How To Create An Exciting Brand Around Your Hobby #FreedomFastLane

There's a reason why you so believe in this. There's a reason why you grow it in sugar cane soil. Like, there are some interesting nuances to your business that only you know, that if you communicate with the rest of the world will be interesting to a lot of people. And this whole machine is going to start to pop a little bit more.

Build a business, invest the profits. I'm Ryan Daniel Moran and this is Freedom Fast Lane.

Oh, hello. What's going on, team? That was a Team America reference. If you know what that. That's from. Shoot me a DM on Instagram. You're my favorite person today. It's one of my favorite movies. Anywho, welcome to the show on Freedom Fast Lane. We talk about building businesses and investing the profits. And we work with those of you who listen to the show and go through our content and go through some of our challenges and our courses, and we look at where you are, where you're trying to go, and how we can help. And today we're talking to K. He has been a listener for many, many years, and he has a tea business. The website is japanesegreentea.org and he's written a couple books about the topic. He's. He's super passionate about the topic, but he's had trouble getting his sales to take off. Now he's got some cool assets at his disposal. He writes about it. He has a little bit of a social media following, and he just got on Amazon. So what I encourage him to do throughout this podcast is double down on that audience and use that audience to prime the pump for Amazon's growth. Now, K has been listening to me for a long time, so he was a little bit nervous being on the podcast. So I do a lot of the talk in this one. Hope you mind listening to me rant for a little bit. But at the end, we have a very clear strategy for taking K from where he is now to getting things popping a little bit faster than what's going on right now. As we were recording this, I was sitting here, man, going, this is like, I really love businesses like this, where the founder is really jazzed and he's in a passionate audience. And.

I get really excited about businesses like this. And that's why we started the 1%. The 1% is our monthly community where we feature success stories and what's working right now. But every quarter, we take the products from our community and we put them into the box and we distribute them to the rest of the community. Because I know if somebody's excited about it. The rest of the community is going to be excited about it too. And I know that if we take a product like this and we feature it in front of thousands of entrepreneurs around the country and around the world, that that lights a new fire and gives them new customers and new opportunities. And we built this community to be a distribution arm for the rest of the community. So it's a community and a service to the community at the same time. Plus, we do regular trainings and what's working now in a Q and A with me every month. There's also a curriculum that'll walk you through building a business, investing the profits, and creating the change over the next 12 months. So if that's calling your name, you can find out more and join us@capitalism.com 1. In the meantime, enjoy this chat with community member k, who's building JapaneseGreenTea.org where we go through how he can get sales faster and grow this from a passionate hobby to a real business.

Hi Kee. Welcome to Freedom Fast Lane. How's it going, dude?

Pretty good. How are you, Ryan?

Doing well, thanks. Key why don't you kick us off by telling us a little bit about your business and what you're trying to accomplish and I'll see how I can help.

Great. Thank you very much. My name is Kei Nishida and I'm the owner of japanese green tea company@www.japanesegreentea.org. we sell Japanese green tea in USA and India. And the green tea that we sell is actually pretty unique. It's grown in sugar cane soil and it's only available in very specific farms in Japan and Shizuoka. And it basically tastes really good. Okay, good.

So that's the differentiation between other tea and we are the only importer and we sell this green tea in USA and India. And because it tastes good, most of our customers are repeaters and subscribers who gets the tea every month. And we won the global tea champion in 2017 and 2018.

Great.

So that is what we sell. And personally, I have published four books related to green tea and on our website we have a blog and.

That'S what we do.

Awesome. Sounds like you're really passionate about this area and this product line. So tell me what it is that you're trying to accomplish.

Yes, what I would like to accomplish is to get more customers. Obviously, having good tea and good product doesn't just directly connect. So I've been spending a lot of time marketing and that is one of the challenges to, you know, find the right funnels and, you know, right channels to be able to reach to the people who would like to try out.

And what are you trying right now and how's it going?

Yep. So we, most of our traffic comes from the SEO organic traffic. Okay. That's what we've been working on is the blog with good content. So the organic traffic comes to our site and we have a lead magnet, the book that I wrote. And from there we have email sequences and I also write quite often to the email groups. So that is the main channels that we use. And we have been trying Facebook and other means of advertisement, but our product is like $30 to $50.

So I'm trying to find some way that I can do, I can fast lane to get more customers.

Yeah, well, you have come to the right place. So what is working and what's not working right now?

What is working is the blog traffic and how that email channel. So every time I send out an email, I get sales and, you know, I grow the subscriber. That is what is working. Another part that is working is we go to events. So like local events and stuff, like a tea festival, a Japan festival. We do very well because we give out tea, the sample tea, and people consume them and it tastes good, so they buy them. We cannot scale this event. So those two are working well, but I cannot scale fast.

So there's a couple ways that we could go about this. Number one, I'm hearing you say that the blog is going really well. Is that blog japanesegreentea.org?

Yes. Okay, so when I do a quick lookup of that, that in some search engine tools, I don't find it anywhere. So if you tell me that it's doing well, where is your traffic coming from?

Well, so It's Google, but JapaneseGreenTea.org actually routes to Japanese GreenTee n.com which you will find it on the channel, on the printed publication and on the audio. I usually say.org because it's easier for people to, you know, just go there.

But anyway, it's www.japanesegreentin.com and most of the traffic comes from Google.

Okay, got it. So, yeah, I just pulled that up and I'm looking through some of your keyword data here. Do you know what your highest referring keywords are?

We come up to the top. I know that buy Japanese green tea or Japanese green tea also like a cold brew. Japanese green tea. That's one of the high keyword.

Yeah, I mean, you're ranking for some pretty cool Keywords here like Japanese green tea, cold green tea, cold brew green tea. You rank for some really impressive keywords which tells me that writing content is a really good play for this business. So can you estimate how many sales or how many email opt ins this is creating as a result of you having this traffic?

Yeah, we get quite number of leads from it, but it takes time for those leads to be converting to customer. I do get the customer right away, but they usually go to the email subscription first and then go get the customer. But yeah, that is not scaling fast enough.

Okay, so how many sales is this creating on a daily or monthly basis?

Somewhere between 100 to 300.

100 to 300 sales dollars or something else?

Sales.

Sales per day or per month?

Per month.

Okay, cool. So we're still in that kind of getting started phase where we need to ramp this up a little bit. And I really like the strategy that you're following of content to email to conversion. That's really smart. So there's a couple things that I would recommend that you start to look at. Number one, you've proven that you can get content to rank on Google, which means that you should probably put more attention into creating more content. So on a weekly or monthly basis, about how many posts are you putting on your site?

My goal is to do about one a week, but oftentimes it's about.

Sometime I'm a little short and I do like somewhere between three to four content a month.

Okay, got it man.

You're ranking for a lot of keywords, so there's a lot of opportunity for you to double down on this and start to ramp this up.

You're ranking for a lot of keywords, so you've got a really great domain name with some authority and I'd recommend you treat that like it's your primary channel. Writing content and getting it to rank in Google is probably gonna be step one for you to get this off the ground. So I always like to start on, you know, what's working well and what you've got and you know, you've obviously got some opportunity here. You mentioned that you had some hesitation around Amazon because of the price point. Did I hear you say that correctly?

Well, I said advertisement. Sorry if you misunderstood. I have tried advertisement on like Google, AdWords and Facebook and so forth. That's not working because I ended up spending too much time. I mean too much money for the each of the customer. But Amazon, when it comes to Amazon, we just launched first product two days ago through FBA and launched meaning it's up there, but no one has bought it because it was two days ago. And I'm still learning. But our first product just went into the Amazon two days ago.

Okay, got it. So. Well, you've got a little bit of a strategic advantage on Amazon because you have an email list. So even if you've only got a few thousand people on that email list, if you direct them to order on Amazon, that will give you a little bit of a lift in Amazon's algorithm to start fueling part of Amazon's marketing machine. The other thing that beneficial for you here is you've already got excited repeat customers who are on subscription, so they're the most likely to come and give you reviews. So you might be able to launch out of the gate with 50 to 100 reviews, which will give you another lift in Amazon's marketing machine. So if you use some of the assets and the momentum that you've got from, from the blog and in your email list and you send that attention over to Amazon, I think you will see faster growth than you trying to take the order on your own website. Does that make sense so far?

Yes. Yep.

Okay, great. So that to me is step one, I think for you is continue writing more content on the site.

And step two, use some of that attention to.

Promote Amazon. That would be step two. Now step three, in my opinion, is if you really believe in your product, which you obviously do, there are two things that I would suggest you do. Number one, I would be intentional about giving out your product to either other bloggers, other influencers, or other raving fans who are likely to share and talk about your business. So I would be looking for your ideal customers. Start killing them with kindness, turn them into raving fans, because that will bring out more raving fans. If you do that consistently, you will end up attracting even more raving fans. That creates a snowball effect. Does that make sense?

Yes.

Cool. And then I'm give you one more thing.

Thank you.

I think you need to take some of the videos that are on your website as well as some of the videos from your customers or the videos from yourself or wherever you are sourcing some of this video content that I see floating around and start putting it on social media just as content. Because I get the vibe that you've got a really cool reason why you're passionate about this. Like there's a reason you wrote books about green tea. There's a reason why you so believe in this. There's a reason why you grow it in in sugarcane. Soil like there's. There are some interesting nuances to your business that only you know that if you communicate with the rest of the world will be interesting to a lot of people. People are really passionate about green tea. So if you are communicating more about it publicly, I think you're gonna get more raving fans and this whole machine is gonna start to pop a little bit more.

Now. I just threw a lot of stuff at you in 10 minutes or so. So what questions do you have for me? Let's clean this up up a little bit.

I do not have any particular questions. I have a lot of list, but sorry about that.

Which one of these feels light and easy and fun? Which of these action items feels like, yeah, I could do that? That sounds like fun.

Yeah, the content is definitely what I'm used to doing it. So I can definitely scale up. I'm hoping that I can do it fast enough. Amazon, to me is a bit of a. Still, I'm learning it myself. Even, you know, just. Just to do, you know, one little things is taking a lot of time, but it's a learning curve for me. But as you mentioned about, you know, bringing the customers from my audience into the Amazon, I would love to, you know, do that and. Yeah, great.

So I think, I think you should prioritize the content. You're good at it. You're good for it. Google loves your site for it. So prioritize the content. And the more you do that, the more you build those eyeballs, the faster the marketing machine at Amazon is going to grow too.

Yep. Yeah, that sounds great. Great.

What else? How else can I help?

No, that's a lot of list for me.

Is this overwhelming for you?

Well, at the same, yes. Yes. But it's great that, you know, I feel like I want to do that. So I really appreciate your input and your advices.

Which one of these feels the most overwhelming?

Well, when it comes to the outreaching to the bloggers, that I'm a little bit hesitant in a way that then.

Then skip it for now.

Okay.

And there's a reason, and the reason why is because if you do it just because I told you to do it, it'll feel like a grind and it'll require a lot of energy. You're already good at content creation, so if you prioritize that, the bloggers may end up coming to you anyway. So prioritize what's working and what you will do more of anyway and make that your first order of operations. And if you want to skip the outreach, that's just fine.

Yep. Yeah, that sounds good.

If we remove that step, does the rest of the process seem easier?

Yeah. Yes.

Great. Great. Well, what else? How else can I help? Kay.

Well, the holiday is coming up soon, so I think. Do you have any suggestion that, you know, that might sparkle a little bit towards this holiday? You know.

Sales?

Yeah. I mean.

Be very intentional of getting your audience to buy on Amazon before the holidays because you want that Amazon spike before the holiday rush. So.

I think the order of operations that we outlined of content Amazon and then sharing more social media content about why you're passionate about this is relevant at any time. But if you can do it before the holidays, you'll take advantage of that spike. That always happens in Q4.

Yep. That sounds good. It ties everything together. Yep.

Anything else?

No.

Would you. This is. This is a really interesting market for me because I know people are so passionate about this and I mean, obviously you are because you've written so many books about it. And I want you to understand that if you start communicating a little bit more publicly on social media, I really do think that you're gonna end up getting other raving fans like you. And it's only a matter of time until the blogger who has a list of a hundred thousand people references you as their favorite source for Japanese green tea. But it requires you to keep priming that pump with stuff that you're excited about. And that doesn't mean like teaching a whole bunch of stuff. It could be as simple as having conversations over green tea.

Sharing the health benefits of green tea.

Crowdsourcing customer testimonials, but always, always bringing it back to that brand story of what you described at the top of this call about what makes you different, why this is exciting for you, why you write three books about it, why is this so important to K? Because that's going to make you excited to keep making the content about it.

I see. Yes. Yep.

Great. Anything else staying in your way? Kay?

No, no. This, this, this has been great. Yeah, Good.

Well, we are all watching from the sidelines, my friend. We are rooting for you and I'm excited to see your progress.

Thank you very much.

Foreign.

Hey, team, real quick, shameless plug here. If you've ever seen my company logo for capitalism.com, it's a red sea with a flame at the end. And the reason why that's the company logo is because I believe that our purpose as a company and my purpose as a leader is to light other fires. And that means creating content for entrepreneurs who go on to Build great companies, working with entrepreneurs to help them break through their plateaus and to invest in companies that really have a shot at breaking out. Teaching this stuff so that more success stories get created. I like to light fires. That's what I'm here to do. One of the ways that I do that is inside of our monthly membership, which is called the 1%. And inside there, we send out a monthly newsletter which features case studies of success stories. What's working right now from some of the best people in the world who are doing this stuff, who are building businesses and investing the profits. And we feature business ideas that you can literally rip off and steal. We often even just throw keyword lists at you and say, go for it. Hey, we might even invest in this post. In the community, you'll probably find an investor too. And the idea is to bring together investors, entrepreneurs, influencers in one place where we can light fires really, really quickly. We also have a year long curriculum that is made to help you build businesses, invest the profits, increase your profits, create the change you want to see in the world. You can't not change as a result of going through this. So you can find out more@capitalism.com 1. If you've been listening to the podcast and you're missing community, you're missing opportunity, you're missing connection, you're missing being a part of a movement that is going to make you a better entrepreneur. This is going to fix that for you. It also gives you discounts on our events and our other products. And it's more than worth 10. $10 for every dollar we charge. That's my rule as an entrepreneur. I don't collect a dollar unless I know I can provide 10. And this absolutely meets that. So that's at capitalism.com/the number one. Hope to see you inside.