How Nomiku dealt with competitors | Lisa Fetterman

OK. We finished our first Kickstarter and we moved back to China. Where our Kickstarter is, like, very delayed, as all hardware Kickstarters are. The good news is that we ship. And how we got there was that we lived in China next to our factory. And we continued living next to our factory for 2 years. I would literally turn the lights on and set up the line. Like, I looked at it. I learned it. High-tech manufacturing. And that's how we were able to bring it back to the United States. Now we have a factory on 14th and South Van Ness in San Francisco where we manufacture high-tech appliance. It's Wi-Fi connected. OK. So we have our MVP. We're selling it. And competitors come out. And they are fierce. More money than me. They buy ads. Like, they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars monthly just on ads. And I don't have that. All I have is my community. I think about buying ads, but the thing is, is that that doesn't differentiate me, and I'm just gonna throw my money into a dark, pitch-black hole. This is a challenge in front of me. It's really serious. Competition is real. So I think about it. How do I differentiate? When you walk down an aisle and you try to choose toothpaste, it's actually quite hard because everybody has tartar control, whitening, cavity protection, etc. It— but then they all become very mediocre together. It's just a sea of whatever. Everything toothpaste is just straight-up toothpaste. Right. And I sell a product that heats up water to a precise temperature and circulates it. I don't want it to become the next toothpaste. I don't want it to become commodified. I want to keep my X factor. And my X factor is community. My X factor is that I get people to have longer customer lifetime value because I really care about them. I'm not gonna follow my competitor's lead of buying ads. That's just not how it works for us. Plus, I'd lose that competition, 'cause I don't have that ammo behind me. So what I do is that I go ham on content. Like, I love food. I love taking pictures of food. I love making videos of food and sharing with people. And that content strategy really works. Even though my competitors sold more machines, our videos are viewed 50 times more. Our hashtags are 75% more effective. And we get people buying over and over again without any ads. Where did you distribute those videos? Instagram. Facebook is really bad now because they make you pay for your things. So Instagram, also actually just live placement. Places like here where I'm talking about the business. So, yes, I didn't want to be ordinary. From that experience, what I learned was that if I try to catch up with someone, if I take a graph of all the things I'm really freaking good at, like a bar graph, there'd be some things that I'd be really sweet at, like public speaking. Woo! Arithmetic. No! This is— like, should I just go home and just double down on, like, multiplication and learning my arithmetic? No, because then that would make me mediocre. I would— all of my bars would flatline. There would be nothing distinguishable about me. So from that day on, I was like, you know what? Whatever I am, I'm going to double down on that. I'm not going to focus on the areas where I'm deficient, because I'm not going to catch up. And when I do, I'm just going to flatline. And I'm not gonna be interesting to anybody. I won't even be interesting to myself. So I was like, you know what, Lisa? You're weird. Double down on weird. Lisa, you're very passionate. Double down on passion. Lisa, you are very motivating. I was like, just gotta figure out, just gotta figure out like why I do what I do and how did I get good at it and keep going further. So I'm gonna ask you a question.