The Road To $1 Million: Day 1 Of The New Journey

All right, so today we're starting kind of a new segment here on the show because when I was building Sheer Strength the first time, version one in 2013, I basically built my audience documenting the journey. And then when I sold the business, we, I stopped documenting so much and I started teaching a lot more and interviewing and I love doing that stuff, but I miss documenting. So you are my partner on at least one of these projects. Significant partner on one of them or equal partners on one. And that's Switch. So let's talk about that today.

Let's talk about Switch.

For those who aren't familiar, Switch supplements.com is our little fun side supplement project where we, we legit developed the best nootropic in the world that isn't drugs yet. Like legit, if you're an entrepreneur and you work at a computer. This is specifically designed to increase certain chemicals in your brain that just make you feel like you're in flow and it frickin works. It is fantastic. And we partnered up a year or so ago and I thought we'd start by you telling the story of the day Ryan yelled at you.

Oh.

I'm trying to pack it in the back of my mind, but you.

So I didn't want to, I didn't.

Really yell, but it was like the day you realized, oh, we're sitting like right on the cusp of something great.

Yeah. Yeah. So I think it was a few weeks ago and we had a regular.

Monday like five or six weeks ago.

Yeah, yeah. And it was a regular Monday team call. You know, you just woke up. You never thought that something like that would happen. No, I'm kidding.

Making it sound like it was.

No, no, I, I, I actually have the recording of that call and I.

Watch that Ryan stabbed me in the face with a pencil. What? I never did that.

No. Yeah, well, you say.

Anyway, so we were just.

I think how I called, how I call it is that we jump to step seven before word step two. Yeah. And you're just waving that flag in my face.

The step two flag or that we.

Are trying to hit step seven, but we're actually at step two.

Common mistake. Yeah, right. I see it all the time. I make it myself sometimes.

Yeah, yeah. So I was basically very focused on getting, getting processes and systems and optimizing the landing pages and all of that. But we actually like below 10 sales a day.

Yeah, right. We were doing like two or three at that time.

Yeah.

And I was like, maybe we don't need to systemize how to get three sales A day.

Yeah, exactly. And, and again, just trying to think big picture because it's really fun and that's what, you know, you think you should be doing and I was not.

And what do you mean by that's what you think you should be doing? What did you think you were supposed to be doing when we were doing.

Three sales a day, getting five landing pages to test, having the team making endless amount of creatives when we are spending less than $200 a day.

You know, things that I was, I was just used to be doing with other brands.

This is what Gary Vee says to do. Like I was, I was on a zoom call with Gary Vee last week. I asked him what opportunities he saw in E commerce and he said make 50 creatives a day to 50 different audiences and scale the winners. Which, by the way, is fantastic advice. Not for switch. Not when you're doing two sales a day, either. When you're doing several hundred sales a day or you've got capital to test a bunch of things, right thing to do. But when you're a team of two and a half and you, you know, you're bootstrapping it, you're doing 5ish sales a day, probably don't need to make 50 creatives.

Yeah. So how I reframed it, is that why we buy is because we have confidence or our customers have need to have confidence, especially when we're talking about a supplement. And I realized that's how I interpreted your message to me by saying like, we're just, you know, we are just jumping too far ahead and we need to go back to basics. We need to have 50Amazon reviews, we need to have video testimonials. Like, I mean, I'm not sure how do I like where to even start? So I just, the first thing I did was to plug, and I don't know why that was the first step, but it was to plug the switch customer support email to my phone and just going through all the emails that people are sending us. And the most, the most common thing that I saw was that the people who are not buying are people who are not confident in what we have to offer or what they will put.

To me, how'd you know that? How'd you know that they weren't confident?

So if they're asking about, do you have any funky ingredients? Or would that make me slightly sleepy? Or would that, does it have too much caffeine or you know, is this safe for, for pregnant women, for example? So, and on the other hand, we had so many people who love their product, right. They subscribe to it, they. They buy it again and again. If we send us those emails, if.

We get five sales a day, two of them are going to be raving ass fans.

Yeah.

Which, which I think what gave me conviction on the brand before I ever met you was, was I noticed that 30 to 40% of people who took it, loved it, which is a very high percentage. 60% on just about any supplement are like, you know, like, I got saw a little lift or I didn't like it or it tastes bad. It does taste bad. But like 30% raving fans on a supplement is ridiculously high. I'm sorry I cut you off, but no, no, that's. That was. It was really good news when. When that happened. So you were seeing that via the email submissions coming?

We saw emails. I was getting Facebook messages. But the only thing we haven't done was to communicate these testimonials and reviews to everybody else.

Now, you mentioned that you hooked up the customer support to your phone. Why hadn't you done that before?

I honestly thought that was not what you're supposed to do.

Bingo. As a brand CEO, Bing, binge bingo.

I was just in love with that position. I was used to that position that I almost forgot what it is like to be at a grind. And yes. Yeah. And I just had to be more humble. I would call it and. And enjoy the process or at least tell myself that I enjoy the process. That was before it happened. But then I remember telling you that I was so excited about these tasks.

Once you started doing them.

Once I started doing it, like reading those emails, my team started telling me, hey, if you want to answer those emails, just let us know. But right now we don't know that we need to answer them or you answer them. You know what, let me just answer them. So for a couple of weeks, I was the only one answering emails, collecting reviews. That was my personal email that all the messages got back to whenever we emailed our list. So that was one thing. The other thing that I got super excited, was super helpful, was to send personalized videos to all of our customers. So everyone who received the product got a personal video from me about three to seven days after they received the product. And I never asked for anything. I just thanked them for their purchase and asked for their feedback and the results from having, I don't know, maybe 15 minutes a day where just. I was so amazed by how much we could get by with this small task. But I think it's a Relatively small task, but mentally, it's just hard for you to accept.

Yeah, of course.

As an entrepreneur, as a brand founder, as a CEO, whatever you want to call it, that, that's what you need to be doing.

Yeah. Very well said. That's the grind. Right. When, you know, I first introduced the idea of the grind in 2014.

Yeah.

And I said, when you're in the grind, your job is to get 25 reviews.

Yeah.

However you can. That means you need to order pizza 25 times, have the guy buy your product on Amazon, and then tip them extra.

Yeah.

Whatever it takes. You got to get 25 reviews. Now it's more like 50 to 100 at least. Runs pay per click ads, and actually pay attention to the people who are showing up. And people will say, well, I'm not getting much feedback. Are you getting any feedback? Well, you know, a few emails. Great. Send some video testimonials to those emails. Right?

Yeah.

And I don't know what I said that clicked for you, that you were just like, oh, there's no, like, system to build. It's just being in the grind. As soon as you have that, it's like, that grind is freaking awesome. Like, it's so much fun because all these micro tasks, like building, building a system for something, you don't see direct, meaningful feedback from that.

Yeah.

But when you're in the grind, working with customers, you just.

Exactly.

I, I, it's like why I love coaching calls because, like, I give somebody feedback and their business changes. It's the same thing.

Yeah. You can see that. The expression under her face that is just changing.

Speaking of expression on the face, what do you think of the root beer?

It's good. It's a, it's good.

That's how an Israeli says it's crap. I'm sorry, you're not a root beer fan?

Not yet. But, But I think there, there are many things in America that I was not a fan of and I just had to accept. And I'll think of my list soon.

Yeah. Can you think of any of them?

The one that I hear the most complaints about is when people say, have a good day.

A good day?

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

Like Americans say have a good day all the time. It drives me crazy. I'm like, like when I'm in the elevator and I, and I went up four floors with somebody and the door opens and the guy turns to me and says, have a good day. I'm like, we did not have a meaningful interaction.

Okay. So I'll tell you my version of it.

Okay.

So the first time I arrived in Austin, I was telling my friend, you know, people here are so nice. I live in la, by the way. So I was telling my friends, people here are so nice. When they tell you, like, have a good morning, they actually mean it. Like, they actually want you to have a good morning as opposed to people in LA who are like, yeah, have a good morning. You know? And, you know, they don't really want to even interact with you, but you just have to because they're American.

Right.

So, yeah, that's my version of it.

Okay. Right, you mean in Texas, they actually mean it in. Yeah, I mean, that's true. Yeah. Yeah, that. That, that is true. So what? What? We have not crossed 25 sales a day yet inside of Switch, but that conversation was like, five or six weeks ago. Yeah, we've had some $800 days, some $900 days. I don't know. Have we had our first thousand dollar.

No.

We come really close. Like one.

Very annoying. We're like, we have 8, 900, but we haven't crossed the thousand.

Okay. We're. We're. We're getting there. Right?

Y.

And I think we both saw a surge of energy when we launched the second product. Yep. Would you. Would you grab that for a second? For anybody watching Product placement. Yeah, for product placement. So we. We. You disagreed with me? Actually, several people, yourself, even Inez was very upset with me that I put my foot down and named it K. Kill Switch. And then. Well, you liked Kill Switch, but you didn't like the tagline.

Yes.

You thought I was too aggressive.

Yes.

And Inez thought I was too aggressive with the Kill Switch name, but I put my foot down. And I'm glad I put my foot down.

Yes, I'm glad to.

So the. The product is called Kill Switch Sleep like you're dead. And originally Ganez was like, don't call it Kill Switch. That's so aggressive. And I think you nudged me. You were like entrepreneurs who have their minds racing all the time. Want to take something that's going to knock them out.

Yeah, yeah, that's what I want. I tried so many things. And. Yeah. I mean, it's. Again, just talking to your audience, if that was a product for, like, moms or, you know, just general popular. Like, you see all of the other supplements and nootropics.

Yeah.

And it's all so soft. And it's also like, dreamy and fun, but it's happy Z's. Yeah. But you. You look at it, it's like Wake up cheerful. It's not gonna work. It's not gonna work. Right.

And you can't go wrong when so true. Right. I mean it might taste.

Enter Kill Switch.

Yeah.

Sleep like someone shot you in the face. That's what I, that, that's what I need. Yeah. Do that for me.

Yeah.

And yeah. And when it does what you know, you promise, it's, that's where you build a brand.

Yeah.

A very good brand.

And it actually does. I mean, I can't tell you how many I get Facebook messages from people that are like, dude, I thought you're a kid and about Kill Switch.

Yep.

I slept for nine and a half hours. Yeah. I almost went to the emergency room. I slept so long, like Stan at the NFT event. Like slept through the first meeting.

His first time trying Kill Switch and he's like.

I overslept. We know Stan. It's 4 o' clock in the afternoon.

So that's where I figured we have to communicate those testimonials.

Yeah, totally.

I believe that this procrastination of trying to do other things is just.

You being some, like there's some, I would say, low confidence in what you're doing. I get that you are afraid of the response. Right.

100%. It's an avoid. It's like a, it's like a. The brain's creative way of procrastinating to avoid looking stupid.

Yeah. It's like asking, you know, everybody, how do I look today? Right. And then you're afraid of the answer.

Yeah.

Right.

So. So you just don't ask.

Yeah. And the funny thing is that's so true. And like I've done it too. Because if you, if you are working on something, then you always have a reason and excuse of why the business hasn't taken off.

Yep, exactly.

Like, like how's, how is Kill Switch going? How's, how's Switch going? Well, we're working on some processes. Right.

Yeah.

It's just a way of buffering the answer, which is not. Well.

Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I think you asked, you asked what got me so like what was the aha moment when, when we had that conversation? And I think that's something in those line where you said it might just be procrastination. So I said that to you? Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. So I, I started journaling about that and starting. I, I think that you know, entrepreneurship is just the best self development program out there.

Of course.

Right. And I was starting to see like, is this really procrastination? Like what am I trying to avoid, what am I trying to not do? And it's not just, you know, sending emails, it's not just doing videos, it doesn't take so long. It's just about probably the response is something that you might be afraid of.

Right? Yeah.

And when you said, you know what, I don't care about the response, I just, I will take that as a self growth experiment for myself. It's not even the brand, it's like me. And when I started doing it, I changed my mindset around it. Suddenly I couldn't care about the result. I only cared about like I want to overcome this procrastination. And when I overcame it, suddenly it's not even getting 25 reviews, it's getting just three reviews. Because those three reviews will get you the motivation that you need to get.

That's right.

Other three reviews.

That's right.

That's how it builds.

And that's why the grind is the best part. Because you get a dopamine hit for every review, a dopamine hit for every piece of feedback. You don't get that when you're building.

Processes for things or not even checking Shopify stats because it's just numbers. But when you have one on one interaction with customers, that's just so fun. And I just decided that I will flip my schedule. And so far it was up until that call this was the last thing that I would do. And I probably never get there like 4:00pm, 5:00pm and you know, I'm like swamp. I like wiped out now. That's the first thing that I do in the morning. And when I do it, I get immediate success out of it because I get those replies and then it just gives me so much energy for the day.

Totally.

That's so fun.

That's what's so great about the grind is you, you don't have anything else to do except that. Yeah, like I think about capitalism. I was, I was thinking today what I, what I should be focusing on. Like I, I know the answer. But my brain has to ping pong like around nine different projects and nine different things and the slack and the team of seven and the Capcom. Like I have to ping pong around to find what I need to focus on again. But when you're starting a new brand, the only thing to do, the only thing to do is talk to leads and to talk to customers, turn them into reviews and to show everybody else the reviews.

Yep, yep.

And when you do it, oh look, six weeks go by and you got 50 reviews which no one cares about except you, but it's just enough to move the needle to like 10 sales a day or 15 sales a day. When I was writing, I got this piece of feedback from a member of the incubator. When I launched my book, I was on a coaching call and I was sitting at 55 reviews on my book, maybe three, two weeks after launch or something, so May of 2020. And I was on this coaching call and I was like, hey everybody, how many of you bought my book? Wave at me and 30 hands go up. And I was like, first of all, thank you so much. It means so much to me that you follow my work that you paid the $26 to buy my book around launch day. Did you find it? Val, leave your hand up if like it inspired you in some way. Hands stay up. Would you do me the joy of leaving me a review? It would mean the world to me. I understand this is an ask of your time, but please do it. I would love to go from 55 to 60 reviews.

And it did. And today has, between Audible and Amazon, it has like almost 4,000 reviews. But someone told me that they were on that call and they said watching Ryan have to go into the dirt and beg for reviews like everybody else made me say, well, I mean, if he's willing to do it, I guess I should be willing to do it too.

That's a good point.

And if you just took on the challenge of, hey, you have to go get 100 reviews. How do I do that? I don't care, I don't care how you do it. Well, can you tell me how? No, just go get them. You'd figure out a way. And most people just don't figure out a way. And they come up with complicated processes and they wait for the machine to kick in. It's like, no, just, just, just, just go talk to people.

Yeah.

And you're doing that.

That's the only thing that you also can't buy, right? If you want them to be authentic. Yeah, you can't, you can't buy, I mean, you can technically buy Amazon reviews if you want to be in the gray line, but it will never work as someone just flipping their phone and shooting a very low quality video of them holding your product and telling how they like it. Yeah, no. Influencer. No. You know, UGC creator. No, all of it. Like, you can't fake that. And this is why I think it's so hard for most entrepreneurs because we are just used to spend money on agencies and ads and all of that. But in reality, the one thing that will convince someone to buy your product is someone who looks like them. That holding your product and telling how much you like it.

Yeah, that's it. Before we wrap, I want, I want to talk briefly about how even a small brand like Switch, how you're stretching every piece of content because you've used a few of those.

Video reviews and turned them into ads that we run and we get conversions from them, we get comments from them, and then you reach out to the next customer, you get a review from them, and you start to feed the machine. I was hoping you could talk a little bit about how you're intentionally stretching each piece of feedback that you're getting.

I think, I think that's also one thing that is missing for many brand founders. They don't really, they know they need to get reviews or testimonials, but they don't really know why they need to do that. And this, I think the number one thing that you need to have as a new brand or any brand is social proof. And if you can use those testimonials and reviews and just repurpose them in every single way, sending them on emails, on your welcome flows, as ads on your social media, it just feeds the system.

Right.

Just, just as an example, our best ads are just video, video testimonials of our customers. Once they get fatigued, we just re edit them together.

Yeah.

And now we have a new ad.

Or we have new submissions. The last batch of people who sent us feedback.

Yeah. The other thing, we are reaching out to micro influencers to try our products. To be honest, I did it for a few brand, for a few brands. But Switch was the only one that was not getting responses and we tried to figure out why. And the moment we started posting our customer testimonials on our social pages, on our Instagram page, we started getting responses from influencers. That's interesting because they had the confidence that they're going to talk about something that other people have tried.

It's.

And that's not a new brand.

So that's so important what you just said, because it might have been eight people, right?

It is. It's like six.

Okay, so there's six people on the Switch Instagram of video testimonials. And most of you, like, it's only six reviews. My life is over. But we're like, but those were actually the convert that converted a few micro influencers to talk about us. And they did videos about it, which becomes an ad, which becomes a piece of the Amazon listing comes a retargeting ad. And so the whole machine is starting to feed and it's still only like nine people. Yeah, but that's all it takes. And most people just aren't willing to go get the nine because they're thinking about the fact that they don't have 50, they need.

Yeah, 900 exactly.

Yeah.

And it's. It's so easy to get those. I think you should even lower the bar. Nothing about 25, because it sounds like a lot when you just get started. Think about getting three. Right. If you have three, you can create maybe 10 to 15 different pieces of content out of those three reviews. You can turn them into text, screenshots, video reels, all of it. Like emails, you know, you can do so much of it. Oh, yeah. This brand is legit. That's what you need people to think. That's the only thing you need people to think.

Well, this, this conversation would not be complete if we didn't do a selfish plug for Switch.

Yep.

Would you hold up that beautiful white and purple bottle right there? Yep.

Yeah.

So Kill Switch. This is sleep like you're dead.

And you can just imagine like we have on Switch here. But Ryan loves it so much that he carries it with you.

I literally did today. I took it this morning and I left it at home. Yeah, that. That was it.

Yeah.

But if you want to Switch, I love On Switch.

You can get.

How do you feel when you take this?

This.

You just held it up like an infomercial. Like, this product right here is amazing.

I mean. Okay.

No, so Kill Switch, I think it's really my favorite product. And it's. It's not just, just like, it's not just my own opinion, but like you.

I mean, you are biased, but you still love it.

I am biased. And this is why. You know, that's funny because I rarely talk about how I like it, just because it just doesn't sound legit. But.

Well, it's just like me saying that my son is the cutest three year old in the world. Yeah. Like, I legitimately think so, but I'm biased.

But this is why we have so many video testimonials and we collect them. So it's not. Ryan and Tom are saying this, this is everybody else. No, really, I mean, we thought that, I mean, if. If I would know that we'd probably start with Killer Switch as our first product on Switches. It's amazing, but I think he'll Switch. Just people know why they need to take it and they can easily Feel if it's working or not. Right. Like, did I sleep through tonight? Did I not sleep through the night?

Will you hand me the bottle real quick? So I had. This was the first product that I had. I didn't know the formulation. Like, I was not involved in this formulation process. And when you sent me the. The lineup, it was like I kind of cocked my head to the side because it was like nobody had done it like this before. Obviously, I've been in the supplement world for a long time and so I know a good product when I see it. And this one, I had to put my pen down and be like, that's interesting. Because it was different and I wasn't sure if I would like it. And the first time I tried Kill Switch, first of all, I thought it was. It tasted great, which I wasn't expecting because on Switch tastes so bad. It tastes like a donkey pooped in its egg. No, a monkey pooped in its own hand and then ate it and burped.

The monkey, not a donkey. That's important.

No, analogy is perfect. But. But it was something some crossbreed between. It doesn't matter. Anyway, so. And then, and then I went into a bit. I was like, actually, this is, this is really. This is really interesting. And then I started tracking it with my Oura ring and you started tracking it with your whoop data. And we were like, oh, we have something here because we can see it in the data. And that was really exciting, just from a formulation standpoint, which. Oh, by the way, just marketing tip, if you can show something that is demonstrative, meaning you can show proof of it working within a few seconds, meaning something gets clean or you show a before and after photo of a diet. Like anything that you can demonstrate, those are the highest converting ads. So when we saw that the whoop data was incredible, we were like, oh, we have something demonstrative that we can run as ads.

Yeah.

But I was curious. I've. I've never got to ask you this question, why you went with tart cherry in the formula.

Yeah. So the formulator that we were working with, he was very convicted on tart cherry as the source for melatonin.

So that. That is. That converts into melatonin. Yes. Whereas most sleep supplements are just straight melatonin.

Exactly, yeah.

So my interpretation of this is that your body converts it slowly, which means that, like, if I take regular melatonin, I wake up in the middle of the night and I'm like, ready to go. Like at 3 o', clock, I fall Asleep, but I wake up at 3 o'. Clock. But this is. Is it true that this just get. Gets converted slowly as a result of being tart cherry?

I don't want to mistaken and just.

State we're not doctors, but.

Yeah, just as a disclaimer, I'm just. How do you say it? I'm just.

I'm just some dude that you follow on the Internet. Exactly. Yeah.

So I. What I know, which is the important part, is that whenever people take melatonin, they report, they feel groggy, they wake, they have weird dreams, they wake up in the middle of the night.

He tried so hard to hold up that sneeze. He tried so hard to hold up that sneeze.

Keep going.

Probably means something.

Keep going. Leave it in. Right.

And he's allergic to. He's like, he's like, oh, those claims about sleep. I'm allergic. They're pitching kill switch now.

I'm not again.

Anyway, so. And people actually, some of them didn't know that we have melatonin. Like, I love it so much. I slept through the night, but whenever I take melatonin, I just feel really groggy and like, actually we have melatonin in kill switch, but like, oh, no way. I mean, I, I felt really refreshed in the morning.

But it is, Is there melatonin or is it just the tart cherry that gets converted into melatonin?

B. Option B.

Okay.

Yeah.

So. So there, there's not straight melatonin in here. There's tart cherry, which converts as like over. After 30 minutes of being in your body starts to convert to melatonin, which I would think, not a doctor, I would think would convert more slowly, which is why you don't have that crazy experience like you would have.

I tell you one other fun fact about it. When we were shopping for a different manufacturer, he asked us, like, why do you start cherry? I mean, you know, it's so much harder to source and it's way more expensive and like, people don't really care if they have melatonin or tart cherry.

Yeah. From a marketing perspective, it doesn't matter. People don't know about it. Yeah.

And I was like, you know, it just works so well and people love it that I don't want to change anything. Even if it means, like, you know, we're spending a few cents more on, on, on this specific ingredient.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I mean, it's, it's easier, it's cheaper, it's to have straight melatonin. And maybe if I would know the difference ahead of time. I would just choose melatonin.

But if, if you hadn't known the difference that you said, if I had.

Known the difference, like if the formula would say, or the manufacturer would say, this version cost X and this version with tar cherry cost a dollar more.

Yeah, yeah. I was like, yeah, it is significantly more.

Take the regular melatonin, you know. But yeah, it just, it, this one just works so well.

It does. I mean, even Inez has said she can't take melatonin and she didn't know there was melatonin in this and she took it and she now swears by it and carries it around with her. So we're excited to document it. We're going to be doing this series where we're just documenting what's going on in our projects, what's going on with our businesses, switch Sheer Strength and the other projects we have going on. So if you enjoyed this format, let us know in the comments or emailing me@ryanapitalism.com Tomer Good to see you man. Onward.

Thanks for the rut.

You hated it. That's, that's bullshit marketing right there from Sneeze Please.

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