The WORST things when starting a green juice company - MARKETING SECRETS EP. 3

That peach was actually really good, though. Holy crap. I bought this company called Zuma Juice. And I remember getting to fhl. I hadn't actually tried the finished product yet. I was so excited. Brand new, this is. No one knows it yet. We're about to bring it back from the dead. And guess what? It did not taste like peach rings. It tasted like green drink. And my heart sunk. And I was like, oh, my gosh. Hey, this is Russell. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets show. Today we're gonna be show guys behind the scenes, one of our virtual real estate companies called Zuma Juice, which I'm really excited. I'm going to talk you guys about the reason why I started this company, why I was excited by it, what we've done, how we manufactured the product, how we created the funnel, the people we funnel hacked, and why, who was the target market, how we launched it, the flops along the way. Me on stage at Funnel Hacking live, being too embarrassed to even talk about it because of some of the mistakes and a whole bunch of other stuff. I hope you guys enjoy this episode. Also, don't forget, you can always go to marketingsecrets.com and there's a section there where you can actually leave voice questions for me about this product, this funnel, and I will be answering those live on future episodes, which is really cool. Also, as you listen to this episode, I want you to set your intentions. I'm showing you guys behind the scenes of a business that I'm building and launching that eventually I think I will sell and exit for eight figures. But I'm showing you guys the entire journey. And the end of this episode, Spoiler alert. We're ending on this. Not doing well yet. And so I want you to set intentions as you're listening to this to just kind of think about, like, your business. Like, I'm guessing that you're not trying to launch a green drink company. My goal is not to, like, give you the blueprint for a green drink company, but all the lessons I'm learning along the way. Think about your business as you're doing right now. There's one piece. Like, I can apply that to my business. Like, oh, I didn't. I missed that step in the process. I should do that. Or, oh, my gosh, like, Russell failed and it's okay. I can fail and be okay as well. So listen with ears to hear, and if you do that, there'll be something in here for you. And the last thing is that this episode is actually brought to you by one of my Favorite sponsors. The sponsor for this show is Zooma Juice. Actually, no, I'm not going to sponsor Zoom and Juice because the funnel's not live yet. So take that back. The sponsor for today's show is actually Dan Kennedy. This is Bobblehead Dan. If you haven't met him yet, if you're listening, you can't see him, but I've got a little Dan on an ox with a bobblehead. If you are not subscribed yet to no BS Newsletter, make sure you do on the no BS Newsletter. You get a print newsletter in your mailbox twice a month. One is from Dan Kennedy, teaching the top marketing strategies in the world. And number two is the behind the Scenes letter. We're actually showing you guys behind the scenes of this and other funnels. I show you page by page what we're doing, why we're doing it. We show you stats, conversions, and numbers. Those newsletters come to you directly to your mailbox. They are two controversial and cool to post online. The only way to get them is by going to nobsletter.com go subscribe and you'll get personal letters, both from me and from Dan Kennedy in the mail twice a month. Go to nobsletter.com to go get subscribed to the no BS and the behind the Scenes newsletter. With that said, you guys, I hope you enjoy this episode of the podcast. You're listening to Marketing Secrets with your host, Russell Brunson. Okay, I'm excited. Today we were talking about the Zuma Juice funnel. As you can see here, if you're watching the video version, we've got the samples of the boxes, the packaging, everything here for both Zuma Juice, the green drink, and the red drink. People always ask me, why did you buy. Why'd you buy Zuma Juice? Why'd you buy a green drink company? There's a lot of green drink companies. And so I'm gonna tell you guys a lot of the reasons why, what we've done so far. Things that work, things that haven't worked. And yes, I do things all the time. They don't actually work. So hopefully that'll give us some of you guys some comfort as well, to know that I do things all the time that flop, and we're always testing and tweaking and trying to get things working. In fact, literally on my way over here today to record this, Kevin told me they stopped all ads to ZoomJuice Funnel, which means it's not converting, which means I'm sharing this, even though it's not like crushing it and doing a million dollars or anything. But I want to share the journey with you guys because I think there's a lot of cool things you can learn along the way, and it'll help me unpack just the thoughts in my head as well. So this is partially therapeutic for me and hopefully beneficial for you guys at the same time. So the backstory behind kind of where we found Zooma Juice, one of my friends, Luke Jaden, and if you know Luke, he's an awesome marketer. He does a lot of direct mail postcard businesses, but then other things. And I remember a few years ago, he launched a new company called Zooma Juice. But I remember when Luke launched, and my favorite thing is the stuff sales video that he made.

You already know you should be eating more fruits and veggies. One way to get more of the good stuff is green juice. Do you like yours chunky? I like mine a little chunky.

It was so good. One of the best sales videos I've ever seen. And it looked like something the Harmon brothers had made. And I messaged Luke. I said, the Harmon Brothers do it? He's like, no, I messaged him. They didn't respond back to me. So he's like, I actually wrote the script myself, and we had some guys who published it and everything. The first version of the video, they launched it, and it started going viral. And there's a scene where, like, the girl's a fruit ninja and she's chopping things in the kitchen. It's just. It's awesome. And they ran the company for another year or two or something. And then some of his business partners came. I don't know the whole detail, but they ended up turning the company off, and it shut down. And I remember for a long time, I was like, man, that is such a cool company. Like, I wish. I wish I could have it. Like, the sales video's done. I remember messaging Luke like, hey, would you ever sell it? And he's like, let me ask my partners. And they never could figure it out. And so every year or so for the next five or six years, I'd message Luke like, hey, can I buy the company? And he's like, oh, let me ask my partners. And it never worked. And finally, I think it was in the middle of, like, right when Covid hit. And I don't know what changed, but they're like, yep. And so I bought the company. It wasn't that expensive, but it was cool. Is I got the entire sales video, which I think I spent about $250,000. Making the sales video, plus all the assets, plus the formulations, plus all the work you'd done, I got for not that expensive, which is really cool. So that was kind of the reason I was like, this would be a cool company. I know the sales video. Copy is the hardest part about any business is the copy and the video. So that video is really, really good. And so that's kind of why initially why I bought it. And it was going to be just a fun project, and it was my kids and some of my friends, and that was kind of the original goal for it. The very first thing we did is we did a call with Luke Jaden. So again, Luke's a great marketer. He's also the brainchild behind this whole brand and the company and the copy and everything. And we just pick Luke's brain for an hour. Like, why did you create this? What was the reasoning? What was your goal? Who is the target audience? Who is the actual market? Right? You have green drink companies like Athletic Greens, for example, which just got bought for a billion dollars. But if you drink athletic greens, it's literally like drinking grass clippings. But it's like the hardcore people, like, inject it in their veins because it's like, it's the best stuff, right? And then you got other green drink companies that taste like candy, but they're like, it's not even healthy for you. And there's this whole spectrum. And it was like, who are you trying to target with this? And so we talked about the target market and who it was. It wasn't like the hardcore health junkies, but it was like people who knew they needed to be healthier, but they want something that tasted good. But we weren't, like, trying to drink Kool Aid either. Like, they're kind of in betweeners. And with Zuma Juice was like, we want something like, you would enjoy, where it's like, hey, I want fruits and vegetables at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So I'll have it three times a day because it tastes good. It's really good for me. And so that was kind of the market and segment he was going after. We also learned about the tone, like, just in the sales video, like, the fun tone, the email sequences they'd written in the past so we could see the playfulness of how Luke communicated with the audience. We wanted to keep that, recapture that.

I drink this every day.

Then we had to go to the manufacturer. So we found a manufacturer. We, like, we send them the recipes. This is what these look like these are the things that are in it. But the original flavor was mint. I wasn't obsessed with the mint flavor. I'm more of a candy guy. So I was like, I want to do the same thing. I want to be exactly identical, don't change anything. But instead of mid flavoring, I want to make it taste like candy and like, what kind of candy? I'm like, peach rings, because come on now, peach rings are amazing. So that was kind of what we gave it to the manufacturer. And then Luke had also created a red drink. So difference between red drinks and green drinks is fruits and vegetables. Green drinks are your vegetables, red drinks, your fruits. And I love red drinks because there's so many vitamins, nutrients from reds that we need. But typically with reds, you get a lot of sugar as well. Right? He built a really cool recipe for zoom and juice red, but it didn't have all the sugars and stuff in it, which was really cool. So we took that to the manufacturer. We want to make both reds and greens. Greens are making taste like peach rings and reds like some kind of fruit punch flavor. And so we sent those and that started the process. Now, manufacturing for any supplement company is the longest, hardest. It's not like an info product where you can have an idea and you create it, you launch it with supplements. It's like months of going back and forth and then making stuff and sending to you, and you got to taste it. We did tons of taste tests of like this flavor versus this, versus this, and some that were good, some that were bad. And then we write a huge check to the manufacturer and they start ordering the raw ingredients and putting them in batches and stirring them up and making what was going to become Zumba juice. Then if you watch the sales video, the main person, the hero in the sales video is a girl named Ariana. And she's an amazing actress and model and like someone who's really, really cool. And so I was like, man, she's in the video. Like, I want to, I want to use her for ads when user for sales page. So we ended up having a time where she flew out here to Boise. And then we got a whole bunch of pictures of her like holding the box like this and putting down and like holding the packet and ripping the packet. We got a million pictures of like all the things we would need for like sales pages upsells down sales. We need these images for funnels, for ads, for social, just for all the things. Right. So we did a whole bunch of pictures with her and then we also thought as long as we have her film, a whole bunch of ads. So we filled a whole bunch of really funny ads that we wrote where, you know, she's eating peach rings and drinking juice and just a whole bunch of short form ads we could use as well.

Oh, and, and don't worry, unlike other green juices out there, this one doesn't taste like sipping swamp water.

She also owns a video production company. So then she went back home to California and we had her make a whole, you know, dozen or two other ads for us as well. So we had a whole bunch of assets. So when we do have the funnel live, we have these ads we can use to push people into the funnel. One of the big mistakes people make is they, and I'm honestly guilty of this a lot is I'll spend so much time working on the funnel that you forget about the ads. And then it's like, oh, what are the ads gonna mean? It's almost an afterthought. Whereas now I try to be more conscious. Like as we are producing whatever the product is, we're creating ads along the way, right? Because now we have all these cool assets while we were creating this and that now become the eventual ads. And then it was coming back down to like, okay, now we gotta build out the funnel. So step number one for building out a funnel is what? It's funnel hacking. I want to see for everyone who's selling green drinks, like, what are they doing right now? Like, what's the best practice? What are people using? And so we found every green drink company we could find online and we funnel hacked them. And funnel hacking simply means we went and we bought their product and took a screenshot of. Here's the sales page, here's upsell one, here's upsell two. Here's the sales videos, I get them transcribed, here's the ads. And we just get as many screenshots as we can of every single funnel, right? And so we probably funnel hacked a minimum of a dozen different funnels. And so I gave us some ideas, like, what, what are other people doing? What are the hooks, where the angles? And this is where most people get funnel hacking wrong. They think funnel hacking means like, oh cool, I like how organifi did, I'm going to copy them. It's not what funnel hacking is. I don't know how many times I get in battles with people on socially about this. Like, in fact, some of the other day was like someone ripped off their thing. Like, well, Russell told people we can Rip it off. I'm like, I didn't say that. And the guy said, yeah, you said that. As long as you change the words, you can steal everything else. I'm like, I'd never have said that ever. Like, it's unethical. It's illegal. I get ripped off more than anyone. And every time I see someone who uses my colors, like their book funnel, they use my colors, it makes me angry. Like, that's not what I'm saying. I say funnel hacking is about understanding, like, what's in the market right now, right? It's doing your homework. So, you know, like, here's what athletic greens, here's the market they're targeting. Here's organifi. Here's who skinny greens, here's who Patriot greens. All of them are targeting different audiences, right? Patriot greens are targeting, like, the preppers. And so their messaging is for preppers, right? Organifi is targeting biohackers. You got athletic greens, you're targeting. You know, it's like they all have their segments, and it's like, where do we fit in this ecosystem? I don't want to be another. Me too. I'm not trying to make another green drink. I'm trying to figure out, here's a segment of the market that doesn't have a green drink yet that we're trying to target. Like, so I want to get a glimpse of the ecosystem as a whole. That's one big reason why I'm doing funnel hacking. Not to copy, but to see what, like, where they are and. And where they aren't so I can be where they aren't, right? So that's a big thing I want people to understand. Number two is, like, understanding structure. Structure doesn't mean I'm stealing their graphics. Structure means, like, are they doing trial offers? Are they doing, you know, straight sales? Are they doing a VSL to 1 bottle, 3 bottle, 5 bottles? Are they still wanting to continuity? Like, I'm trying to understand, like, what are people doing right now in this specific market? That's what funnel hacking is just. I'm trying to get. I'm trying to understand what the best practices are working today, right? So we laid out the structure, he throwed the copy, we had the videos, we had the pictures from Ariana. So we had funnel designers who designed it and then funnel builders who hooked it all up. And we got the very first version done in live about the same time, the funnel hacking live last year, which is 2021. And so the product was about done. And so I said, hey, we ship, like, a thousand satchels of zoom and juice to fhl. We're putting them in everybody's bag. It's going to be amazing. So the shipping warehouse, shipping directly to there. And I remember getting to fhl, and I hadn't actually tried the finished product yet. I was so excited. And brand new. This is. No one knows it yet. We're about to bring it back from the dead. And guess what? It did not taste like peach rings. It tasted like green drink. Yeah. I've never been stronger before, so I wonder if I'd spin more in last time or had less water or. It was almost like they created it and they forgot to put any of the flavoring in. And my heart sunk. I was like, oh, my gosh. But I want to say anything. I mean, maybe I'm just. Maybe I'm sick. Like, maybe I got Covid. Maybe my taste is gone. Maybe I'm just. So I started making it for, like, Colette. My head. Colette drink. She's like, oh, it's good. I'm like, you know, if you don't know my wife, Colette, she's very much like, just like, oh, yeah. I was like, no. Like, please be honest. And she's like, it's not very good. And other people taste it. Everyone's like, I thought it wasn't supposed to taste like peach ring. I'm like, yeah, there's pictures of peach ring on the packet on the box, and it didn't taste like peach ring. And I was so embarrassed. And, like, our first grand entrance. 5000 funnel hackers all have a packet of it. And I'm like, I hope they don't drink it. I don't want them to try it because that's gonna be the first sample, and it's not gonna taste good. And I remember being, like, devastated. But not only that. Like, we had printed 5,000 of these satchels for FHL, but we printed, like, hundreds of thousands of these things that were now done in a warehouse. And I remember going back to manufacturer, and I was like, hey, this doesn't taste right. And we had the same. The red drink. The red drink, same thing I bought. Like, neither of these tasted right. And so what they did was just super cool of them. They went through and took all the packets, reopened them, dumped them all back in, added more flavoring in, and eventually got one that tasted really good, sent it back to us. I was like, oh, my gosh, it tastes good again. Finally, we got new versus done. We got boxes. We got A warehouse. We're like, hey, finally we're ready to launch this funnel. It's gonna be awesome. We started launching it now. We started getting sales coming through, but our cart value wasn't as high as we needed it to be. If you guys know the funnel game, there's two metrics. Like, how much are you paying to acquire a customer? Cost to cpa or cost to acquire a customer, and their average cart value. So we were spending more to acquire customer than we were inside the funnel. And I think in my head, still to this day, I still think the biggest problem is we don't have the full sales letter that which we need to really get the conversions where we need to be. But then as I was meeting with the funnel team, went back and forth, I found out something that's, like, devastated me on this product. So this is for anyone who is launching a business and you're frustrated because things aren't working the way it's supposed to be. I was talking to the copywriter. I'm like, where's, like, this element? Like, these things we're missing from the funnel? He said, oh, we had to pull them out. I said, why? He said, well, the actual recipe that I built, the sales funnel, if you look at the ingredients in the actual Zoom and juice, they don't sink. So I had to pull out all of these ingredients that had claims for, like, the benefits they had. I had to pull these out because they're not actually in the product. Like, what are you talking about? He said, yeah, like, the recipe that I wrote, the copy on that you gave me, which was the recipe we got from Luke Jaden. He's like, this recipe does not match what's actually in the product. I'm like, what are you talking about? I gave them the recipe. I said, build that. And, like, I go to the manufacturer, I'm like, this is the recipe I gave you. This is what's in here, right? And they're like, yeah, that's what's in there. I'm like, are you sure? Because copy told me. Anyway, we go back and forth, and also, I get a message from the manufacturer. They're like, oh, my gosh, we're so sorry. We see the mistake. You're right. Like, the recipe you gave us is not what the Zooma juice is. And I just sat there, and I was like, oh, my gosh. Like, literally probably. I mean, my hard cost for inventory are over six figures, $150,000 or more. Inventory is now sitting there, and it's not the Right. Formula. And I'm like, oh, my gosh. Like, what do I do? Do I just, like, not say anything and just like, oh, well, we'll just tweak the copy. But I was like, man, I didn't. I didn't want to go create a product that. That just tasted good. I wanted to create a product that matched the promises we were trying to make for the audience we were trying to make it for. And so I went back to manufacturer, and they're like, we'll fix it. We're so sorry. But I was like, you know what? There's just been a couple of mistakes. And so we decided to transfer over to a different manufacturer we've used for other products in the past. And I gave them the new recipe. And right now, we're literally in the middle of doing taste testing with them, going through the same process of, like, okay, how to make peach ring taste good with the formula has all the stuff we need to. I think that's part of the problem, is, like, they couldn't get it taste right with our formula, so they pulled some of the things out to make it taste right. It's like, no, we can't. We couldn't do that. And so we're going back and forth back. We have a couple of flavors we're taste testing, like, a sour apple, which is really good. Kiwi strawberry. There's like, a mojito one, which is really good. And then on fruit punch, we're testing a bunch of flavors as well. So we're doing the whole process over again, which. Which sucks, and it's slow. So we're working on the new version, but in the interim, we have $100,000 worth of inventory of a product that's good and it tastes good. But as you guys know, my belief, good is the enemy to great. And if I want this to be something I'm proud of, it's got to be great. And so right now, we're doing testing in the funnel. We're testing another version of the funnel. It's a short form, like free plus shipping. Like, hey, get two packs of peach ring, two packs of fruit, red and green for free. Cover shipping, handling, and then from there, pushing the upsell funnel, Just testing some things at a small scale to see what we can do to get the conversions right. So when we do have the new product, we can blow it up. And so this is the game, right? This is the game we all signed up for. There's the ups, the downs, the positives and negatives. The pros the cons. But that's what I wanted to share inside of these, these episodes. I hope by listening to the Zoom and Juice stuff, you got some ideas, you got some thoughts about the process of how we do it from, like, why would I pick this business? Like, what is the most valuable asset? To me, it's the copy, right? Like, I bought this company because of the copy. That was the reason why. Trying to figure out who's the actual avatar for this. And funnel hacking to figure out which avatars are already being served. What's the avatar that we need to actually go after. I'm also understanding that, like, look, just because I'm Russell, just because I'm the funnel dude who builds funnels, who's obsessed with who funnel hacks 15 funnels before we built this one. It doesn't always work the first time out of the gate, usually. In fact, it doesn't. Hopefully it helps also knowing that, like, I have problems with manufacturing. Hopefully when you go with the manufacturer, you make sure that when you get the sample that, you know this is the actual formula. It's the correct formula. Like, okay, this tastes good. Is this based on this exact formula? But the cool thing is, like, when this is done, when it's right, then we start growing and get to 100 customers, then a thousand and five thousand. And, you know, I was talking to Ryan Moran about this. He talks about supplement companies. Like, you get 5,000 active customers on supplement, you can sell that company for $10 million. So for my mind, this is the goal. Like, how do we get 5,000 people on Zoom, a juice and an exit for $10 million? Like, that becomes a fun virtual real estate property. It's like building a house on Park Place and, like, adding the people and all sorts of stuff. Then you sell it for, you know, for eight figures. And again, if you enjoyed this episode, please, please, please share with other people. That is how you can get back to me the most. Because I'm doing these for free. Because I love sharing it, number two. But number one. But number two, hopefully you get some value from it. So if you do, please share it with other people. Talk about it on Facebook, share it on forums, post it on your feed. Like, whatever it is, let people know about it. And if you have questions about this product or any project, go to marketingsecrets.com Again, there's a block there where you can submit voice questions. And I listen those questions and we'll pull those ones back in. Maybe my next Zoom and Juice episode, if you guys ask questions specifically, specifically about this. Or maybe if you watch the YouTube version, you post it down below, my team can pull those questions and we can answer them at the beginning of episode, you know, the next Zuma Juice episode. And that way we can kind of have this as an open dialogue, which makes it more fun for me and hopefully for you as well. So that's kind of the game plan, you guys. I hope you enjoyed this episode. We'll see you guys on the next episode of the Marketing Secret Show.