How This First Time Entrepreneur Sold $25,000 on Launch Day

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Ryan Daniel Moran and this is an update episode with Mark Cuda. Mark has been on the show before as he was thinking about going to market and what his go to market strategy would be with his company, Ancient Strength. And we've been documenting Mark as a case study here@capitalism.com because I believe in his brand and him as a person and because we invested in him inside of the Capitalism fund. And Mark and I agreed at the beginning of our relationship or our business relationship that we would put capital into the business if we could document the growth of the brand. Well, he just launched and over the period of about two weeks, he's done over $25,000 in sales and he's done it in protein powder. Protein powder is a saturated market. It's a place where a lot of people say, don't go into this. The margins aren't there. There's too many competitors. It's already been done. It's hard to see stand out. And Mark went in with no audience of his own, no history in the space, no clout or credibility, and went in and had a $25,000 launch. We break apart exactly how he did it, as well as how he's going to leverage this to build a multimillion dollar company. Now, if you're listening to this and you're saying, well, hold on a second, how do I get funded for my business? I've got something that I believe in, I am doing the right things, you can put it on my desk over@capitalism.com fund and that's where I will take, take the call or my partner will look at it and we'll decide if we want to fund it. But in this episode, we go through Mark's launch plan, we go through how he converted a very small audience that he had to grind and hustle to build, how he got massively high conversion rates on a premium product that he had no expertise in. And you're going to really enjoy seeing how he was able to turn such a small audience into something that was so profitable. All right, let's go hang out with Mark. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. Today we are on set in Mark's garage. Mark, give us a quick tour of this amazing studio from where you are packing and shipping boxes.

I, I would love to. I'd love to. So right over here you have the garage door, because we can't forget that I've upgraded from the closet office to the garage office, which is a big upgrade. Way better way Better.

Last time you were on the show, you were in the. In the closet office.

Yes, sir. I've upgraded. I've hit the big time. Finally we hit such a good launch that I, I was able to afford to get kicked out of my own office in a closet into a garage. It's much bigger and also much hotter, but it works. So we've got our bookshelf here for all the important readings. The most important, of course, is Road to 1 million on the Shelf. You should definitely buy that.

You should get the title right if you're gonna, if you're gonna promote.

Oh, yeah. 12 months to 1 million. I'm sorry, Look. Yeah, right here, right here. The most important checks in the mail. Checks in the mail on the bookshelf. Then that's where I try to stay fit. This is where we build boxes. This is where we pack the boxes, print labels. This is where we.

And if you are just listening on audio, then Mark is just giving us a quick tour of his. What looks to be. Is this, is this a two, two car garage? But, but front and back, not side by side.

It's actually, it's actually even funnier than that because I live in an apartment, so I have a garage. And then I actually re. Rented the garage next to my garage. So I have two one car garages. So what you're seeing is where we actually prepare the boxes and do the founder letters, print the shipping labels and do all of that stuff, as well as where I work. And then there's a garage next to the garage that we're in where we have all of our inventory. So we've got boxes on pallets there.

Oh, okay, got it.

Boxes are boxes of, of protein powder. So we've got.

So this looks absolutely like a chaotic mess. But the, but the, the hook to this, this, this interview with you is much sexier than this chaos because you just had like a $25,000 launch with not much of an audience without, you know, in a competitive market that some people told you you couldn't break into with no experience in this space. Right. So I'm glad we started with what's going on behind the scenes because everybody sees the headline and they just say, oh, well, okay, this is easy. So you're, you're not in the grind. In the grind and in the thick of it now. But now let's jump to the sexy part. What have sales been? Because the last time we chatted, you were thinking about what your launch plan was going to be. Now you have completed launch and you're off to the races. Give us a quick update.

Yeah, so we're, we're just under $30,000 now in two and a half weeks post launch, which is really, really crazy. Like I, I was doing that math and realizing like, we're basically almost already pacing a million dollars a year just from like the launch that velocity, see, which is kind of, which is kind of funny because obviously we're not maintaining that velocity currently because we had this singular launch. But for me it was just validation of like, well, if I can do 25, 000, you know, in my first week, then it shouldn't be that difficult for me to do 25, 000 every week. And if I'm doing.

And I, I want to highlight this.

Important point that you're touching on. Where a lot of people run into trouble is they have this launch and they expect the momentum to continue that they had in launch and then they beat themselves up when things start to taper off. So what, what is so important at this point in the process is knowing that that one review that comes next could be the thing that takes you to 25 sales a day consistently, or that one keyword ranking, or that one ad campaign or that one influencer relationship that opens up gets you back to that consistent momentum and those things stack on top of one another over the course of a year. So I'm really glad that you're in that headspace of knowing this is part like the decline in sales is par for the course, but theoretically, if I did it once, I can do it every week.

Yeah, and it's funny that you bring that up because I have been going through that whole mental loop for the last week or so as things begin to take that post launch nosedive while people are waiting to get their product and there's not any new promotions going out and you're kind of just twiddling your thumbs waiting to see what's going to happen. And then the reviews started to come in and now we're, I think at 16, 16 reviews now that are like, I mean, some of the best reviews I've ever read of people who are talking about how the product is transforming the way that they look at protein powders and how amazing it is digestively and the quality and the taste and all these things that were exactly why I designed the product exactly the way that I did. And it's been super validating and has sort of gotten me over that mental hump a little bit of like, okay, the sales are just only trickling in now, but the reviews are starting to trickle back at beautiful greater velocity than the sales. And so that's starting to make me feel like, okay, this is at least the product is going well. We just need to have a few thousand people that have the same experience and we have an eight figure business here. Right?

Like that's, that's exactly right. That's exactly right.

Three to five thousand people give me a review like the 20 that I've already gotten in the first two weeks. Then we have a really substantial business here. And that's exactly start thinking about like other Skus and other flavors. And I already have a beta list going of people who want vanilla, who have been asking me for vanilla. And so there's, there's, you know, there's momentum even though it's not quite showing up in the sales the way that I would like it to. In fact, yesterday was actually the first day that we didn't sell any bottles. We've not sold less than, I think four bottles on any day up until that point, which is really crazy to think about the fact that we had two promos that went out on Instagram only two and a half weeks ago. And that's literally the only promotion that we have gotten or that we've done. And I haven't been running ads only content's just been trickling out little by little. It's really been organic. Plus people looking at our stories that I'm featuring the. Because people are posting about us already and sharing us on their stories and sharing reviews. So I've been sharing that content and that's.

I need to go into this. Mark, what do you mean that you just had two Instagram promotions? Because I know you've been busting tail during this launch. So tell me what you mean. And I want to digest the overall launch plan for people who are saying $30,000 in a launch sounds pretty darn good. Pasting a million dollars right out of the gate sounds pretty good. I want to digest that a little bit. So let's dive into that a little bit.

Yeah, tell me more. So, so to add some more clarity, what I really mean is, you know, we had our, our main influencer partner, JP Sears, do two, basically two video promos on Instagram to promote, you know, the product launch and telling people, hey, this is, this is why I love this product. This is why I partnered with Market with Ancient Strength. This is why you should go buy it. And so we had two of those videos that went out on Instagram and other than that, it's literally only been the work that I've been doing behind the scenes to cultivate those. That those folks in the audience and nurture them via email. And also like nitty gritty stuff, too. I mean, I've literally been on the phone calling customers when they buy and thanking them and telling them when the order is going to arrive and asking them how they're enjoying the product. I've been doing those things because there's not that much else to do other than love on. The people who have already raised their hand said, hey, I'm willing to give you 90 or 100. I mean, we've had 47% of people take the upsell and buy two bottles right out of the gate. So these are people that are spending nearly $160 for a product that they've never even had before and buying two bottles. And we had like almost 100 over 100 customers. Take that to my ready? No.

And you said an important point here, Mark, of you had some liftoff from an influencer with a large audience. Right. And we worked on that partnership together because he's. He's a friend of ours. But two Instagram posts does not move the needle to Instagram posts does not generate sales. I don't care who you are, that does not give you the attention that you need to have a smashing launch. It was you on the back end nurturing all those leads, replying to those comments, replying to those emails, making the phone calls, asking for the reviews, reposting those video reviews on your own story. Was you diving really deep into that process. That was the reason why there was such a high conversion rate. It had very little to do with. With one influencer shouting you out. That was just an introduction.

Right.

You then closed the deal. That's right. And I think that's where a lot of people miss the influencer marketing piece is they're expecting it to do all the heavy lifting. You did all the heavy lifting. And so now anything that happens on the front end will now just make that fire grow brighter. So would you explain a little bit about what you did? I know you. I know you built a little bit of an email list. I think there might have been a Facebook group in there. What was the strategy that used to bring those people in and nurture them and then close the deal?

Yeah. So up until recently, I've also been, you know, working full time and managing my family as well. And so I tried to keep things as simple as I could and not do too many things because I tend to do that already and I didn't want to spread myself too thin. So for the most part, I have been focusing primarily on Instagram, whether it's feed posts, stories and reels. But more than anything, rather than just posting content regularly, which was important, it was actually a lot of the community engagement that moved the needle the most for me because every single comment that I ever got, I replied to. Every single DM that I ever got, I replied to. I offered samples, free samples, to anybody who ever asked for one. I was always available as much as I possibly could be to the community on Instagram and did what I could to nurture one on one relationships with people to the point that when we launched in the first 10 minutes, we had 55 orders come in. In the first 10 minutes. The first 10 minutes, yes, sir. And, and actually I went on Instagram live with my wife. We sat here in the garage and we turned on the car, we ran the giveaway. And. And because that was part of the strategy too, which we could talk about as we, we did a giveaway. But primarily what we did is we got an Instagram live and riled people up to get in there and then we opened the cart live on Instagram, literally took the phone and showed the screen where I was turning on the website and literally saying, like, the cart is open. Go buy ancestral fuel now. And. And people were distorted mind, distorted mind, distorted mind, distorted mind. And I can't wait, I can't wait. This is super exciting. And that sort of momentum fed on itself because then other people that were in the live were like, well, shit, everybody else is buying this stuff. Like, I don't want to be left out, I don't want to miss out. And so that, that drove more excitement for them to get involved with the product as well. So it was a lot of engagement, a lot of replying to comments, a lot of talking to people one on one. Every time I'd get a new follower, like literally every time I'd get a follower, I still do it. When we get followers, I will DM them if their account is public and I can message them. I DM every single person. I don't use an automation. I literally DM them. I use their name, I try to look at one or two of their photos, try to understand who they are as a person, and then thank them for giving us their attention and just do that over and over and over.

So that's like, I am so proud of this process. Mark, this is amazing, but it is, it looks A lot like work. And it's starting.

Yeah, starting. Remarkably similar. Remarkably similar to work. Yes. Yeah.

Now, but Mark, I want you to comment. How many followers do you have?

On my personal Instagram I have about 3,500 and I don't have that much engagement. And then on our Ancient Strength Instagram, we are just over 4400 followers now. And we have slightly better engagement on that, especially, you know, the last, which.

Is the one where you are going live and people are interacting on our.

Ancient Strength account oriented.

So 4,000. 4,400 people. I say this over and over and over again. You don't need millions of followers, you don't need hundreds of thousands, you don't need tens of thousands.

Yes.

You need a small group of very active, engaged people and you bust a tail to get them engaged. And thus you come out of the gate with $30,000 in sales in your first couple of weeks.

Yeah. And then the other, the back half of the strategy. Right. So we promoted a giveaway on our landing page for like two weeks or three weeks before the launch. So I did a video, you can see it on our Instagram. It's the only slightly professionally looking, professional looking video. Still not very professional, but it was at least done on a. On an slr so it looks kind of professional. And we did that video basically hyping the launch. And the call to action was get on the launch list for our April 22 launch. We launched at 4:22 22, at 2:22pm and that was like what we did to build that list in the back end. So every single call to action that I had, I actually went and bought the domain Name Fuel your evolution.com to serve as like a kind of like a campaign landing page for this particular launch, rather than just like our standard domain name. Not that that's necessary, but it just kind of gave a cool domain name that I could tell people had to feel your evolution.com you know, and. And that was like basically the call to action to get on the list then. The funny thing is I really, I kicked myself a lot for this, but in the end it totally worked out fine. And that was. I was so behind on everything that literally the morning that we were releasing the hype video, which was exactly four weeks before launch, the landing page was completely broken and I needed to rebuild it from scratch. And none of the emails for the welcome sequence had been written and I was still editing the video to have it done to go out at noon. And so I was planning on taking like two weeks to perfectly craft this welcome sequence. And in the end, I wrote it over a cup of coffee. In an hour and a half, I wrote four emails and I just basically shit them out because I was like, out of time. And so I was like, okay, what are the four most important things I want to talk about? I broke that up into four emails that kind of took people along the journey. Or like one of them was simply a welcome email. And all the emails were plain text, by the way, so no graphics, no fancy templates. Literally just plain text emails. The first one was like, hey, thanks for signing up. You're now my best friend. Reply to Reply to collect your to claim your Best Friend forever badge or BFF badge. And thanks for signing up to try Ancestral Fuel. And actually almost 300 people over the course of the next few weeks would go on to reply to that email and ask me for their best friend badge, which I thought was really hilarious. But that email worked really well. Then the next email, I told my story how I healed from digestive of illness with these kinds of foods. And then the next email was like, hey, this is how hard it's been for me to get this product to market. And the last email was like, this is why this brand means so much to me and what the mission is of the brand, like the broader mission and, and what I hope to bring to the world through this. So we set up this email sequence, super basic and, and then literally just put, put the landing page out and put the video out and just started, you know, trying to promote it organically as much as I could. And between that point and launch, we were able to put to a little over 2,000 people on the email list. So that's, I think, another important call out because you talk about this a lot, Ryan. Like, we had 2,000 fucking people on this email list. It was not a lot of people. And in fact, I was worried looking at the size of the list. But when launch day came, I was like, are we going to sell any, any protein at all? Like, with this list? Like, I'm just not convinced that, that this list is going to convert. And I think we did like 80 something orders on 89 or 90 something orders on launch day alone. And then they just kept rolling in from there. And so it was, it was really remarkable to see how responsive the list was. And then from there, literally the backend marketing post launch was just a lot of reels and posts, like a lot of stories on Instagram. Those started to get a lot of traction for Me, I seem to be a little bit better at stories than anything else. So I lean.

And were you sending all of these to the pre launch page to build up that list?

Was that the strategy during that period before launch? Yes. And then post launch it was like go buy now. Like that was literally the call to action.

I got you.

That landing page actually disappeared and Feely Revolution then redirected over to the sales page once the launch went live.

So I want to clear all, clear all this up for people who are listening and trying to follow along inside of the 1%. One of the things that we walk people through is setting up what we call the traffic triad. The traffic triad is you need a place for traffic, you need a place to engage. We call it the hopper. And then when you need a conversion source. So in Mark's context, that is he had a partnership with an influencer that got him a little bit of traffic. Not a ton, but some. His hopper was Instagram. That's where he was engaging with people and calling people and building that community. And then the conversion source was email. So the influencer got some of the attention. He went really hard into engagement via the hopper, put them on an email list and that's where the conversion happened. So that's the complete traffic triangle, which is why you're able to get such high conversion rates. Because we have a, basically a. We have what we give us this trust that is formed in which we've now been seen in three different areas which is what triggers in the brain closeness when you see somebody in three different places. So that's the strategy that we're talking about here. Mark, you're starting to see reviews come in now. We're starting to see sales sort of taper off. What's your plan at this point to go from, okay, I can pace a million dollars in launch week.

Right.

What's the, what's the plan to overcome that hump now?

Yeah, so for one, I'm working on building out a more, I wouldn't say necessarily sophisticated, but more foundational website. So something that, where I can actually put longer form content. We can build more reviews on the product page and do the things that will more legitimize us as a, as an e commerce shop rather than just a sales page. So that's part of it is building this new foundation for, you know, not just collecting leads through, you know, calls to action and lead magnets, but, but also nurturing those leads with content. The reason why that's one of the things I want to do is simply because I spent years in SEO and I built tons and tons of websites.

And sure, it's something good at, right?

Something that I'm natural for me and I've done for many years and I'm good at it. So to lean on, that makes sense for me because I know for a fact that there's. For the research I've already done, there's a lot of SEO potential with our niche and it's fairly soft still. And I know that we can absolutely crush it. So that's one, one thing that I want to begin building. Maybe a little bit slower on the side, but more immediately to begin kind of rebuilding the momentum. I've realized that I'm very good at building relationships with influencers because I try to treat it like a collaboration. I try to treat them like I would anybody else or any other business partner.

It's a good strategy.

And because my background obviously is doing business in person and often over the phone. And a lot of B2B, you know, one on one relationships is in my background. So I'm experienced at building relationships with people one on one. So funny enough, and this is something that I think people can look out for. If you do snag a partnership with a larger influencer like we did, that also opens the door to other influencers because pretty much every single person that I have reached out to that I wanted to partner with in some way, I didn't even have to tell them that we were partnered with JP Sears. Just them looking at our profile and seeing that we were was enough to incite them to literally, I've had a 100% response rate from every, for every influencer that I've reached out to so far, which isn't a ton, but that's, that's really telling. In additionally to that, I actually had influencers reaching out to me as soon as we launched saying, hey, like, we love JP and like we love what you're doing. And look at me, I'm very similar to your customer. Like, do you think, yeah, you think maybe we can, we can talk? And, and so it's actually, it really is because rather than me having to make an ask, they are actually the ones making the ask. And I've had multiple people say, hey, I don't know if you're open to other partnerships or I don't know if you have an exclusive deal with the influencers that you already have. But like, I would love for you to consider like working with me and I'm not talking like people with you. Know, one or two or three thousand followers, although I've been getting a lot of those DMs too. But those have been coming for the last year. What I've been getting now are blue check influencers with 300,000 followers, 1 million followers, 1.8 million followers, and I've even been having really high level folks that have millions of followers that are purchasing our product, not even opening relationships, but are going directly on the back end and purchasing on their own, paying full price for the product and wanting the product for themselves. So that's one of my strategies moving forward is because I see what, what.

Is, what is the actual strategy though. I mean obviously we're relationship building there, but what, what there's still a gap there of figuring out how that relationship is going to work out.

Yeah. So my plan is to not necessarily quote, unquote, rinse and repeat what we've done with our first influencer, but use that as momentum and as a foundation to build similar types of promotional relationships and then use Instagram as kind of that main place where that traffic is being exchanged. So they're bringing them to our Instagram, we're cultivating them with our reels, with our stories, with our content, all the while moving them over with the call to action being to go to the website and make a purchase and eventually once I have a, a website that's a little bit better set up and we have the ability to do like lead magnets or you know, prospecting flows or whatever, then rather than just take them straight to a sales page and ask for the sale, we'll have that kind of step in between where we take them to some sort of content or nurture page that's got either a pop up or you know, an intercidal or whatever that allows them to put in their email and get on our newsletter for promotions and things like that.

So let's, let's, let's high level this very quickly because there's two important points are ones to brag on you and, and wants a brag on me.

I love it.

So the important brag on for you here is that this was the result of you doing the unscalable things which is, which is going and building those relationships one to one influencer or not, you were building very deep relationships which looks a lot like work and it is the reason why your momentum is happening so quickly. To your point about influencers, you're following the classic playbook of what we walk people through inside of the incubator, which is you have an anchor influencer and then you try to round that out with a few other people that you might throw a point to or half a point to. And I've got this great distribution base of influencers. The brag on me is some people are listening to this saying, well, you had a secret advantage. You got a relationship with JPCers. How did he do that? Well, the way we did that is I am an investor through the fund inside of Mark's company. I was the first check in and I have a relationship with JP and one of the things that we do inside of the fund and inside of the incubator is try to make those relationships happen is people from our network or from my network we often bring to the table and say, there might be a match here. Mark still had to do the work. Mark still had to build a relationship with jp. I made an introduction and I wrote a check. And since I'm homies with jp, I said, hey, I'm investing in this company. I think you should take the call. But Mark still did the work, right?

Yeah.

And if you only walk somebody through the door, they still have to close the deal. They still have to make a relationship.

And I think that's an important call out to make too is because, you know, I met JP in April of 2021.

Yeah.

And we did not close a deal for six months. And I had many phone calls with him and text messages, message exchanges and in person seeing each other and calls, zoom calls with him and his team with people on his team and not him with his, you know, his back end team. His front end team. Like there was a lot of time and energy that went into it for six months before we were able to close that deal. And I think maybe this is just a tidbit for some of the folks who are maybe earlier on in the process even than I am. Some people might say, well, you know, how did you get investment in your brand to, to begin with? From Ryan and the capitalism fund. And for me it's like it goes back to that long term approach. Like you and I have been friends for three years and you and I became friends because of a mutual friend of ours who I worked for for four years at another startup. And so it's like the work I did in 2016 for RVShare.com, building a relationship and a friendship with that company's founder is eventually what many years later led him to connect you and I and say, hey, you guys should know each other. And then it took us three years before we did any business together. And so it's like, it's a really long journey. And like I always say, like, life makes sense in reverse. And. And for me, it's like the dots connect so clearly when you look backwards. But moving forward, I think for people, it's sometimes hard to see it. But, you know, I've been at this for, like, 15 years, trying to build something that I actually loved that was meaningful and that was actually successful or at least had traction. And it's taken a lot of blood, sweat, and tears and mistakes and failures and relationship building with people who wouldn't even be involved in this business to even get to the point where I could build this.

And you're not done yet. You still have a lot more of that to do. Here's. Here's the beauty of what you just said, Mark. Most people will look at. They'll skip over all of that and they'll say, well, he had a relationship with JP Sears, so he had an unfair advantage. Therefore I can't, and therefore I'm going to complain about it.

Yeah.

Where you 10 years ago said, who's in front of me? My boss. I'm going to serve that guy. And you have a relationship with that guy not knowing where it would lead.

Correct.

And the way it led was an introduction to me years later. We talked about working together, and we didn't go that route, but we served one another, and that led to another relationship. Like that is just karma. One on one, if you will. And so it was. A lot of people will see the results or the relationships or the, quote, unfair advantages that somebody else had.

Yeah.

And they don't factor in that. It started as a seed that got planted that looked a lot like relationship building that eventually led to something else. I was actually telling the story today about how I started my podcast. It was me just on a journey figuring this out. I hadn't discovered E Commerce yet. You go back far enough. I'm not talking about E Commerce because I wasn't doing E Commerce. I documented the journey of getting there, which led to this relationship and this relationship and this relationship and this relationship to now I have clients and customers and investments and all of that. And I'm still just getting started because it is all relationship building. So, Mark, where you are now is you've got a successful launch. You've done a. A really nice, solid $30,000 launch within a couple of weeks, you have a plan to move forward. Where do you need help right now? What's on your mind in terms of gaps. How can we help close those gaps so that you can go on to building a million dollar business, which it obviously is going to be probably faster than you calculated when you started this thing?

I sure hope so. I would say that for me, right now I am up against the classic Mark Kuda dilemma, which is I, I think far too much and I have, I think a lot of people in the community can resonate with this. I know you can. I have too many ideas often and it becomes difficult to prevent the ping pong in my head. And with this particular business, more so than any business I've been involved in in the past, not only am I doing everything but. But because it's a physical product, there are, there's a whole other side of the business that relates to the actual physical fulfillment of the product. Whether it's vendor relationships, you know, shipping and logistics, you know, building boxes and putting tape on them and, you know, shipping them out. Like I just came back from the post office dropping off today's orders like right before I got on the phone with you. So there's all these different things and it's become a little bit difficult for me to determine where I should be spending my time and where I should be.

I would like to interject here, Mark, because I don't even need to hear your ideas to know where this conversation needs to go. Because I would be willing to bet that your brain is thinking about website management and optimization. You're thinking about search engine optimization, you're thinking about building a list, starting a newsletter, putting energy into starting a podcast, working on your influencer relationships, starting an affiliate program launching on Amazon. That was eight things.

Let's not forget ads.

All right, all right. So am I close?

Strategy? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

You maybe have missed one or two, but you, you scooped it up pretty, pretty good there.

So from. For where you are in the process, process, you basically have capacity for one short term thing and one long term thing because you are still shipping boxes and sending them out. And we have to do one thing that clears up some bandwidth and one thing that creates room.

So if I were, can you clarify that? What do you mean by that? When you see.

Yes, I will create room. Create space in your day. Like tactically, you shouldn't be shipping out boxes long term.

Sure.

So building the presence on Amazon and using their fulfillment services and getting a 3PL. Do you have a 3PL in mind?

I have a couple of. A couple in mind, yes.

Okay, great. So I would pull the trigger on a 3 PL as soon as you have the ability to do it. And I, and you texted me this idea, I think it's a good idea to send a few hundred units over to Amazon and start building the presence there in terms of reviews and, and building up that inventory that, those inventory limits. So it's. Those two things will take things off your plate. They'll. They'll reduce your workload and put you in a position where you could grow if the Amazon channel becomes a profitable channel for you. So that is one thing to do that reduces your overall workload. And then one area of growth, the two areas of growth that you are excellent at are content creation and relationships. So between those two things, which feels more exciting, like it gives you the most life, Is it starting a podcast that allows you to build and nurture relationships and build an audience, or is it connecting with influencers that can put you on the map with a couple of Instagram posts, which one of those feels lighter and easier and more exciting?

I would say that long term, the podcast is more attractive to me because I'm definitely a conversationalist at heart. I love people and I love conversations and I love talking with people and learning from them and asking them questions. And I also have a large list of people that I have been building for two years that have agreed to come on my podcast, including really exciting guests that I had been working for a long time to convince them. So I see that as a very powerful channel for me long term. But what makes me feel nervous about launching a podcast now is the just the overhead that I concerned it might create in my life and in my day of, you know, I want to, I want to read their books before I interview them. I want to really research them and understand what kind of content questions I want to ask them. I want to listen to an interview or two and think about how can I ask things that other people haven't asked them so we can actually have unique conversations that aren't just boilerplate talking points, right? Like, those things matter to me when I create the podcast. Like, I want it to be a better and more elevated experience than other podcasts. Now you could say, like, you know, you could start simple and make it more sophisticated over time. My only concern there is just that because I have such amazing guests already lined up, this is probably a scarcity mindset. Or actually, I know it is a scarcity mindset, but I don't want to quote, unquote, waste all of that ability that I have to talk with incredible people by not feeling fully Prepared to dive into the conversation as deep as I would like to. So that plus just the work.

So here's, so here, here's, here's the gap. The work of the podcast is simple. And that's going to be. That's the easy part. Part. I hear what you're saying on the prep and the, and all of this about, about the podcast and kudos to you for wanting to be well prepared here. But do you do that much planning when you start building a relationship with someone that you just met?

No.

The answer is no.

That would be kind of creepy.

Exactly. Exactly. So if you. Here's, here's the what? I think this would be my recommendation.

For you to go to the coffee shop the other day, got her Social Security number.

Read her book.

So here's, here's what I would suggest a plan for you to move forward. If the podcast is important to you long term, it can be an amazing place to build leads and continue to build relationships. Every episode of the podcast is brought to you by Ancient Strength. Podcast listeners can save 10% when they use the discount code podcast at checkout. And then you use that podcast as a way to actualize all the relationships that are coming into your flow.

Right, with the influencers.

Yeah, that's right. So these people are reaching out to you, saying I heard JP talk about you or I heard I heard you on the capitalism.com podcast. And then if you're looking to build that relationship, you can use the podcast as one of the assets there where it can be as simple as well, tell you what, why don't we do this? Why don't we record a quick podcast together, get to know one another, build a relationship and we can just see where it goes.

Yeah, and I'll say ancestral feel while we're at it.

Exactly, exactly. And so that can be a way to both build the audience and the relationship, while also to nurture those influencer relationships that you can cash the check on later. Does that make sense?

Yes. I actually really like that because it allows me to kill two birds. Like one stone. Actually, more than two birds because the other strategy that's very important to me outside of the podcast and influencers is I think clips on TikTok and Instagram Reels. I've begun to get traction on some of those and I enjoy making them. And so I think that like that there's a lot of opportunity there to create great content. And the podcast obviously just creates a lot of long form content that you can. Gary. Gary Vee Content Pyramid. You know, up into lots of little clips that you can use across these various channels and test them and all of that. So I feel like that's a good way to think about it and sort of frees me up from feeling like the podcast has to be perfect out of the gate. Like more so than any other thing that I'm creating. Whether it's the website, the logo, the emails I'm sending, the Instagram content for whatever reason. Maybe it's because it's the one I've maybe most passionate about. The podcast feels like the one that has to be done the best. Right. And I know that that's a. That's like.

Which is probably why you haven't done it yet.

It's. It's not probably why I haven't done it yet. It is. It is why I haven't done it yet.

Like, then my advice, Mark, is to get the worst one out of the way. The first one is always going to be the worst. So as, as we're recording this tonight in, in four hours, I go on stage. My first ever stand up appearance. Right. I hope it is, by the way. I don't know, but I hope that it is the worst one that I ever do.

Sure. That would be a good thing because.

The next one means it will be better. But. But the reason I've not done up to this point is because I wasn't willing for the first one to suck.

Yeah.

I wasn't willing to bomb. Wasn't willing to test things out. Yeah. And so now it's like, okay, this will probably be the worst one I ever do. Which means they're all going to get better from here. So go get the worst one out of the way. This was the advice that was given to me when I was thinking about having my first capcon. I was over, like, it has to be perfect. And somebody said, just get the worst one out of the way. Like do an event. And it was a fricking great event. But the next one was better and the next one was better and the next one was better to the point where it was like, I don't know how we're going to drop this thing.

And then Capcom 5 came along and it was.

And we keep doing it.

Fucking.

So. So that's my advice to you, is to go get the worst one out of the way and start to build upon that momentum. You don't have to cash in all these relationships at once. Cash in three of them.

Right. For a way to build relationships, we'd run out of inventory. Before we could even produce more.

Exactly right. And the other thing that I would encourage you to do here, Mark, is to every third episode or every fifth episode, do a solo cast.

I was actually thinking about.

That's a company update.

I was actually thinking about alternating between.

You can do whatever pace you want. Do whatever pace you want, but work in your own solo cast in there that are just you documenting the experience of building a company, of going on this journey, of your health, of what's going on.

Yeah. And that was the story behind the brand and. And the. The benefits.

That's right.

The topics that are most important. Like, I already have an episode I've outlined to go into more depth of, like, my own digestive healing journey and even, like, my childhood elements of it and how from. From, you know, very, very young age, I was dealing with these issues and sort of an episode that would monologue that whole story from beginning.

That's right.

And there's lots of clips in there, too, that an editor can pull out for me as well. And use those as reels. You can use them as ads for awareness campaigns and stuff like that on the front.

Be careful not to think too far down that road because, well, you just went into, like, an editor could do this and it. So that is your idea. Brain firing. Which is awesome.

Yeah.

But none of that. If you go too far down that rabbit hole, it becomes overwhelmed. That prevents you from doing the next thing forward, which is starting the podcast.

Yes. Yeah.

Be okay. Like, we launched this show with my mentor, JP different jp and we wanted to perfect it from day one. Let's have clips, and let's have all this. And it was too much planning, so we opened up the computer and we recorded six shows over three days. And there's no clips, there's no video. The audio is not great. And now we're on the board, and now we're building momentum, and now we're building an audience. And that would be the. The step that I encourage you to take is just.

I need to hear that. I needed to hear that because I am too much of a perfectionist in everything that I do, but especially when it relates to anything creative. You know, I consider myself to be an artist, so everything that I do, I want it to be art. But that presents a major challenge when you have a million things to do and very little time to do.

Of course it does.

So.

Of course it does.

I needed to hear that. I appreciate that advice.

And it's gonna be sloppy at first, regardless of how much you plan for It. So just let it be sloppy. Yeah, just let it be sloppy.

I will do that. I will do that. I'm gonna. I'm gonna do that for sure. Because that also my other problems.

Is there anything strategy wise or tactic wise that you want to cover before I let you go build a million dollar business?

I don't think so. To be honest with you, man. I think.

Getting clarity on how the podcast feeds into the other things I'm doing, specifically a clip strategy, which is on my board, an influencer strategy, which is on my board, and an ad strategy, which is on my board. The podcast actually creates the space that as I do the episodes, the content will naturally be there already. And so it means that I don't have to come up with different strategies and outlines and time on my calendar to produce all of this different content. Rather, I can do it once and it can serve me not just many times, but for a long period of time moving forward. And that's really helpful because I've been thinking a lot about, you know, structuring at, you know, basic ad campaigns and all those things, but it's what, what goes in the awareness part of the campaign.

Well, keep this in mind. Keep this in mind. The brand Bulletproof started as an okay podcast.

Of doing interviews of other health people in the space.

Right.

It didn't become Bulletproof until he started talking about putting fat in your coffee.

Right.

He was building an audience and building relationships. And then Bulletproof happened. So you are in that early phase of building the audience of your Bulletproof.

Yeah.

And it's not going to be great out of the gate and it shouldn't be.

Yeah.

But I want you, I want you to know that my investment partner, Sam and I are genuinely proud of you and brag about you publicly and are bragging about you to our investors because you're doing all the right things with the right mindset. That is what we look for. More than ebitda, more than run rate. We're looking for somebody who has a vision and is willing to do the right things, which you are doing. So there is zero doubt that this is a seven figure business in my mind. Zero. It's already there in my mind. And I don't need to put too much pressure on you, but you're one of the brands that we bring up when we're like, we only need, you know, three brands to hit to give our investors a wicked return. And we've already got, and we name a few, one of them being Mark Cuda. So thank you. Congratulations. And we're very proud of you. All right, if you listen to this episode and you are saying, all right, look, I'm in. I need to go back and redo my launch. I want to get to that first $10,000 a month as fast as possible. That is our focus right now. Inside of the 1%. We have put together a series of trainings that are designed to get you up and moving into the first 10k as fast as possible asap. As possible. As we like to say@capitalism.com we are creating an experience, a sprint experience that is designed to get you up and moving and to the first $10,000 a month as fast as possible. And we guarantee that if you don't do it, we'll just buy your business from you for $10,000 because it just works. So if you want a spot, you want to go through this process, you can apply for an invitation over@capitalism.com 1. If you want to be the next Mark, you want to be the next Damian, who you've heard on the show, or you want to be one of the many, many success stories of people who are coming up with great ideas, launching, having that first five figure month and building that foundation for a seven figure business, this is where you do that. So go over to capitalism.com1 and fill out the form and I'll remind you that these are all happening now. All these case studies that we are sharing with you are happening now. They're not happening in 2015, they're not happening when the economy was good, they're not happening happening when supply chain issues weren't a thing. They're happening now. So if you want to be next in line, you need to let go of your excuses about why they're not possible and just go through the process. We got this. We've done it a bunch of times. We will walk you through it and get you to that foundation of a business that you can build off of and then have that seven figure business. So go over to capitalism.com1, click on the link, fill form and let's get you on the board and in the game. Thank you for listening and I'll see you guys on the next show. Take care.