How To Launch Your Own Merchandise Line with Mike Davis and Michael Belknap from Brand Origin

Hello. Hello. You're listening to the Level Up Creators Podcast. Amanda Northcutt here, founder and CEO. We help digital creators build thriving, sustainable businesses they love. We're so glad you're here. Welcome. My brilliant guests today are product manufacturing expert Mike Davis and serial entrepreneur and social media marketer extraordinaire Michael Belknap. Welcome guys.

Thank you.

By the end of today's discussion, you creator will have the information you need to decide if moving toward launching a product line of your own is right for your brand and And if so, how to do it. Mike is the owner of both Mosaic Distributing and BrandOrigin, and he's joining us today with over a decade of manufacturing and importing experience. Over that decade, he's developed strong relationships with manufacturers overseas and is an expert in taking products from concept to production for dozens of amazing creators and brands. Under Mike's direction, BrandOrigin has been working with brands for the last 5 years developing products and handling all aspects of the supply chain. Which is a mystery to most of us, myself included. So I'm super excited to learn from your expertise today. And actually on a personal note, I've come to know Mike through Level Up's work with creators around the world and have come to view Mike and his team at BrandOrigin as a trusted partner who takes excellent care of our clients. And my other guest today is Michael Belknap, who has a long track record of success in entrepreneurship and business. He is the founder of Mountain West Pest Control, owner and CEO of Social Stance Media, and head of talent relations at BrandOrigin. As a dynamic and visionary leader in the field of social media marketing, Michael is known for his innovative strategies and exceptional results. As head of talent relationships at Brand Origin, he's worked with many influencers in helping build and grow their brands. So glad to have both of you here today to demystify this whole product manufacturing puzzle. And just to kick us off really quickly, what we're seeing at Level Up Creators and have been seeing for many months and what our research proves out is that Creators, as you know, you're typically pretty reliant on platform payouts, brand deals, and this whole incredible rollercoaster that is unreliable revenue streams, uh, that you really don't have a whole lot of control over. Obviously you can create a media kit, you can position yourself well, you can go out and pitch yourself or have someone do that on your behalf to get brand deals, speaking engagements, whatever it is. Um, but we're here to help you think about and unlock other revenue streams. There are so many options from which to choose. When you have this creator-led or creator-first business, and I'm actually starting today and then in episodes 4, 5, and 6 as well, we are starting to break down all of the ways that creators can make money. And we encourage you not to choose just one and kind of put all your eggs in that basket, if you will. But the way to really make a sustainable business that brings in between half a million and $5 million a year is to have the right product suite. And so Again, today we're going to help you understand and decide if creating your own product line is good for you instead of just repping other people's products, right? Mike, let's kick it off here. I'd love to hear more about your background and what led you to start BrandOrigin.

Yeah, background. Like you mentioned before, I'm in manufacturing. A little bit of history, I have started multiple ecommerce businesses. I've sold products on Amazon. I transitioned from those businesses to actually manufacturing and sourcing for other companies and other brands. That current manufacturing business that I do for other people has kind of a unique business model where we finance orders if the company signs an exclusivity agreement with us. And that kind of led us to kind of where the future is headed, which what is where we think the future is headed is with creators and influencers. And so we created BrandOrigin, which takes that same concept of financing orders and financing the business aspect and creating a similar model for creators. So helping them create a brand and funding that for them and basically helping them do all the heavy lifting, excuse me, heavy lifting on the back end. of all the supply chain issues and mysteries, right? And letting the creators focus on what they do best, which is create content and support their followers. So.

I love that. And yeah, I mean, the journey from concept to actual delivery of products and handling customer service, the journey is often fraught with peril if you don't know what you're doing. And so I'm a big fan of hiring experts that know what they're doing and have a track record of success in that area. And one of the most unique and incredible things about BrandOrigin is this financing piece that you're talking about, Mike. I mean, you are reducing so much risk on the creator's part. You are saying, hey, I believe in you. You've got a really loyal following. You're well positioned to have your own product line. And we're showing you, you're literally putting your money where your mouth is. And so I know that you all do have competitors. More competitors are popping up, obviously, to serve the creator economy in a broader capacity. But I think your value proposition is very, very hard to beat. So kudos. Thank you. Right. Yeah, absolutely. And Michael, how did you and Mike become connected? And can you share a little bit more about what you do, what else you do in the creator economy?

Yeah. So I would say that I'm pretty well connected, or at least our business is for sure, with a number of different influencers. And so that's really how Mike and I got connected is Mike is the mastermind behind manufacturing and has these great contacts and connections. And he's got really good experience building ecommerce brands. And so we tell, you know, similar to you, right? Like we help influencers, we consult with them, you know, we help specialize in growing them on social media. And as I'm even helping influencers with brand deals, you know, we talk about talent management. That's a big, that's a big deal. And I think the big thing in the market right now is so many people, especially creators, are always looking for the brand deals. But I would always tell our creators, like, you know, you should have your own brand, you know, like, what are the things that are selling well? And why don't we have our own brand based off of that? Right? Because you make so much money. Like nowadays, like affiliate links, you can make a lot of money in commission on affiliate. Obviously, depending on the size of your following engagement, you'll get brand deals, etc. But it's like, man, it'd be nice if you had your own brand that you can just build and build and build and you own it. And so anyways, I would tell our influencers that. I still tell them that you should have your own brand. And so anyways, it just worked out really well with what we were looking to do and then what Mike is doing for us to sort of team up on that and basically just have a funnel of success with creators.

Nice. That's fantastic. And you guys do such an incredible job of it. I mean, people can just go to brandorigin.com and see the kind of creators that you work with, the kind of products that you are helping them create, that you're helping design and source. I've got a box of your samples actually in my office, Mike, and they're the highest quality samples that I've gotten from anyone like BrandOrigin. And yeah, to Michael's point, I just cannot even stress enough the value in partnerships in the creator economy where incentives are aligned and the value of having your own brand, your own stuff. You know, you don't just have to rep other people's, but the way that you can really build a business, build revenue, build something that is sustainable and profitable is to have your own stuff. So can't emphasize that enough. But before we move on, Michael, can you tell me a little bit more about Social Stance Media, what you do, how you help? Creators in that area?

Yeah, for sure. So we, um, what we really specialize in at Social Stance is we help creators and brands grow on social media with new and engaged followers, and we also help build out a targeted client email list for them as well. And so one thing that we found that we specialized in is giveaway marketing. And so we host giveaways with a number of celebrities or influencers that we feel would help achieve a rapid growth of new followers on our client's page. And so that's sort of what we focus on. We have an affiliate marketing team as well where we help brands specifically grow and get in touch with influencers to grow their whole affiliate program. So when it comes to the affiliate marketing side and working with creators for brands, like I've seen them both sides of it as we help Because we also do talent management and we'll help creators. But then we also on the other side of the brand side where we also help build out the influencer side of it for brands. And so I would say we're pretty well versed on both sides of that. So I've seen the table of how both things work. And that's why I think one reason why what we do works well is awesome. But I also think the reason why BrandOrigin and what we do goes hand in hand because both things work really, really well together.

Yeah, thanks for sharing that. And those are really good points. I love your, your POV and sort of unique value proposition as well with Social Stance and the unique approach that you're taking to account growth and brand growth. And we're going to come back to talking about how affiliates can tie into sort of a signal for your own possible brand creation here in a minute. But real quick, Mike, How does a creator know when it's time to launch a merch or product line?

Yeah, that's a great question. What we've seen is the best— there's like indicators, right? So you kind of, you'll kind of see things happen where people will reach out to you and want to know, you know, where did you get that shirt that you're wearing? Or where did you get that tool that you're using in your video? Where'd you get that paintbrush? How can I find You know, that thing that you have. And ultimately, it's like this trust, right? They build— these creators are building trust with their followers. And once that trust has been established, those followers then reach out and want to know where they're getting those things or where, you know, how they obtain those items. And so that to me is a big— that's an indicator right there is you'll start to get feedback from your followers. That's the indicator to know that it's time to launch something, right? And another couple things that we look for and that they can look for is just a unique demographic. You don't want to be just launching something to the masses. You want to have a unique demographic, a unique set of people that follow you for that thing. So, let's just take an example of arts and crafts. So, you have an arts and crafts page, that's something you specialize in and you have a unique audience that follows you for that thing and you have high engagement. So the engagement we look for is, you know, if you have less than 100,000, we want to see 5 to 10% engagement. If you have over 100,000 followers, you know, anything above 2% is pretty good. So you have that unique demographic, you have that unique audience, you have good engagement, You're kind of an expert in a field, right? We've talked about that where you're good at that thing. People follow you for that thing. And another thing is you notice that you're sending those followers somewhere else to get those items and you're finding success in sending people away. And that's when you're leaving money on the table. That's when you should be launching your own product because you're You could be obtaining a higher percentage, a higher percentage of revenue. Kind of a prime example, we just barely talked to a lady that makes jewelry and she sends people away for pliers and wire to make this jewelry. She makes a couple hundred dollars, $200 or $300 every month, and the percentage she makes is only 3% on that. That's the kickback she gets is 3%. So when you do the math and you kind of reverse engineering these numbers, you're like, okay, she's making $300 and she's— it's 3% of the revenue she's generating. You know, you divide the $300 by 3 and times it by 100. So she's essentially generating $10,000 of revenue and leaving a huge amount on the table where if she was working with BrandOrigin and created her own brand, our commissions or the amount she could make is 25 to 40% of the $10,000. So there's a lot of money she could be making. Yeah. You know, every month and every year that she's not. So anyways, the, that's the long story short is, is that those are some indicators.

Okay. Thanks for sharing all that, Mike. That was all really, really helpful. I'm going to try and break that down and summarize really quickly and make sure everybody gets it here. So number one, your followers are asking you where you get your stuff from that helps you do whatever you're doing better. You said, you know, paintbrushes and tools, pliers, wire, all that kind of stuff. So whatever your area of subject matter expertise is around, has attracted followers, and then there is stuff that you use, even if that's like a cool hat or a t-shirt or whatever, people want what you have. And so if they're asking for it, that's a really good indicator. The next thing I think you said was a specific and unique audience demographic. So you've got a pool of people who have a very similar interest level and likely have, you know, crossover in the Venn diagram for demographics and firmographics and all those kinds of things that give marketers indicators of how to sell to people. And also you gave some engagement statistics. So I think you said 5 to 10% engagement if you have fewer than 100,000 followers and then over 2% engagement on accounts over 100,000. Is that about right?

Yeah.

Cool. And then I think the last thing you said was if you are, you creator are directing traffic to another product's site and collecting affiliate commissions successfully, that's a very strong indicator that you should be, uh, like the arts and crafts creator that you just mentioned. Um, you should be selling your own stuff rather than directing your followers to purchase from someone else. And of course, like capture a lot more of that upside. Is that a fair summary?

Yep.

Awesome. Um, so Mike, do most creators come to you with affiliate or referral relationships already in place? Like, do they already have a suite of affiliate programs that they're benefiting from?

Uh, some of them do. Uh, mostly, yeah, I would say they do. I mean, Mike— Mike— Michael would better know what they have in place because he's the one that talks to them and kind of vets them before I talk to them. So Michael, what would you say?

Yeah, I think a lot of them— I would say most, yes— most of them already have something in place, whether it be some type of affiliate link. A lot of them do. And I think a lot of them is— I've, I've chatted with a number of these different creators— is because they're like what we sort of talked about, like, oh, you know what, I saw that I sell makeup and I sell so much of it, I'd like to have my own makeup line, or all of these different things. And so yeah, they, they definitely have some type of affiliate going on. Obviously, if it's a much larger— I will tell you this, even large, like when we consider like a macro influencer or a celebrity style of influencer, you'd be surprised, but there's still a number of them that also have affiliate links Even if they are a very large influencer. Now obviously there's a stage where some of them may, um, where they may only do paid posts on certain things, but a lot of times they'll still get some type of kickback in there, you know, you know, on their sales or whatever. So yeah, a lot of them definitely have affiliate links, especially with the ones that, you know, Mike and I work with at Brand Origin. A lot of them still have affiliate links, and it's sort of nice to have that 'Cause if you're a creator and you're listening right now and you're like, hey, I'm looking to build a brand, you should really get in touch with, like, know your numbers when it comes to your sales, right? Mm-hmm. Like, you should really understand your sales because if you can understand that, then that's gonna give you a better idea if you should have a brand, right? Like, that's just gonna help you go further down that journey of like, oh yeah, I should do that. But if you can understand what your sales numbers are, you can probably start figuring out Man, maybe it's worth having my own brand at this point. And man, I can make so much more. I mean, to talk about the people that we have conversations with that are getting stuff from like Amazon, and I mean, they're getting like 2 to 5%. A lot of them are like 3%, 4%. And Amazon sounds great, but the reality is like these people actually can sell and they're not really making that much money. On Amazon, you know. And so it's like, but I would tell you this though, those people are really trying to find a way to like monetize their following, right? Because as an influencer, the reason why you're an influencer— most of them, not all, but if we were to say the average influencer— they're an influencer because they're looking to make money, right? They're looking to monetize their influence. And it's like, how do you go about doing that? Well, the traditional way is either affiliate links or getting paid posts, right? Those are the 2 main ways. Most influencers and creators actually would do quite well with having their own brand, right? In fact, you go look at a lot of the large celebrity style of influencers, they all have a brand, you know, like almost every single one of them. So it's like, as a mid-tier influencer or someone that's growing, having your own brand is a platform for success because otherwise you wouldn't see people like I don't know, the Kardashians, for example. Like, we've worked with the Kardashians at Social Stance, by the way, and so I know how much they get paid on a lot of things because we worked with them. We're probably the ones that paid them, and they're great to work with. Um, but the point is, it's like there's reasons why you want to work with them, but also on the business side of it, they know how to monetize their audience really well. And it's obviously through a brand and then marketing it, posting content, all those things. But really, they have a great platform on how to be successful. And so again, if you're a If you are a creator looking to have a brand and you're already doing brand deals and you have affiliate links where you're making commission on, this is a great platform for you to like take your own brand where you can have ownership in it and be able to get commission. It's really a great platform and another way that you as a creator can monetize your following.

Yes, yes, yes to all of that. And the Kardashians really have paved the way. I mean, in a macro influencer kind of way, but we can all take inspiration from what they've done. And please don't come away from this conversation thinking that affiliate revenue is bad. It is really, really good. What we're saying is that affiliate revenue captured successfully and consistently is a signpost that you might ought to consider creating your own brand and selling your own products so that you can capture more of that upside. And it is very unlikely that everything you have the opportunity to present to your followers, your community of followers, is something that you should make in-house under your own brand. And so it's great to actually have a mix of things that you sell under your own merch or product line, and then things that it makes more sense for you to just be an affiliate for. So it's really a both/and, not either/or kind of a situation.

And by the way, Amanda, 100% right on that. And Mike and I are also saying, look, You should still do those things. You should, you still should get paid posts. You should still do commission and affiliate links. Like you should still those still 100% do all of those things. This is just part of what you're saying, how to monetize on your following, right? This is another way to add to that. But 100%, I'm with you. Mike's with you. We're all for it. I mean, we still, we still have creators and influencers we do brand deals with. So like it's a big part of what we do. So 100%. But This is another way to help you monetize. This is more of like, how should I know when I should have a brand? That's a good indicator of it for sure.

Yep. Yeah, it's all about the product mix and nailing your product mix and solving all of the problems that you can for your community of followers. And it's more of like getting off the brand deal treadmill and having that reliable, predictable base of income that will really help you leverage everything that you've built in the absolute best possible way. Okay, let's talk about circumstances in which maybe it's not the best time to launch a product line. So what are indicators that a creator is not quite there? Whoever wants to take that.

Yeah, I'll jump in. I would say it kind of depends on the engagement. That's a big indicator. If you're not getting a lot of engagement, demographic, You, let's say if you're trying to sell kind of like a, maybe even like a gender-based product, maybe you're trying to sell a swimming suit, a bikini, but 95% of your followers are male, it's going to be a tough sell. Also, I think if you have fewer than 10,000 followers, it's going to be hard to sell and see, really see a return. On those products, so I would avoid. I would avoid launching something and investing cash in that if you're going to do it yourself. I would avoid investing that cash until you have a bigger following. Also consider seasons. I know this might sound simple and like kind of a no-brainer, but don't launch a product that is meant for a specific season in the wrong season, right? So don't launch a you know a a really thick hoodie or jacket in the middle of summer or beach ball in winter. You kind of just need to follow that. So yeah, just kind of gauge where you're at, gauge your following size, gauge your demographic, gauge the engagement, all those things to know whether you should or shouldn't launch a product line. So. Yeah.

And I would also imagine based on our lot of conversations so far up to this point about affiliate revenue, if you are repping affiliates or products that you are an affiliate of and they are not selling, you know, you do not have that product market fit. And so to me, that would definitely be an indicator that, oh, maybe I don't have an audience that's quite centered around one specific topic, or there's a little bit more kind of like priming the pump to be done to get people used to buying things from me and/or buying things that I am promoting for others. Okay, so we talked about, you know, a number of different possible revenue streams for creators. So Mike with Brand Origin, what have y'all seen happen when the right creator launches a product line in addition to, you know, the financial upside?

Yeah, I think that it strengthens their community. I think that when they do, when the right creator launches a product line, there's typically a lot of thought that goes into it. They want to play to their strengths. They want to play to their followers. They want to continue to build trust because that's what people see in them is whether you— let's say you're work— you're someone that works out a lot and people follow you for those workouts. And then you launch an exercise ball and you're using that frequently and people are seeing that you have results with that product. It strengthens that, that, that trust builds the community even more because they see you know, that you're using it and you're not just talking about it and then never using it. So it's adding that credibility, it's adding value. And I mean, you have those skills and talents in that specific area and launching that product really helps support, you know, your talent and building that trust. And like you said, you know, in addition to adding revenue.

So yeah. Yeah, I imagine it Probably increases brand affinity. People feel more connected with you when they have your products in their home and they're using them, trying to get the same results that you're showing on your Instagram account or whatever, right?

Absolutely. Yep.

Yeah. And then, Mike, what products typically do best? I know this is different for every creator, but, you know, if we can paint with a broad brush here, what does best?

You know, honestly, we see a lot of success with hoodies. I mean, I'm guilty of that. I freaking love Yeah, I love hoodies year round. I mean, I'll just, even in the summer, I'll crank my air conditioning down and wear a hoodie in the summer because I just love them. I think it's just like a comfort clothing item that everybody loves. So we see a lot of success with that. And it's important to get creative with designs and other things for those products. But really what we've seen and what we believe based on the data is The best products are products that cater to your demographic. They cater to the people that follow you and support you and trust you. So we have, you know, a creator that has a lot of women that follow her, and they're all in the same community, and they all do the same type of thing, and they all support each other. And this creator is launching a journal, and that just goes right hand in hand with, with what all of her followers want and need and love and enjoy. And she, she built it out completely custom. And it's a really cool journal, comes with like dried flowers and a personal note, all of that, which we're able to do. And, and she's going to crush it with it because she has great engagement. And that's exactly what her, her followers want. So it just goes, it goes with what she's already doing. So I would say The best product to launch is something that you, you can, that we can gauge and learn from your followers to launch and not just launch a shirt just because you need to really do some homework on, on why people follow you, what you're, what you're particularly good at and what people trust you for, and then build your product line around that.

Wow, that is an incredibly high degree of customization. I'm kind of blown away by that. Wow. What other, what are some of the other more unique products that you all have put together for creators?

There's another one where we've created a lingerie brand for a lady. We're in the process of developing a couple other things like exercise bands is one of them. That's kind of like a, there's a lot of fitness influencers out there. We're developing an oversized, an oversized yoga mat for a creator because sometimes yoga mats, the current yoga mat size might be a little small. And so we're doing a completely custom bigger yoga mat, just a little bit wider. We're also doing a custom mini yoga mat for someone that just wants one on the go and they can just hurry and throw it out there and it's, you know, 30 inches long and branded with their brand. Yeah, we've built tons of different products, helped product, we developed products for a lot of different brands. There's not a lot of products we can't make, which kind of puts us in a unique position where when it comes to branding and when it comes to products, we have it dialed. So yeah, we can do a little bit of everything.

That's cool, Mike. And that's so— it seems like such an obvious thing to make yoga mats the sizes that people actually are. My husband is 6'2 and barely fits on a yoga mat in downward dog.

Right.

And this is completely random. Uh, but you probably know this story, Mike, because of the line of work that you're in. I'm from Dallas, and so I was a big Dallas Mavericks fan and a Mark Cuban fan, uh, way back in the day. And I remember one of the first things that Mark Cuban did when he bought the Dallas Mavericks was have bigger chairs made for these NBA players that are in standard-sized chairs on the sidelines, like on the bench, um, that normal average people fit in. And he's like, Why hasn't anybody solved for this? This is insane. And now, uh, those are— those chairs are ubiquitous, like on NBA floors at this point. Everybody uses them. And so that's so cool. I bet, uh, the creator you're producing those custom-sized yoga mats for is just going to be kind of like the tipping point for, um, more things like that that are obvious to some people and not so much to others. But

for sure,

that's really cool.

I think ultimately it just comes down to they know their followers. Their followers are following them for a reason and they kind of have the finger on the pulse and it just comes down to seeing the need, identifying the need, and then we help them fill the need. So.

Yeah. Which is a big deal. And okay, so for creators who do successfully launch product lines through Brand Origin, does that typically, do you guys see that opening doors for other opportunities for creators or does that like level up their legitimacy such that It brings on other things.

Oh, 100%. We do have connections to bigger and better things. It just depends on revenue and growth. I mean, we do have a few ins at some box retailers that there is potential that if one of these brands takes off, which it's only, it's a matter of when, not if, right? So when that does happen, we have the connections to help that brand go to the next level. And, you know, in our agreements, there are things that like some triggering events and other things to help us all develop, you know, an actual LLC together and legitimize that the business and then also making sure that, you know, because there's agreement in place, we can still finance that. It's not something that they— if there is a big, you know, million-dollar purchase order that comes from Walmart or somebody, we step in, we're still that, that capital partner for them.

Wow. Okay. So you guys can stick with somebody from the very beginning to as far as they can go on their product journey?

Yep, absolutely.

That's pretty cool. Okay. Let's kind of get into the nitty-gritty details of what it actually takes to develop a brand, a product line, bring that to market. Um, you know, let's, let's tackle this question from the maybe DIY creator's perspective, or those of us who are just insatiably curious and have no idea what this actually looks like. Uh, it Mike, can you break down the steps for us?

Yeah, so there's, I mean, if you're gonna start and you're gonna do it yourself, there's, it's kind of a tall order. There's a lot of stuff to consider. And usually it's these things you don't plan for. These are things that you, you know, you think, oh, I'm just gonna, I'll find a t-shirt online or I'll have someone else make it for me. And you don't think of all the steps that go into it. So, so there's logo design. Obviously you're gonna wanna, if you're gonna start a brand, you gotta find a good logo. And those aren't cheap, especially if you want a good one, a memorable one, a good name, domain names. Those can get expensive and difficult to find in this day and age. Like all the domains have been taken. So it's, it's hard to find something unique, right? You have to design your merchandise or your products. You have to go through the sampling process where you're going back and forth with the supplier, whether they're overseas or they're domestic. It's— you have to make sure that the product you're launching is good and it's going to stand the test of time and it's not going to fall apart, you want to have, uh, you want to be able to trust that, that manufacturer or the supplier. Um, yeah, again, back to product development, making sure you're going, you're, you're just doing your homework. It's, it's a comp— it's kind of a complicated process, but, um, and then you have to handle the supply chain all on your own. I mean, you have to find trusted suppliers, you have to arrange, you know, payments back and forth. And if you're overseas, I mean, you're talking about international wire transfers. You have to work with freight forwarders to make sure that those, you know, products arrive and arrive on time. Uh, there are certain dates, obviously, like look at, uh, you know, we have Black Friday coming up. You want to make sure that you have inventory because I've seen it so many times where people— Black Friday rolls around and they sell out before Black Friday even hits. And, and I, I maybe I, I would have, you know, there's been times where I've I've contacted those people that I've worked with in the past in July and said, hey, let's prep right now for Black Friday. You know that you're going to need that inventory and inevitably comes back to buy them. But yeah, so arranging, you have to make sure you're paying the correct taxes, duties, and other associated fees when you're importing. You have to design and maintain a website. You have to do all the customer service yourself. So you're going to have to manage returns, damaged or defective products, or angry, angry clients if they get a wrong size. How do you handle that? That's something that you have to take time out of your day to go manage and handle that. Purchasing and managing your inventory, you're going to have to forecast inventory like I had mentioned before, making sure you don't have stockouts when it, when the, when it's, when you need it the most. Collecting and paying sales tax, that's something that It's just kind of all these things, like they're more of annoyances. Once you figure out how to do them, you can do them. But it's also, again, taking time away from doing what you do best and doing, you know, really finding ways to generate revenue outside of this. And then fulfilling and shipping orders, you're going to have to do that yourself. And we've seen that with creators already. We've talked, Michael and I have talked to people where they'll be on a Zoom call with us and there's boxes and boxes stacked behind them, all their merch that they weren't able to sell. And that they just have to hold them in their living room because they didn't plan ahead and they didn't, it just is one of those things they have to do on their own. So kind of a crazy, there's a lot to do. Also photography. So you have to do, we've seen that product photography when it's flat laid or lifestyle photography is really where you, it really adds credibility to the product doing lifestyle photography, letting, having someone using the product in a real life scenario. It's kind of like, you know, just an action shot or something that we've seen sales increase because of that. So it's a very important piece. And we actually provide a budget to all of our creators. Every time there's a new product launch, we give them a budget to do a photo shoot of lifestyle photography because we know it will give us a return in the long run. So.

Wow, that's a lot. Especially if you, if you don't have business experience or, you know, experience collecting sales tax alone, even just domestic here in the United States. I didn't even, I did not even think about importing fees. My goodness gracious. Do many people actually handle all of this in-house or do most creators at a certain stage?

Oh, create on the creator side. We haven't, I mean, yeah, we've seen some do it. And I think the lady that had a bunch of stuff in her living room, she did it herself. On the brand side, I mean, that's what I did for years is my do-it-myself, one of those DIYers, but, and that's why we created this, right? Because I know it's kind of a pain in the ass to do it yourself. So it's, that's why we're here.

So. No kidding. For the DIYer, what's the trickiest part of getting all this infrastructure in place?

Shoot, I don't know. That's a great question. I mean, each one of those things has its own challenges. I don't know. I really wouldn't be able to tell you. They're all just, they all are just special in their own way of complicated.

So yeah, I guess maybe that's hard from your perspective because you've got this all on lock completely.

Yeah, I think importing is probably the biggest hurdle. If you're importing, I think that's probably the number one. I've seen a lot of people, a lot of big brands have gone through this where they source themselves and then they They send a check, they wire $40 grand to their supplier, and then the supplier disappears. And you're just like, oh, why did you do that? And so it's, it's something where having a middleman that has the connections, has the trusted, you know, the trusted relationships overseas, it allows us to be the person that is held accountable if something goes wrong or if the product fails. It allows them to transfer the liability off of themselves and onto us. And it allows us to be the one that is held accountable for the product, for the deadlines, for the, you know, the quality control. It's all on us. So to do that yourself, that's the, I think that's probably the biggest hurdle.

Yeah, that sounds like it. I would not want to be one of those people who got hoodwinked on a $40,000 investment. That sounds really rough, but it happens. You got to know the right people, right?

For sure.

Alright, so let's say a creator does get their product line designed, manufactured, imported, ready to be dropshipped. What are the most common pitfalls that come with launching a product line? And then of course, how can those pitfalls be avoided?

Yeah, I would say the most common pitfall with launching a product line is that people don't post enough. So they think, oh, we've built all this product, we've built all these, you know, this, this merch line or this product line, and we've spent all this time and energy into making this awesome thing, and then they never talk about it. And they just think that sales are going to roll in because they talked about it once. And we actually saw this recently. We have a creator that their product line has been there for a long time. And there's been, you know, they talked about it at the very beginning, and they saw consistent sales, thousands of dollars a month, and then it just dried up. And then we were like, hey, it's time to post, it's time to post. And then finally they posted. So we're talking 4 or 5 months without posting and they finally posted last week and did, you know, $350 of sales in a day. And you're just like, why have you not been doing this? Like you're really leaving so much money on the table. So post, post, post. Like that's really, that's one of the biggest pitfalls is just not talking about enough. And, you know, we've talked a little bit, Michael and I have about, you know, it's that 3rd post. By the 3rd post is really when you're starting to gain credibility about that product that people become familiar with it, start to trust it, and then ultimately start to purchase because they see you with it multiple times. So that third, by that third post, we start to see a little bit more action and reaction from the followers. So.

Nice. Number 3, magic number. Okay. Quick interjection, interjection here. Michael, is there a posting cadence or marketing plan of sorts that y'all recommend a creator follow for best results?

Yep. You're gonna find this surprising, but if you never post, you're never gonna sell. So the reality is we do find something unique. Obviously, every time you post, whether that be a story or an in-feed post or whichever, we always see sales. Like most of the time you're gonna see sales come from that. But typically the third time is when we see like really good success. And I think we probably see this across other things as well. But for example, like the reason why your followers are following you is probably for 2 reasons. Majority of it is because they either trust you or they like your content or both. And so the first time you introduce a product or your brand to the audience like that, you're going to get people that are like, oh wow, I trust you. I'm going to buy it because I follow you for this reason. So yeah, I want that. Like, for example, you're a makeup person. Oh my gosh, I love your lipstick. Where do you get it? Well, go check out my brand. Bought it. Then you have other people that still like your content. They still are like all about you. But it sometimes takes the second time, the third time. They're like, you know what, this person's posting about this. That means, okay, yeah, this is, this is something that this influencer is excited about or trusts. I'm going to go with that as well. And the reality is, too, in the same world, if you are a brand in general, typically you like to get an influencer to do at least 3 posts. You know, I'm sure you've probably seen that too, where if you can get at least in a brand deal, if I was the brand or representing the brand and I'm negotiating a deal with an influencer, I'd love to make sure I can get at least 3 posts or stories done with that influencer because I know that doing it that way, I'm going to get great brand recognition and awareness and usually I'm going to get good sales with that. So as an influencer, when you're talking about how do I develop my own brand, how do I make sales with it? You got to post, post, post. You got to post about your brand. When you want people to know about your life, that's why you post about it. You want them to know about your brand, so you need to post about it. You need to market it, you know. And there's creative ways to go about doing it, but the biggest pitfall is you can't just assume sales will come just because I have 50,000, 100,000, half a million, a million followers, or I have a 10% engagement, or even whatever percent of engagement you have. The biggest pitfall is to say, oh, I have a brand, but you never do anything about it. It's just auto— the success is not automatic. So posting at least 3 times on a— at least 3 times is a good thing. We try to always encourage our creators to post a minimum of at least 1 story and 1 in-feed post a month. Obviously, like, you can do as many as you want, but I would say the best way to build up brand recognition is by obviously posting about your brand.

Yeah, that makes sense. And I could imagine that if creators can incorporate their own products as frequently as possible in natural ways to their posts, for instance, Mike, back to your point earlier about the creative person who, you know, now has their own pliers and their own wire. And so if they're using their own branded products, wearing their own t-shirts, hats, hoodie, whatever it is, mugs, it seems like that would be a very natural reminder without being annoying to your followers. And you don't have to always talk about it. You can just let your actions show that, hey, you need this thing too.

For sure.

And by the way, if you're doing things with a story, like I have, I follow some people because I love their stories. Like they talk about, I don't know, like I'm not a girl. So I don't do the get ready with me type of thing, you know. But I do like watch some of these guys. And like, there's some girls that I follow, like they're hilarious, right? And I'll follow them because I'm like, wow, their content is so funny. I mainly follow sports guys, so I like seeing them get ready for a game or whatever, or they talk about certain things. But what I have noticed too is that if, like, to your point, if you can incorporate something in a story and also bring your product up in it, it's such a natural way to sell like a product. So if you're selling jewelry or you're selling some type of makeup line or even a clothing, some type of apparel, like If you can do that incorporated in your story, that's a natural flow. I think those are such home runs, in my opinion, if you can capitalize on that.

Yeah, definitely. And Michael, this is a little bit of a broad question, but just want to slide this in here because I'd be totally remiss not to ask you since you're right here. Based on your experience, especially with Social Stance, how can creators really sustainably grow their social media following?

Yeah, you should be in our— participate in our giveaways is what you should do. That's what you should do. But to answer this question, though, this is a really good one. Because what we talked about earlier in this call is about— or in this podcast is specializing in something, right? Specializing in some type of niche, right? I know even for you, like, that's a big thing. You like work working with creators as well that are experts in their field. When you're talking about how you want to grow your audience, like, I had a call with this influencer. She's great, she's a golfer, but she's like, I want to go do travel, and I also want to do, uh, what was the other thing she wants to do? Lifestyle, I think it was. And you look at her page and it's like, you know what, I really don't know who you are. Like, yeah, you've got a good following, but like You have to be able— like, if I'm gonna pitch you to a brand, I gotta make sure the brand knows what you're about, right? And so I would tell you this, I think not all creators are like this, but this is the advice I would give you if you're going to— if you're really wanting to increase engagement, your following. One is you need to be an expert in your field. That's the number one thing. So when people go to the page, they know who you are. That's the number one thing. If you look at your page right now, you're like, oh, I don't know who I am. That's a red flag in the sense of you just need to make a correction. Number 2 is you need to post frequent, you know, stories, in-feed, reels. You need to be consistent with that. And I hear influencers tell me, oh, I don't know if I can do this all the time, right? Like, even we're doing brand deals, we'll ask, how many brand deals are you looking to do a month? You want to do 1 a week? You want to do 4 a month, 8, whatever it is? But the point is, when we get the pushback on it, that's when it's like, you know, I don't know if you're quite ready for that because at the end of the day you have to be posting frequently. So you have to post frequent, you have to become an expert in your field, and if you can do those 2 things then other things will come with it. And then it's just about being consistent. It's not going to happen overnight, it won't happen over the next month probably, but over time you can all of a sudden now gain followers, get better engagement, and I can guarantee you, you will see success. Just by doing those 2 things will be really important.

I love that clarity, consistency, persistence, patience, all those things. Okay, awesome. Let's talk a little bit about email lists. We see a lot of creators and influencers who don't focus on what's called owning their audience or owning your audience, but spend a lot of time kind of playing to the algorithm, as it were. What role Michael, do you see the email list playing in creator-led businesses moving forward? And what's the right balance between building your social media following versus spending time building your email list?

This is a great question because I'm a huge advocate for the emails. I'll just tell you something really quick. We had worked with an influencer, massive following, by the way, like major influencer. If I told you who it was, like, oh my gosh, I love this person. You would be surprised they had less than 10,000 people on their email list. And this is someone that you would be like, you say, what? How many followers you have? And you only have how many people on an email list? And the thing is, this is actually the most common issue among creators in the industry right now, in my, in my opinion, actually, because they don't treat this as a business. What happens if you lose your Instagram, your TikTok tomorrow? Where you're gone, you're done, right? Unless you can get your Facebook or Instagram or whatever back. But one thing that can stick with you is an email list, right? And so what we did with some of these influencers, we went and we helped them go grow their email list. So now you have your own business literally on an email campaign, email marketing, right? That's such a huge thing. I hear people tell me this too. Oh, Michael, email marketing is dead. And I usually want to respond to and say, well, how do you think you and I got on a call today? It was it was probably by an email, right? Like majority of what I do, probably ninety plus percent, ninety five percent of what I do is actually all done via email. And so email marketing is extremely relevant today. And if you're an influencer or creator looking to monetize, you need an email list. We literally I was on a call literally yesterday. This happens all the time, but. Literally on a call yesterday, this, this influencer we're working with, we're lining up some brand deals for. What's great about it is we go to these brands and they're like, oh, I don't know about this or that. But then like, hey, by the way, we have an email list of 50,000 people and we have a 70% open rate. And if you want me to book you with my influencer, by the way, we want this and this and that. And that is such a huge way that I can use that to now promote the creator and what, what benefit that does for the brand is of course they want to get in front of your email list. They would love to have that. I mean, why— at our company at Social Stance, we also collect emails. Like, that's what we do. We have people that participate in our giveaways all for the sheer fact— some of them only because they want the emails, you know. And so yeah, the big thing with the whole email thing is you got to utilize it. And there's so many platforms, right? I It doesn't matter where you go, go on the big ones. Klaviyo is a big one. A lot of people like to use that one, you know. I mean, and there's a lot of affordable ones too. There's so many instantly. They've got all these different things from Mailchimp to SendGrid. I don't know if I love all those, but they're all out there and you can, you can use them and they're relatively easy to use. But as a creator, especially if you have your own brand, you need to have a newsletter or some type of subscription or something that you're engaging your audience in another way. Because one last thing real quick. No, it's not always about the likes and the comments. I think that we're seeing a little bit shift in the in the market right now. I don't think it's necessarily the only way to gauge or to gauge engagement is based upon how many likes and comments you have, right? I mean, yes, we still look at that. That's part of what we do all the time. But another part of that is like, well, how many people do you have subscribed? To your platform, you know. And that's also a big indicator— how many, like, people view your stories, right? All of these things are also, like, really good indicators of, you know, what your engagement is like. But a lot of it, I'll tell you, I think the email thing is huge. You can use that. If you're a creator right now listening, you need to get your emails in a row. You need to get— you need to collect it. You need to go out of your way. You need to get your followers. You've got to get those emails Because that is going to be a huge way for you to negotiate in brand deals, especially if you want to do a brand with brand origin. We would love— we love creators that have email lists because every time you launch, blast them with that email and you're going to get people that will just— they're automatically going to sign up from that. You know, it's going to— it's going to happen. So big fan of emails for sure.

Awesome. That's super helpful. I actually read a story this morning. It's a super quick anecdote. I think ConvertKit put it out and it was featuring a creator Who's a popular travel blogger, even had a show on Netflix, and she had over a million followers on YouTube and now makes more money with her email list of just 7,000 people than she did with over a million followers on YouTube. And so I thought that was very interesting and quite the sales pitch to get your email marketing and marketing automation machine up and running. Mm-hmm. Um, and keep listening to this podcast. We are going to discuss email marketing ad nauseam so that you know what all of your options are and sort of like, just like we're demystifying this whole process of bringing physical products and merchandise to market, marketing automation is another one of those things that needs to be made a little bit more accessible, I'll say. And it's a very important part of creator businesses, especially with multiple products and services that you're offering. All right. So Let's kind of start to land the plane here. Mike, what advice can you give to creators who are considering launching their own brand at this point?

Yeah, if you're considering it, I mean, one of two things. One, come work with us. Let's see if you meet the criteria for us to work with you. You can go to brandorigin.com. There is a tab at the top that says join us and you can put in like what platforms you use and what your handles are, and we can go look at it and reach out to you. And then if you're going to do it yourself, I would just rewind this podcast back to the list of things I mentioned and just start knocking those out one by one, developing that brand on your own. And actually, you know, if you wanted to have us source, we could source too. We don't— you don't have to just be a BrandOrigin client or team up with us. Like, you could source through us and we could do that heavy lifting for you, or at least work with us in that capacity too.

No, that's nice. Options are great. And then Mike, let's talk through some next actions for creators who meet the baseline criteria and should at least do proper vetting exercises to see if adding a product line to their brand is the right move. What would you advise a DIY creator to do next if they want to go at it alone?

Alone? Yeah, I think that you need to See if there's a need in with your demographic. If you can see a need and you can be the one that fills that need, I think you need to identify it and start to really work out what those products are. And I think that it's also important to start small. A lot of people want to just launch, you know, I want to launch a spring line and a summer line and fall and a winter. And then you start to see like what that would take, and it's hundreds of thousands of dollars. And if you're going to do it yourself, And even with us, we don't come out swinging with big stuff. We always start small because you have to test, you have to test and see what works. And so I would, I would heavily advise to launch 3 products, 3 separate products, and then see how your followers react, see which product, you know, is the, is the most successful, and then determine, oh, maybe 2 of them are awesome. And you You would basically double down on those 2. If there's one that was terrible, then at least you can pivot. You just, you always want to be able to pivot in this industry or in any, you know, launching any brand. Don't just come out and launch 50 different products. And because in a way, it's, you're creating too many options. And I don't know if you've ever shopped, you know, at different restaurants that have, you know, thousands of different items to choose from. Let's say Cheesecake Factory. It's hard to— It's hard to choose and they can't be an expert in that, in all of those dishes, right? It's too much. And so you want to take the, you know, the In-N-Out Burger approach where you've got 3 items, it's a hamburger, cheeseburger, double cheeseburger, and that's it. And people will then choose, you know, one of the 3 and you can take that information and build on that.

Love that. And I love the concept of working in iterations. That is so important. For anything you're doing in business, anything at all, working in iterations so that you reduce your risk and increase your upside is a really, really important piece of information that again could be overlaid on anything. So I'm glad you said that. And I love the In-N-Out Burger versus Cheesecake Factory analogy. That's really on point. All right. So let's say somebody goes to brandorigin.com, they click that Join Us button. Mike, what's the process like working with BrandOrigin?

Yeah, the process would be we would look at your, your, your pages and then we would email you to set up a Zoom call. We would kind of just, we would want to know about you, you know, see if we can work well together, see how that conversation goes, how the, you know, there, a lot of it is just like talking back and forth, just trying to see if it's, it would be a good fit and then kind of determining, you know, what information you could give us about yourself. What brand ideas you have. We have one girl who has a smaller following, but she has a banger of an idea that we're like, we're willing to spend thousands of dollars, tens of thousands on this idea. And so it really just comes down to that process of let's get to know each other. Let's work. And we've, you know, we've signed NDAs on stuff. We're happy to sign those because I know that ideas, not all ideas have been explored in this world. Right. So we are fine with signing NDA. We want to have you protect your ideas. And then we would just, you know, we would determine how your engagement is. We determine what kind of products we could get into. We would send you an agreement, the agreement that we send everybody. We would look over the commission schedules to see how well it would work out for you. And then once that's signed, then we start working on, on developing products and merch lines and other things.

Nice. Yeah. And then it's kind of off to the races. You all take it from there, right?

Yep.

Soup, soup to nuts.

That's right.

Awesome. And Michael, where can our listeners find you online?

Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. You can just go to my LinkedIn profile, Michael Belknap, or you can hit us up at Social Stance. I make it a point to respond to all our DMs and all my emails. So if you reach out, you'll definitely get in touch with me. So if not, my team will pass you over to me. So yeah, feel free to reach out. Social Stance. Obviously, if you want to look at Build a Brand, And hit us up as well. Happy to do— I do a lot of the vetting for brand origin. But yeah, Michael Belknap, hit me up.

Yeah. And we'll of course include all of y'all's contact details in the show notes as well. Thank you again to both Mike Davis and Michael Belknap. That was a tremendous amount of wisdom and knowledge all packaged up in a nice little 1-hour show. So thank you both so very much. I've enjoyed our conversation. Likewise. And listeners, we know that your time is precious. Thank you so much for sharing yours with us. Level Up Creators exists to amplify the voice, reach, and impact of creators making a positive impact in the world. With your expertise as our focus, our team of strategists, marketers, sales pros, product developers, administrators, and tech gurus handle the heavy lifting of building and optimizing a profitable business that will transform your life for good. Check out welevelupcreators.com for more information and resources for creators just like you. See you next time on the Level Up Creators Podcast.