How to Get Your Business Go Viral on TikTok (feat. Julia Montgomery aka @itxmejules)

Hey everybody. Welcome to the Build in Public podcast. I'm your host, KP, and on this show, I interview world-class entrepreneurs, ambitious startup founders, creators, and builders on the internet who are boldly building the future in public. This podcast is my excuse to take you all on a curious journey to understand, learn, and hopefully be inspired by the worldviews, insights, and stories of these fabulous people changing the world. So far, I've gotten the rare privilege to sit down with incredible guests like Gary Vee, Alexis Ohanian, Kat Cole, Sahil Lavingia, and many more leaders. So check out the full podcast listing at buildingpublicpodcast.com. Now buckle up and get ready for our latest episode. Hello everybody. Welcome to the Building Public Podcast. I'm your host, KP, and I am super excited to be chatting with Julia Montgomery, joining us from New York City. Julia, Right? Did I get the location right?

Yes. New York City. And also my last name. Now social media will know.

Now they know, right? I know you were, it's me, Jules, or it's, uh—

Yes, it's supposed to be it's me, Jules. The only reason there's an X after it is because it's me, Jules spelled properly was taken.

Taken. Wow. It's funny because even despite that quote unquote typo, you still have crushed it. You still have built a, what I would call an audience empire on TikTok. You have close to 300K. Followers on TikTok, and then about, I think, 3 million likes. You know, I'm sure you stopped caring, you stopped counting, you know, at this point, but huge fan of your work. And I know we connected last couple of weeks ago, and I've expressed, you know, you know, my— the fact that I love your work and the fact that you're kind of speaking a lot of the things that I would love to talk about, except that you're doing it on TikTok. And that's awesome, including building in public. So today's conversation, I'm excited to unpack some of your life lessons, some of your entrepreneurship, you know, lessons and insights in all the experiments that you've done on TikTok and what, what were some top takeaways for our audience here. First of all, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Awesome. So why don't you give a quick 30-second or 60-second intro of who you are, maybe take us through your last 3, 4 years of your entrepreneurship journey, because I know there were some interesting pivots and twists there, as I would love to have you share them.

Yes, it has been all over the place. I'll go back about 80% of the way. I was working a job that did not inspire me, to put it nicely. And I discovered the podcast, How I Built This, which I started just bingeing. I would listen to it every day.

And were you in college at this time or?

This was post-college. Yes. So, after graduation, working a job I didn't like, I was trying just anything in healthcare. Because I don't know, that's what my family wanted me to do. I hate to say that's the biggest reason, but I think that's the biggest reason. I also really loved numbers and business, and it's a long story, but yeah, I just, I was trying to make healthcare work and I did not enjoy it. Discovered the podcast How I Built This, and I started listening to it while I got ready for work in the morning, at my lunch breaks, after work. And one day I was eating lunch in my car and listening to How I Built This, and I, it was Sarah Blakely's episode on how she founded Spanx. And she said that she was selling fax machines door-to-door post-undergrad, and she cried in her car between houses and was like, this is not my movie. I feel like I'm stuck in someone else's movie. This is not supposed to be my story. And it really resonated with me. And I think that was just kind of the push that I needed to finally act on one of my many business ideas. And I did so much research and tried to figure out What the best way was to start, how not to fail, like how to know if you're going to be good at business. I'm like, how do I know if I'm going to be a good entrepreneur? And everyone's like, you won't, you have to try it and find out. So anyways, this was the push I needed and I came home. I'm looking through all my journals of business ideas and trying to do some market research. I used tools to see what was like the best thing to sell on Amazon. And I ended up actually taking a break from the research and scrolling Instagram and seeing a couple of posts of people in like tie-dye sweat sets, like sweatshirts and sweatpants matching. And I clicked on the accounts that they were getting them from and they were sold out everywhere. They were being handmade. So people were buying like white sweatpants and dyeing them and they couldn't keep up with the demand. So I was like, well, I can help supply that demand. And I ordered a bunch of white sweats. I started dyeing them in my parents' bathtub, had my little sister help me, eventually paid her. Took a bunch of self-timer photos of just me in these sweats in my childhood bedroom with like a sheet behind me and like— Oh my God. A ring light. It was such a sketchy setup. And I just like made an Instagram and I posted 20 photos of me in these sweats. And I tried to like zoom in and get some different angles and like make it look different. But it was like just me in these sweats. And I started DMing all the people who were in the comments on these competitors' pages and sending them discount codes to my sweats. These are the same thing.

No, on the front end, was this a Shopify store? Like how were, how were you accepting orders and payments? Okay.

Yeah. So I thought about doing Amazon FBA for a while and I just couldn't get anything to make sense where I would like the amount of energy that it takes to build a business. I just feel like it's not worth it to have 70% of your revenue taken off the top.

Right.

I mean, there are some great benefits to selling on Amazon or even like maybe testing a market. Right. Via Amazon. But yeah, I ended up starting a Shopify site, watched a ton of YouTube videos on how to run Facebook and Instagram ads, and I started gifting to influencers. I feel like I grew up during peak influencer culture. I'm like a cusper, like millennial Gen Z, and I went to high school while influencers were like being born on Instagram. And then they were just like I feel like the biggest thing when I was in college, everyone followed Instagram influencers, their favorite style inspiration, whatever. So I already had a bunch of people in mind that I wanted to send these sweats to, and I just started with the smallest people thinking they probably get the fewest requests from brands.

Right.

And started DMing them asking if I, if I could send them our sweats. I'm like, no strings attached, would love to send you these, have been following you for a while. And that's how I started gifting. One of the early girls that I sent a set to, she had maybe 20K on Insta. And she ended up messaging me and saying, oh, I posted a TikTok in these too. Like, I just started posting on TikTok. And it was right before COVID hit the States. And she—

Early 2020.

Yes, early 2020. And I had no idea about the power of TikTok. I mean, I knew what TikTok was, but I just kind of was dismissing it as the dancing app for kids at this point. And she was like, here's this video of me. And she was dancing in the sweats. And it Blew up, went viral, and drove like $12,000 in sales.

Wow.

And I was like, how am I gonna tie-dye that many sweatpants?

So what did you do?

That is when I started like really employing my sister. I was like, okay, I mean, I'll give you $200 a day to tie-dye these sweats. Like, I just need someone helping me. And she was, I don't know, early college at the time. She's like, okay.

Right. Wait, wait, wait. So it's Like this whole $12,000 worth order was still hand— like made, not made, but like done by you both. Yeah.

This is like white jerseys, sweatpants.

Oh my God.

That's why in my parents' bathtub.

Oh my God. Shout out to the Montgomerys, you know, to put up with all of this. But

my poor parents' bathroom.

Very impressed. What was the name of your business back then? Or is it still the same? Or

99 the label. She's extinct now.

I see.

So the way that that happened is this thing blows up. It's crazy. The Facebook ads, my CAC is so low. I think I'm paying like a couple dollars to get someone to spend an average of $80 on my website. And my, the influencer marketing is working exceptionally well. I'm getting influencers who follow their influencer friends DMing me and asking me to do posts in exchange for product. I don't know why they were doing doing so much work. I think it was because these sweats were hard to find and everyone was like bored. It was quarantine. It was like the only fashion trend happening because no one was leaving the house.

Right.

So I started doing a ton of influencer marketing, selling like $5,000, $6,000 a day of these sweats. It was just insane.

This is peak COVID era too, I think.

Yes. But by now we're hitting like, okay, we're all not leaving the house. My mom and sister are both teachers. And so they were sent home from school and at this time they didn't have virtual school or anything, so they were just home. And I was like, I have something to occupy you. Do you wanna tie-dye hundreds of sweatpants with me? So that was just like the whole family activity. I had a friend from college find me on Instagram, like on the Discover page. And he was like, oh my God, I can't believe you didn't tell me you have an e-commerce business. He had been doing e-commerce for years. And I was like, well, I don't wanna tell anyone about it in case I was bad at it. Because then that would be awkward. So I waited, found out that I could actually sell stuff online. I was actually— actually, I still didn't tell anyone. He found me and he was like, how are you doing this? I told him I was handmaking it and how much we were selling. He was like, that's insane. Like, let's get you a supplier. So he introduced me to a supplier he had used for a while. We went back and forth with this manufacturer in China, ended up getting samples after maybe a month of waiting, and then put an order in for a bunch of sweatpants. I think it was like $50,000 cash. And at that point, that was like almost everything that I had made. I only had the business for like a few months before we got this order in. So then this was like COVID had already hit. It was probably like June, but like for some reason the factory shut down after that. So I don't know if like it just got worse and they had no one to work. I don't know. Right. But the textile mill shut down, the factory shut down. I was out of stock for like 6 months. Wow. And it was a seasonal order. I didn't diversify my supply chain at all. It was like the only stock that I could sell. So I'm trying to still like source jerseys at this point and handmake stuff while I'm waiting for this other stock to arrive. But then jerseys factory shuts down. Wow. And can't get that. So I'm sourcing like random white sweats. I spend probably like 3 hours a day at this point, just like calling manufacturers and trying to get ahold of something to sell. And I end up getting open-bottom sweatpants and people wanted joggers at the time.

Yep.

And so I'm seam ripping them open and threading elastic through them and sewing them shut myself.

Wow.

It was just crazy. So anyways, finally hit the point where there are no more white sweatpants in the United States today. And my stock is going to be stuck overseas and then at some shipping port for months to come. And I'm like, well, I'm good at influencer marketing. That's how I grew this. So I'm gonna start doing influencer marketing for my friends. I had already started like sharing my spreadsheet of influencers and kind of giving just like advice on the side on how to do it. Advice, yeah. Yeah. And so to get more brands, I decide I'm gonna post on TikTok. I saw this Gary Vee video where he's like, people are dismissing TikTok and they should be posting 2 to 3 times a day. And I'm like, all right, 3 TikToks a day, here we go. And I start talking about influencer marketing and how to run a campaign and how to build a D2C brand, like all kinds of stuff I'm testing. And an influencer marketing video blows up. I start getting a bunch of creator followers. The people who are following me were— it was just like blowing my mind. I'm like, these people are so much cooler than me. They have actual platforms, actual brands. TikTok is this amazing untapped networking tool.

Right.

So I keep on posting. The brand flow is great. I start hiring for this agency. Then I get the idea for my startup. Influenc3d, which is what I'm currently working on. This now, to put us back on the timeline, is July 2021. So June 2021, maybe. Right. That's when I come up with the idea for Influenc3d.

Yeah, go on. What is Influenc3d? Yeah.

Yeah. Well, so I, at this point I had been posting on TikTok for maybe 6 months and running the agency and running these like traditional influencer campaigns for brands. What Influent does is it attempts to make content marketing more predictable in the way that Facebook ads and Google ads are predictable. So they have all of this data, all this traffic information. What we do right now is a brand comes to us and says, we want to be on TikTok. It's a lot harder for them to get on TikTok than it was for them to get on Facebook or Instagram. Now they have to talk to the camera. They have to have like real ideas. They can't just take a picture of their product, right? So we will match them. Them with some creators who are good at talking to the camera, good at making content already, and we'll have them make content on behalf of the brands. The influencers, the creators don't post it to their accounts. They just give it to the brands and the brands post it. We'll tell the brands which ones they should be boosting with TikTok Spark ads, that kind of thing. And I started putting all of these brand TikToks into spreadsheets and analyzing for patterns. To see if, you know, the high performers had anything in common, if we could predict what type of content would do well. And it's actually quite predictable. It's difficult to predict something that's going to go like mega viral, but it's pretty straightforward predicting what will do well, what will reach maybe a few hundred thousand people.

Right. Actually, let's put a pin on that because I want to come back to it in a different question, which is like unpack the Twitter, the secret sauce of Mm-hmm. Going viral, at least semi-viral on TikTok. We'll get there. But to finish this initial question of probably, by the way, this is probably the longest answer to my question of—

How'd you get here?

Introduce yourself, right? So how do you get here? I love it. I love it. This is like a podcast highlight that this is the longest answer for a question of what do you do? So this happens in June, July 2021. You started this startup. This is a tech startup now, not an agency anymore, correct?

Correct.

And you've been at it for almost a year now, correct?

Yes.

No more. I mean, more than a year. All right.

Just over a year.

Awesome. This is excellent. Now let's segue into like, what has Influent morphed into? Because I know a lot of the times when you start a tech startup, people start with an MVP, like a first version of something. And you know, what I've always advocated for is just put something out there into the market and let people slash the market kind of guide you into what they want more from you, as opposed to being attached to your initial hypothesis and married to it and losing lot of, you know, and getting stressed out about why it's not working, right? Has that happened in your case too? And if so, then how have you evolved? How has the product evolved?

Oh my God. Yeah, absolutely. The reason I didn't initially take you through all the iterations from the inception of Influent is because I'm trying to shorten my, like, how did you get here story? And I can't.

That was a shortened version?

That's me trying. I can't.

We have to do a Netflix documentary on your story.

It's just so all over the place. Like, it's so chaotic. I have— that's what I loved about How I Built This when I started listening to it, was how different every founder's story was. I'm like, this is so comforting to someone who thought that you had to like go to a top business school and do consulting and, you know, get into business a really traditional way. So, I loved hearing that it was all over the place. I feel like my story is like one of the most chaotic that I know.

I think, look, there's no one in business who will tell you that, oh, I went from zero to being whoever they ended up being in a very linear fashion, right? Everyone. That's what the biggest myth in business, you know, across all generations or decades or countries has been the fact that, you know, people assume going into business that it's a very linear pitch deck to go-to-market, to first customers, to scale, to exit. And it's nothing but linear. You know, it's so loopy. And circular. And sometimes you actually have to go back to the drawing board after 4 months or 4 years. And so that's why I think it's way more painful if you're so attached to that initial hypothesis. You know, it could be just an excuse, like a small ticket to get into a music festival and you do whatever the hell you want inside of it. Like it can't be just the— it's not your— in my view, it's not like a degree that you want to, you know, put it in your living room proudly. That's not your MVP. Your MVP is just literally a ticket. Yeah. to go to market, you know? So yeah, you're— I mean, your story, no matter how chaotic it may seem, I think a lot of listeners will resonate because theirs is probably just as scattered and chaotic. And you're right. So yeah, yeah, add a little bit of flair to what you were saying. Sorry.

To influence. Yeah. Well, so to what you were saying, one of my favorite things that I've heard is the only person who remembers launch day is the founder. No one remembers the day Facebook launched. No one remembers the day Apple launched. Like, you could be the greatest company in the world. And no one remembers your launch day.

Wow.

It's just you.

Like another thought just on that one. You know, a lot of people are so afraid of the initial failures. If the first, you know, let's say you and I had 8 business ideas, 8 experiments that we run, we ran Facebook ads and just try to like get them out of our, out the door. The real, the bigger reality is people are so busy and self-centered in a good way and like living their own stories and the busy lives that they barely even care about your biggest success. Like your biggest success would be a footnote in someone else's story. It's impossible for anyone to expect that they would care about your failure or one of your many failures. So it's actually a great motivating, and it's like that fact could be disappointing saying like, man, nobody cares about me, but also it's liberating. Make all your mistakes, right? Like do all this shit. Like nobody cares about that until you become something. Like if you become The Rock or Oprah and everyone's watching, you know, but until you're one of those two or like that level name brand, keep shooting the shit. Nobody cares.

Yeah. That's what I always say about posting on social media too. Like your videos that flop, they flop, so no one sees them.

Right.

That's the beauty of it.

That's the beauty of it. Yeah.

But the initial idea for Influent was actually, it came from brands started reaching out to me because my platform was growing and most of my followers were creators at the time, brands and creators, but it was very creator heavy. And there were so many creator economy startups popping up and they were reaching out and saying, all your followers are creators. Can you help us get creators on our app, on our platform. And a lot of them were really interesting and I was like, yeah, sure, this is perfect. This is on brand for me. So started working with brands, but I had no idea how to price myself. I was still living in Michigan. I had no other creator friends. I was like, I've run Instagram campaigns before, but is TikTok similar? I don't know if the pricing is similar. So I posted and I said, hey, I don't know if you guys have ever struggled with pricing yourselves, but fill out this form. It's totally gonna be anonymous. And then I'm gonna give you guys stats on what everyone else is charging. And so you guys can see. Yeah.

Yeah.

So within a few weeks we just had, I don't know, 3,000, 4,000 brand reviews. And the brands ranged from, you know, the smallest Instagram ad brands that you would see to Lego, Nike, Target, Apple. Like, yeah, just a crazy range of brands were reviewed and it was really insightful. It was really cool for someone who didn't know how to price themselves to see. I will say the pricing was all over the map. Um, and I initially thought, let me try to standardize this. I want it to be more fair. But the further into that I got, since this was the initial idea for Glassdoor for influencers. Oh, nice.

Glassdoor for influencers. Oh, nice. Yeah.

Yes. The further into this I got though, the more I realized, especially with TikTok, it's never going to be standardized or even close because you could be a skincare brand looking to work with 3 different influencers. Each of them has 200,000 followers.

Right.

One of them is a lifestyle creator and they'll help you reach your target audience, but it might be a little bit more of a brand awareness play. One of them is an aesthetician who rates her, you know, 3 favorite of each category of product. Right. And to be featured at the top of that is going to directly drive sales. Right. One of them is a dermatologist and you're going to have an actual dermatologist endorsement behind this. So that's gonna be even greater for your brand. Right. So it's just so hard to standardize based on follower count and engagement rate. But that's not actually why we pivoted. Why we pivoted is because our business model was going to be brands post campaigns, creators can apply to campaigns, everything will be transparent. Right. We'll take a portion of the transaction for managing it. But brands didn't wanna do so many traditional campaigns anymore.

Right.

They wanted to host events and build their PR list, and they still wanted to do some traditional marketing, but they were just really diversifying the way that they're working with influencers. And most recently, a few months ago, brands started asking me to place creators within their TikTok, like to be in-house content creators or make UGC for them. Right. They're like, we want to build our own platforms. It's more cost efficient. It's better long term. If we own the content, then we're able to put Spark ads behind them. And, you know, it's just, they're more in control and it's more affordable working with influencers on a once-off basis. I mean, the rates are crazy now. And I know from creating content for brands that it's a ton of work. So I understand the justification for the rates, but a lot of brands just can't afford it.

Like one example, like you don't have to name names, but like, let's say if I was Nike and if I wanted like a perfect influencer, up and coming, They're like, they have a lot of Gen Z followers. Mm-hmm. What would be a sample rate if I was Nike? Exa— as hypothetically?

Yeah. So saying this up-and-coming influencer has maybe 500K.

Okay. That's good. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know. Well, 500K on TikTok, I feel like is kind of, I don't know, 10 grand for—

10 grand for an endorsement or like for a video basically on—

Yeah. Yeah. For a TikTok video.

Wow. That's cool. I mean, that's—

Because you're Nike too though. So people know who they're talking to when they set their rate.

Yeah, of course. But I actually have— Yeah, right. I mean, that's Fair. I have, yeah, I have endless cash. I'm Nike, right? In this case. Yeah.

Yes. Yeah. I have, uh, I, I know an influencer who was right around $500K and worked with a very similar brand to Nike and I think charged $8,000 or $9,000.

Right.

For a video.

For a 30-second or a 1-minute clip, basically a TikTok clip.

Yeah. Somewhere between 30 and a minute, maybe it was like 45 seconds. Yeah.

So what you learned though is that brands are not wanting more of this. They'd rather hire this person for an hourly rate and maybe just keep the content in-house. Is that what you said earlier?

Yes. So, and we're also entering a recession, so people are like pulling back on their budgets. When we first started, they were just— I mean, a lot of brands were throwing a lot of money at TikTok, right? And I don't think that was necessarily a bad thing for a lot of them. I think people were trying to learn the landscape. They didn't know what was going to work, but they're trying to be more efficient now. And when we have like one or a few creators making content in-house for a brand, it's more consistent income for the creators. So if I'm a creator and I make content for 2 or 3 brands, I could be making a full-time income. I could be making, you know, right, 5, 6 grand a month. Right. I know who I'm making content for. I don't have to go negotiate my rates every month. It's not hit or miss. And then for the brand—

Brands, they don't have to keep finding somebody else all the time. Yeah.

Right. And Gen Z and younger millennials and just like everyone has— is so tired. They're so fatigued from all of the influencer-sponsored content that they've seen. It's just not resonating with them the way that it used to. I mean, like you used to be able to work with an Instagram influencer in 2014, and if she had 200,000 followers on Instagram, you could count on getting hundreds of conversions.

Right.

It was crazy how well it worked and how the engagement was. So it, that's just not happening with Gen Z now. I think that they're just much more, I don't know, like savvy with the way that they like respond to digital marketing. And I, I mean, I think that's the way more marketing works, right? We just like get tired of what we're used to seeing.

Right, right, exactly. Now, so what does the latest pivot look like? Like what is the latest offering from your side?

Yeah, so right now a brand can come to us and say, we wanna be on TikTok and we just fully manage that strategy for them. So, will place creators on their content and we will. So I said that I was doing the spreadsheets for the brands. We've now automated that with technology. So AI will actually scan or like you can connect your TikTok account and it'll give you analytics on how everything's performing. It'll find the patterns for us and point them out. And it'll also suggest new content ideas based on your niche. So if you're a beauty brand, it will suggest that you make a video on recreating Hailey Bieber's Met Gala makeup because that's trending on Google News right now.

Wow.

Which, like, things that trend in pop culture tend to do well on TikTok because anything that's like relevant that people are talking about, like if you can give someone something to like grab onto, that tends to do a lot better than something with like less context or that isn't as popular.

Yeah. Wow. I love that. Now let's get to that question that I put a pin on earlier, which is, you know, what are some secrets to going viral on TikTok? Asterisk, you know, assuming this is not always the case. And, you know, of course this is just an example kind of thing. Yeah,

of course. First of all, I'm so impressed that you can remember what you wanted to ask me from like several minutes ago. My ADHD brain could never.

It's just this podcasting life, you know, I'm getting used to it now. Yeah,

I'm like, oh yeah, that question. So your hook, your intro, your first sentence of your video is by far the most important determining factor in your video success. You People's attention spans are shrinking so rapidly. You have very little time to get someone to stop scrolling. So what you want to do with that first sentence is you jump immediately to the value of the video, whatever's going to entertain them or inform them. You don't want to make them wait. It's not YouTube anymore. You can't say, hi, welcome back to my channel. There's no time for that. It has to be like—

If we were doing a TikTok video, let's say this hypothetically, this episode, Yeah. It would open with me saying, here's the secret about going viral on TikTok, because that's the actual value prop in a way, right? It was not— there would be no like, welcome to the Build in Public podcast, none of that shit. Like, just delete all of that. Okay. Exactly. Keep going. Keep going.

Exactly. Intros that use the word you in the first sentence of the video tend to perform better. So here's the secret to how to grow your TikTok. You would want to just like make it personal for them.

Interesting. Wow.

Everyone's like very selfish when they're looking for value.

Yeah. So if you

can make it feel like it's about them, that helps. Addressing a pain point in the first sentence tends to be really effective. So if you're talking about a skincare product, instead of talking about one of its benefits or why you love it or what it does, you want to talk about like a pain point it addresses. So breakouts, oiliness, dry skin, wrinkles, like something like that. You want to like address that pain point because that actually tends to elicit more emotion. And gets people to stop scrolling. Emotion is why people stop scrolling. It's the same reason people buy anything, you know?

Right.

It's like, I love looking at brands and like finding out what they're really selling.

Right.

Because you have—

It's like Nike's selling inspiration.

Yeah, right. You have like 2 ends of the market, right, that are like really split. And you have Amazon and Walmart over here that are just like convenience.

Yeah, they're selling convenience, right? Like low prices, affordability.

Exactly. But then on the other side where you have like brands that elicit emotions, like they're selling anything from coolness, exclusivity, you know, like beauty. Supreme, for example. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So they're, they're always selling like some kind of emotion. I don't know. And I love looking at that.

It's fascinating though. I think you're right. I mean, I think especially like the margin-wise, like if you can sell emotion and if you can like sustainably do this over a long period of time, which is, that's the hard part. I think even I can start a DTC brand and say, hey, we're like better than Nike, we're selling like, I don't know, coffee. Right. For example.

Yeah.

And for our whole ethos and a whole, like the whole brand aesthetic is all about inspiration. We still, we use like athletes as well. Right. But the difference is like the longevity of that promise, you know, like Nike has been doing it for 35, 40 years, whereas you and I have been doing it for 4 weeks. So we will have to be insanely patient. But if we do though, if there's, if we can bank on the emotion aspect, like to your point, like Supreme sells exclusivity. Nike sells inspiration. Coke sells happiness, quote unquote joy, you know, like broaden the horizon.

No, that's, I think that's spot on.

Yeah. Apple sells creativity.

I mean, they're straight up like hit your dopamine loop with all this sugar.

Exactly. Apple sells creativity or design in a way. And so they demand or they warrant and they, they can get, attract insane margins because there's price. These things are insanely high margins compared to something that, you know, you can buy on Amazon or Walmart, right? Which are all like low margin, high volume stuff.

Of course. And to your point with like being patient, margins tend to widen with time if you're doing things right. Yes. If I'm trying to place an order for some sort of product that's going to compete with Apple, I don't know what like their order quantities look like, but I'm assuming they're in the hundreds of thousands minimum for like a single, you know, and I'm probably going to be able to finance like maybe a 1,000 product run if I raised money. So obviously like those things make a difference, but I'm so glad you picked Nike as an example because I think a big mistake people make is they try to compete with some larger incumbent by playing their game and you can't beat someone at their own game.

Yeah, exactly. It's like trying to play tennis with Serena Williams. It's like, no, you wanna, you wanna play like, I don't know, hopscotch or something with her. It's like something that, you know, like she's like you, that person or that, you know, incumbent is not used to dealing with. I think another thing I wanna hear what you think about this is I think a lot of folks focus on like what's obvious, what's visible. As an opportunity. I think oftentimes you have to think about what's not visible, like what's an underserved niche or sub-niche that this mega brand is not serving. And that's your go-to-market wedge to market because those people are already on the fringe. They're angry. Yeah. That like, for example, this big incumbent is not serving them well enough because that's not part of their core persona. You start there and then you kind of like, you know, get them over your court and then you build it up from there as opposed to going after their obvious main personas.

Yes, exactly. That's why I'm so glad that you chose Nike as an example, because I just heard that Brooks Running was not Brooks Running yet and trying to compete with Nike. And they were, I don't know, this was maybe some 10 or so years ago, and they were losing money. They were heading in a very not great direction. They brought in a new CEO who was like, we are going to be the shoe for competitive runners. Like, we are going to be Brooks Running. Mm-hmm. Nike is the shoe for everyone. It's for the masses. It's kind of become like this cross between athleticism and style. Yeah, exactly. And we want to cater to like the competitive performance runners. And that's how Brooks didn't die. They ended up like just blowing up within the running community. And now they actually do cater to a slightly broader community than that.

Right.

RXBAR is another great example. They went and sold to CrossFit gyms and then they are now, they're like sold to mass markets at supermarkets. Yeah,

I couldn't agree more. So yeah, you seem to be that kind of person with like a fountain of ideas. You know, you're always wrestling with 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 ideas at a time, business ideas. I mean, what would be your advice for someone who's kind of like you, but they were, they are, let's say, in their college, or they're, they've never built a business before, they've never given this a shot. Looking back at your own life and your story in the last 5 years, what would be your advice to your younger self?

I would say you have to get A positive attitude about failure and don't be afraid to lose a little bit of money because what you think is a lot at a young age is just so not a lot of money. And also, it's just like you have to get okay with failing and just like the only way to figure out what's going to work in business is by actually doing. And for me anyways, that was the hardest thing because I'm someone who is just very analytical and I will do a ton of research and I will go down rabbit holes and I can just be be paralyzed by the analysis of trying to get everything right before I go to market. And I think that's why I've seen a lot of people fail, actually, just like I've seen people in the startup space who will just do so much internally before ever giving anything to the customer. If you look at like Airbnb's MVP, it was awful.

Right.

You would think, who would list their, the place they live on this website?

Right.

But no one's gonna remember that. And so, I think you just have to like go for it before you feel ready. I think that the biggest difference that I've seen between people who are like speculative about business and people who are like awesome entrepreneurs are most people wait until they feel like there's a guaranteed outcome to take action. Entrepreneurs always put in a ton of time and effort and energy and emotion before they know if anything will work. And like putting in all of that effort without a guarantee, I think that's like the difference maker and that's the risk that people talk about. I actually have a really specific example from college. Yeah. I did a really good amount of market research. I read South Korean beauty blogs and I found out that the girls over there were jade rolling their faces like the little— and this was 2014, '15 maybe. It was really a while ago and no one was talking about it here yet. And I had a cart full of them on Alibaba and I was like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to like test it on Amazon and then I'm going to make my own website. I had a whole plan and then I was like—

It's become a thing now though, right? It's like—

It's a big thing now. Okay, cool. That's why I want to cry about it.

Wait, okay, cool.

So I had this whole cart full of them. I'm about to buy them and I'm like, $500? That takes me like a month to make right now because I'm going to school full-time. Okay, maybe it took me like a couple weeks to make, but I did not make a lot of money. So I'm like, $500, it's so much money. I only have $1,000, right? It's half my money. And now I'm like, oh my God, $500 to start a business.

Yeah, you should have. But I know you're like, dirt

cheap. And like a year later, Kim Kardashian's on her Instagram story like, Jade rolling her face. And I'm like, I'll never not act on an idea again.

That's amazing. That's a fun story. And I think, you know, maybe the biggest takeaway for you is to, like, to your point at the end where you now know the price of not acting, you know?

Exactly.

And so switching gears here, tell me a little bit about audience building and what you've learned. You know, I know it's, you know, of course TikTok is your main platform, but like, Overall, if you have to summarize one or two top tips that you learned about building an audience, which might be different from starting a company, right? Um, what would that be like? What would be the advice you would give yourself on day zero, day one of your TikTok journey?

I think my number one tip would be don't try to go into a specific niche because you see other people succeeding there and because you think that that's going to help you build this platform. It's not sustainable, you won't have fun. And you'll also end up with a useless platform. The chances of becoming like an Emma Chamberlain or a David Dobrik are so low that you really want to make sure you're creating content that caters to a passion community you actually care about. So that when you have brand deals, it's brands you love, or when you, you know, launch your own business, it's a business in a space that you care about. I mean, like, really ask yourself, why you want this platform and what your ideal platform looks like and work backwards from that. I'm all about strategy for content performance and tweaking your intro and the way that you edit and the style of content, maybe playing off of some trends in pop culture to see what you can get to trend on TikTok. But if you're not creating content around something that you like, it always comes through on camera and it's, it's just not sustainable. people. I did that for a while and I started to feel really tired about the type of content that I was creating. And it was basically like how to blow up on TikTok quick tips. And it did help me grow in the beginning. So I can't say that I'm— I wish I never posted it, but I was shocked that when I switched to creating content that I cared about, that my audience also cared about it.

Yeah.

And that new people, I found new people who cared about it and that it ended up being more useful. Whenever I post videos that are like deep dives on how a brand was built, I just like a ton of fun researching. I end up connecting with really cool people. They end up performing better. So create content that you enjoy consuming.

I love it. I think, you know, the framework that I've been using, and I haven't said this out loud on the pod yet, but maybe this is the moment, is I'm trying to imagine a triangle. And then I want to have, you know, one of these 3 elements, you know, when I do content, it has to be either fun or it has to be something that brings me joy. Sometimes it doesn't have to be fun, but like it's meaningful and joyful, or something that actually is— the last one is learning, something that by doing that act I'm getting smarter, you know. I love

that.

And if it doesn't meet any of these 3, I usually ignore it regardless of how trendy or how everybody in my— all of my peers may do it and etc. Like there's so many things that all my— a lot of my peers do that I don't care for. I'm sure you feel the same way. I know that there are hacks, I know that they will help you grow, but if I'm not having fun, then you It'll very clearly come off, especially if you're on video. And the same thing if I'm not learning, if I'm not curious by default. Like this podcast, literally, I was genuinely doing it for my own sake. Like my— most of my podcasts, 99% of the time, I'm doing it for my own sake. I don't need for 8 people to like clap at this or something. I am just genuinely filling out my own curiosity gap. Mm-hmm. So that's the learning part. And then there's the joy. Sometimes there are stuff that I do, I'm sure you feel the same way, that are hard to do, but they give you meaning and they make you feel like, yeah, I am the kind of person who does this shit. It's not fun. There's no curiosity. Probably there's no ROI, but you feel like you're— it's a nod to you growing up and being an adult saying like, yeah, I'm the kind of person who does this shit.

Yeah.

And so that's the framework I use. And what I loved about— you just said that when you pivoted, you know, of course I saw— I started seeing your content only after your pivot, only recently. I missed all the early embarrassing attempts, but what I loved instantly is, is, you know, there are so many content creators on TikTok. Like it's almost like too abundant at this point. Like there's so many creators. Yeah. What I love about you is that you super, you nerd out and geek out about the marketing analytics and brand research and stuff you just talked about so far on the pod. And you, it's like super hard skills. It's not soft skills. It's like super hard. Tangible, tactical shit. You go into like their background and like you really go into it. And we talked about this last time too. Remember I said a lot of people think that it's the communication skills, it's the lighting, it's the effects. All of that stuff is table stakes on TikTok or anywhere. Like as a podcaster, of course I have to be able to be a conversationalist. Like this is like table stakes, not like new things. I don't need to be Charlie Rose, but I can't be an idiot who can't ask a question. Yeah. But what I think is valuable in many cases is what are some tangible, technical, tactical skills that you can share with others. And that stuff is what brings a lot of, I think, credible people. The soft skills are just like, you know, they'll probably will bring you like masses, but if you want credible, like I had Gary Vee on the pod and I asked him technical tactical questions about building in public and those things. And so he was there because those were the questions I asked, not just like, like fanboy questions that superficial, you know? So I think, yeah, we talked on it last time too. You want to, you want to share your view again? Like, Yeah. Tactical or technical skills versus soft skills. Yeah,

yeah, for sure. So building in public or the skills specifically?

Yeah, the hard skills, like the fact that, you know, to really grow, it's better to go technical and hard, like super nerd, nerd out about the niche you care about than, you know, not.

Yeah, for sure. I think that people get scared of the idea of like a niche or like what they're going to create content around. But you, like you said, it's so saturated, you need to be able to differentiate and some way. And I think an important thing to keep in mind is when you choose what you're gonna be creating content about, that doesn't mean you can't share any other aspects of your personality. You can still share like a lifestyle video, or you can share a workout or a recipe or whatever. Like your, your audience isn't gonna get mad at you. You're not gonna suddenly lose all of your followers. You can have fun with it. But having something that's like an anchor, like a way that you're going to share your passion. Yes. I actually think we're going to start seeing like a huge divide in the creator And I think the middle, the like lukewarm, I guess, creators are going to get wiped out. I know that sounds aggressive, but I think we're going to have like the celebrity creators on one end who just like blew up and now they're just mixing with mainstream fame and it's Charli and Dixie and Addison and all that over there.

Right.

And then we're going to have on the other end, like the passion creators and they are creators because content is a way to share their passion, not because they just wanted to be creators and go to brand events and get PR.

An example would be the— is it Miss Excel? Like what's her name?

Yes. Yeah. Miss Excel. She's great. I actually don't even know. I just know her by Miss Excel.

Yes, exactly. Like, that's it. That's, that's the whole point. You're like, she's so passionate about that Excel thing. I've never seen anybody be that excited about like something like Excel.

Yes.

I think that's what you're going for. The emotion you're going for is you're right. Like either you have to be extremely mega famous, right? Like MrBeast, you know, like all these people like Lilly Singh, like, you know, including YouTube. Right. But either you want to do that, which is you're essentially saying, I want to be part of this PR circles and like be part of Hollywood, whatever. I think there are some people who want that. That's fine. That's great.

That's great.

If you're, let's say if you're in Bangalore, if you're in Seattle and you don't want to go to LA, you don't care for that culture or that kind of, you know, mainstream celebrity fame, whatever, then you should be niche famous or you should aim for niche famous. And the niche fame is not, doesn't look like the mainstream fame. It looks basically very much about like you're nerding out about the thing you're so passionate about. That the emotion, an emotion average user who comes across the content should be like, I can't believe this person's excited about this shit.

Yeah.

There were so many times I felt that way about you and your content. I would be scrolling and I'm like, I can't believe like Julia's excited about this shit. Like, who cares about it? The other day I think I saw something about, I don't know, was it Duolingo or something? And I was like, who cares about that? You're like, you're so passionate. You were pitching that thing. And I was like, this is the most ridiculous thing I've seen. But that's what they want. That's how you build that kind of connection.

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, if you're nerding out on something and you're having fun with it, you'll be able to sustain yourself through those periods, especially in the beginning when you start posting on social media. It's like you're calling into a void before you get something to catch. And if you're not actually having fun with the type of content you're creating, it's just gonna be miserable. And I mean, most people just quit really early on when they realize.

Yeah. Awesome. Look, I think we're at the top of the hour, so I wanna be mindful of your time. I had fun in the last hour. 45, 50 minutes with you here. Thank you so much for being on the show, and I wish you all the best on your, you know, both influencer journey and also your personal TikTok journey too.

Thank you. Me too. Thank you so much for having me.

Awesome. All right, let's keep in touch. Okay.

Bye.

Bye. And that's a wrap. Thanks everyone.