know how we can predict that. So what is the strategy as you get back in stock and your revenues have smoothed out? We now have a little bit more predictability. What's your approach for continuing to build on the success of this product without breaking the business?

Yeah, so the approach began when we went out of stock and things were still going viral because you still want to collect that traffic, obviously. So we were able to set up, swap the landing page over to the website instead of Amazon, start collecting emails, keeping them up to date on when it's going to be back in stock so we can obviously monetize that traffic a bit. So I think once we do go back in stock, we'll see it's a pretty active list saying, like, they're ready to buy. We'll kick them a discount so that we can really have that initial sales boost again. And then obviously she's going to do some more posts, maybe comment on the old one to bring it back to life. Just keep coddling that relationship with that influence so it can be hopefully, a repeat traffic source.

Yeah, and of course, we're going to turn that into an ad and we're going to run traffic to that ad and continue that conversation going for a long time. If I've learned one thing. When you find that thing that hits you, milk that sucker. So when you came into this year, you set out the goal for hitting 5 million in 2023. 3. Where are you in your trajectory for getting there?

I'd say we're right on track right now. It'll be a little closer, but it's kind of tough to predict with mine because I have insane Q4s. I think compared to a lot of businesses, like, we'll do almost our entire year's worth of revenue from like October to December or historically we have. So, yeah, they're like good price point giftable items, solve clear issues, things like that. So it's very good giftable stuff. So if basically based on past trajectory, we should be right at where we need to be practically.

Here's how this plays out. At the beginning of your business, you have a few products that are getting sales, and Jake is still getting about 50% of his total sales from old products. Products that have reviews, they have organic listings that have repeat customers. But then he launches a new product that has no reviews, that has no sales. But the exposure that he got gave that new product a lift. And now he can go build the reviews, build the rankings and what we call stick the landing, where that product will become an evergreen product that continually gets new customers, and it builds the overall revenue and value of that business.

You are a very stoic man, Jake. So how are you actually feeling about all of this?

No, it's cool. I love this stuff. Like, I know I don't show it, but it's fun for me. I mean, my whole side of everything is like more of the product creation side. But tied into that is like the fun marketing strategies too, because when you create new unique things, like for say, yourself or people that you know really well, you start to understand the benefits of those products as you create them. So it's fun to really just outline those benefits into the marketing strategy. So it kind of just becomes one wrapped up into each other. And that's been really pivotal, pivotal for a lot of our success.

I love to tell this story where you, you said, I, I really would like to take this to about a $5 million business. And I. And I said to you, I was like, I'm one. Some of the effect of. I'm 100% certain this is a $5 million business if you follow this plan. And I'm curious, I think it's happened faster than either of us thought that it would. But I'm curious, what if you knew that this was going to be a $5 million business. Two years after that conversation, what would you have thought and what would you have told yourself?

The initial thought would have just been shock and probably a lot of self doubt because as we said, I borrowed a lot of confidence. You. So that was very helpful to be in those rooms at the time. I don't, I don't know if I would have fully believed it. I think I'm more of a I need to see the data type of person to believe it. But yeah, outlining the strategy and just really breaking down the numbers to see how many SKUs do we need to release to actually do this makes it a lot more realistic than just the thought of like this big huge number in your head. Like, yeah, really break it down and then it starts to become real.

I hope that you feel inspired after hearing this because it was only two years ago that I met Jake and he had just been grinding his way to this business and it was starting to become something. And then two years later, he's got a business that's going to do about $5 million this year. That's how fast things can happen when you follow the playbook, the playbook that I've shared with you over and over. If you haven't seen that playbook and you're still grinding your way to the first million, go to capitalism.com playbook and you can get it for free. The biggest fear that people have when they're at the beginning of the journey is saying, what if my product doesn't sell? And I like to remind entrepreneurs that if you follow the playbook, your challenge will not be taking sales. It will be, can I keep in stock because I'm getting so many sales? That's hard to believe until you've experienced it. But as soon as you launch and you start doing the things that you've learned from me or you've learned inside my book, you will experience this because the snowball builds really quickly when you launch a few products, get reviews and are good to your customers. That's ultimately why I teach this stuff, because I want to invest in people like Jake. And to get there, you first have to follow the playbook of building a million dollar business, which is four products at 25 sales a day at a $30 price point. And if you still need the playbook for how we do that in about 12 months, go to capitalism.com playbook and you can get it for free. I'm Ryan. Danny Moran with capitalism.com I help entrepreneurs build million dollar businesses. You just saw a really good case study of the type of businesses that we like to invest in and the ones that when they follow the playbook, some really cool things happen. Hope you enjoyed it and I'll see you next time.