Neil Patel and Eric Siu use a three-week-old cookie brand selling on Instagram with ten customers to show why launching beats waiting for perfection. They share how product design itself markets, and how Neil's early podcast marketplace raised zero dollars despite multiple business plans.
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You can just get started and it doesn't have to be perfect.
Let me tell you about these new cookies I got over here. So guys, in the camera you can see these are these Biscoff cookies. They're nice and fancy. And those of you listening, Neil, do you want to describe what you're seeing right now?
I don't know what the base is, but it looks like some sort of cookie. I don't know if it's chocolate chip or oatmeal or whatever it is, or just a plain cookie. Uh, a Biscoff standing up, and I don't know what the white thing is.
Yeah, but The white thing kind of looks like cheese, but it's not. It's white chocolate. And then she made the cookie. My friend Stephanie made the cookie from scratch, and then there's like some salt on it as well.
But what kind of cookie is it?
Is it chocolate chip? It's a Biscoff cookie.
Oh, the base is made out of Biscoff?
Oh, no, no, no. Yeah, I don't know what the cookie is. It looks like a regular cookie. I don't see any chocolate chip or anything. Maybe some oatmeal or whatever. But this is really nicely done. And by the way, she started this company 3 weeks ago and it's called Warm House Cookies. So @warmhousecookies on Instagram. I think when you, when you design something like this from a marketing standpoint, it stands out because I bought this for Neil's kids, right?
Thank you, Eric.
Yeah. And I'm like, dude, the fancy ones, let's give it to the kids because it's like, whoa, like I've never seen a cookie where there's a Biscoff standing up from it and then there's like a white chocolate. So sometimes you can say the design itself sells the product, right? Especially when it's food.
Yeah. But here's what's really interesting. And we're bringing up this cookie company for a reason, not just to promote them or anything like that. Sure, you know, any great buzz is great buzz, but there's actually a different reason why we're bringing them up on this episode. I asked Eric when he first brought them to me is I'm like, hey Eric, what's their website? He's like, they don't have a website. Now I was like, how do I buy cookies from there? He's like, you just have to go to Instagram and go to Warm House Cookies. And do they need a website? Yes. But the bigger lesson here is for especially a lot of marketers, You can just get started and it doesn't have to be perfect. Everyone just overhypes everything and thinks it has to be perfect. I'm like, I need the perfect launch. I got to figure out a PR strategy, hire a social media company. I need to go and figure out how to get my website and Facebook and then do TikTok Reels and get influencers. And what does she do?
She just started.
She just started. And I asked Eric, oh, where's her location? And what did you say?
Home.
Exactly. Because when I look at the box, it looks very professional.
Professional, super fresh. And then she has a sticker with a logo on it and Instagram. You look at the videos, the videos are well done too.
I didn't see any videos on Instagram.
On the Warm House, @WarmHouseCookies?
There's one video. Sorry.
Okay. Even the one video itself is fine. Right. And then I'm just like, the product itself is good. And, but the fact that she started this 3 weeks ago and then she has boxes and then she has logos and things like that, it's already pretty crazy.
She only has 335 followers. She's following 26 people. Yeah. 7 posts. This is it.
Yeah.
She doesn't have a ton of business.
Yeah.
So how is she generating business? Because you're not the only customer, but like, what's her model?
I actually asked her yesterday. I was like, how many customers do you have so far? So keep in mind it's 3 weeks in. So how many customers do you think she has so far? It's not a crazy number.
Like 10, 20?
Yeah, exactly. 10, right? 10 customers is what she has right now. And so I'm like, whoa, this—
Wait, were you one of them? Yeah, I'm one of them.
But it's like, you just need a couple customers to get validation to show that you should keep going. And like, you're not going to build a giant business in a day. And I don't even know if she's trying to build it into a big business. Because once you get into the cookie business, that's a legit thing, right?
Yeah.
And so, by the way, I have a friend, YPO, his mom makes these amazing cookies in batches. I got those for your kids too, right? And they actually had a major cookie investor. There's one of those, right? That really liked the cookies. Hey, like, I'll invest, but I need to ask you, do you enjoy what you do right now? And are you ready to make this into a business? Those are 2 separate things. If you want to do it for fun, do it for fun. But if you want to make it into a business, it's going to be a lot of pain and suffering.
Yes. And when you look at her model for Warm House Cookies, you know, people ask like, how are you differentiating? What's your unique value proposition? And honestly, there's some cool designs and stuff like that, but you don't have to overthink it all. If you're going after a big market like cookies or food.
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You know, as I was once told when I was talking to a guy in private equity who's a billionaire, he ended up telling me, We were talking about the agency space at the time. He's like, look, it's a big punch bowl. It's big enough where everyone can get drunk. And if you're in cookies, whether you're Crumbl or Warm House Cookies or someone else—
Or Levain's coming out nearby.
Do you see that? Which one?
Oh, you don't know Levain? Okay, Levain's popular in New York. It's coming right by, you know, Honor Bar.
No, what's Levain?
It's a new cookie. We're going to see it today. Watch, when we walk there for lunch, it's L-E-V-A-I-N. It's a very popular cookie thing in New York.
Okay, sometimes you just got to go out there and just do it. And it's okay if you're not differentiated. In marketing, everyone's like, I need to have a unique value proposition. Sometimes just go and get launched and then figure out the rest later on.
When have you ever done a business plan?
I did a business plan when I was starting off.
Yeah, very beginning. You're like 14, 15 years old.
No, a little bit older than that. I would say early 20s.
Okay.
I was looking to raise money at that point. And there was a company called Fruitcast, I believe it was, that we had. It was one of the first podcast advertising companies.
What?
And—
FreeCast?
Yeah, I did it with a guy named James. Was it James something? I forgot his last name. It was his idea. He then, I put in the majority of the money. We even had good meetings with Yahoo about M&A and stuff.
This is when, this is past ACS time?
Very early during ACS. Okay.
So you guys were cash flowing well?
We were cash flowing well. And the whole model was when podcasts first came out, like literally when they first came out, the way people did advertising is, hey, let me go call you, Eric, for marketing school or leveling up and see what the rates are and do some insertions. And we had this model where we're like, we're going to create interface kind of like Google, which we did. And podcast advertisers can go in there, they can slice whatever moments, and they can just buy ads on an impression basis. And it was just more automated and it was going to create, in essence, a marketplace.
Mm-hmm.
Where we struggled with was the technology end. Not that we couldn't create a marketplace, it was a lot of people would just record their podcast episode and it was meant where you can put ads just at the beginning, it was hard for the podcast advertiser to follow, get them to follow instructions on where to put breaks so we can insert ads in the middle.
Yeah.
And then the other big problem with the business was we were looking at CPMs in the multiple like dollars of like $15, $20 a CPM, which was really high for certain categories.
People weren't ready for it yet.
And they also weren't ready for it, but that's really high when you're talking about like, Call it 18, 19 years ago or something like that. That's extremely high CPMs. Yeah.
So, okay, you did a business plan, but since then, have you really done business plans?
I think a business plan is a terrible way to raise money, and that was the only reason we created a business plan.
You thought you needed one.
That's what we were told.
Yeah.
And then the person sold us on 3 business plans, not just 1, 3.
Oh, a business plan seller sold you on a business plan. Of course he's incentivized, just like a real estate agent.
And guess how much we raised from all the business cards?
Zero.
Zero, yeah.
Exactly. So I think the point we're trying to get, going back to the cookies thing again, is like you just need to start sometimes. Like the software or a lot of the stuff that you've built, you just, me knowing you, you've always just launched things, right? In the beginning.
Yeah.
And it's, you're better off doing that and then seeing if you get some customers and then go from there. The fact that she has 10 customers in the first 3 weeks shows that she's already like, she's doing something about it. She's not just waiting around for the customers to appear. You can't just say, Oh, I have a great product and then hope the customers come. And by the way, the flavors are unique. The one Noah and I just ate, probably like 300, 400 calories, but like passion fruit and like jelly on it, right? The ones your kids are getting, white chocolate and Biscoff. Biscoff? Biscoff, right? Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We'll cut it up into chunks before I give it to them.
Oh, because they can't have too much or else they're going to go crazy.
300 calories for someone who weighs like 30-something pounds.
Oh yeah, you should chop it up. But dude, when we see the Levain later, you'll see like they were huge in New York and they're expanding Right by you.
So that's cool. I'm gonna check it out.
Anyway, that's all I'll say. A jack of all trades, guys, is better than a master of one. See you tomorrow.
