Episode 177
On today’s episode we have the pleasure to chat with Ryan Margolin. Ryan is a Digital Marketing and Branding expert. Ryan is the Founder and CEO of Professional Hair Labs. Ryan is also a TEDx speaker and at his core an Entrepreneur with over 20 years experience in business.
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00;00;24;04 – 00;00;43;10
Speaker 1
Welcome, everyone to the Firing the Man podcast. On today’s episode, we have the pleasure to chat with Ryan Margolin. Ryan is a digital marketing and branding expert. Ryan is the founder and CEO of Professional Hair Labs. He’s also a TEDx speaker at his core, an entrepreneur with over 20 years experience in business. Welcome to the show, Ryan.
00;00;43;11 – 00;00;47;07
Speaker 3
Thanks for having me, David. I’m looking forward to the conversation and I appreciate the opportunity.
00;00;47;08 – 00;00;55;12
Speaker 2
Absolutely. So to to set the scene, can you please share with our listeners a little bit about your background and your path to becoming an entrepreneur? Yes.
00;00;55;14 – 00;01;14;16
Speaker 3
Look, I grew up in an entrepreneurial household. Parents were business owners at a very young age. I experienced, you know, the you know, what I saw at the time were the ups and downs of having a business. And as a kid, a lot went over my head. But I think it really formed and shaped my my beliefs and what I was really looking for in myself growing up.
00;01;14;16 – 00;01;33;10
Speaker 3
So I knew from a very young age I was really in it to, you know, create my own path and and eventually just work for myself. So that’s kind of how the journey started for me. My first positions or my first jobs were sales and marketing based, and they were predominantly much the same throughout my young adult life.
00;01;33;10 – 00;01;49;13
Speaker 3
And then, you know, 28 the economic crash happened and the industry I was working in was one of the worst hit. So I was looking for other opportunities. And, you know, my dad picks up the phone and he was like, You, Well, Brian, I’m not really happy with the way the company is going. It’s been quite stagnant for many, many years.
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00;01;49;13 – 00;02;05;27
Speaker 3
And look, it might be an opportunity for you to come over and see if you can contribute something. So initially I said, no, I wasn’t really interested in moving country. We had myself and my wife had one daughter at the time and she was very young. But, you know, in hindsight we took a little bit more time to think about it and we decided, look, what’s the worst that can happen?
00;02;05;28 – 00;02;29;01
Speaker 3
You know, it’s it’s an opportunity. We move to another country, we experience some new things. And that’s kind of where the the journey of kind of my own self-development and entrepreneurial landscape really took shape. Yeah. We moved to Florida and spent a year and a half there, and within a year and a half we made some really simplistic changes to the business that I saw were, you know, kind of challenging or weak and we tripled revenue.
00;02;29;01 – 00;02;53;17
Speaker 3
And ultimately we didn’t want to stay in Florida. So we put a business plan together to to open up a European facility in Ireland. And that in 2011 we opened that. And that’s kind of, you know, where they were. The journey on this side started. So from that point it was kind of growing year on year and then we had this point of exponential growth over about five years, which took our business from six figures to over eight figures.
00;02;53;17 – 00;02;58;29
Speaker 3
And there’s a lot of lessons that have been learned in between. So that’s kind of the bird’s eye view of of of my journey.
00;02;58;29 – 00;03;15;21
Speaker 4
Excellent. Thanks for sharing, Ryan. And so before I get into some some of our questions, one thing you mentioned in your in your back and your history and your story that that’s intriguing to me whenever I hear this is tripled revenue. Can you share what the audience what are a couple of things that you you know you saw in the business or tweaks that you made to get that hockey stick?
00;03;15;22 – 00;03;32;25
Speaker 3
Absolutely. So when I first joined the company in 2009, I believe was April 2009, I spent the first six months learning about, you know, I knew a little bit about the industry. I grew up in it. But this niche, this this part of the business, I wasn’t so wasn’t so knowledgeable about. So I learned about the internal operations.
00;03;32;25 – 00;03;49;13
Speaker 3
I learned about the customers. I learned about, you know, the marketing side of of of what was required for for, you know, for this type of business over, you know, the six months that that I was focused on learning as much as I could. In parallel with that, I was building a manual database of every single hair replacement studio in the United States.
00;03;49;13 – 00;04;11;26
Speaker 3
You know, in 2009, it was really Google is all you had to go on. So it took quite, quite a few months to to do that. I believe in the end it was about 5000 studios. So we have this database and I had a really good understanding of the different states and different areas of the clusters. And we were like, okay, we have this database of what we know are certified, you know, targeted clients of ours and we need to reach them.
00;04;11;26 – 00;04;29;26
Speaker 3
But you know, what we have really is the foundations right now. I don’t I didn’t really think was powerful enough to make a difference. So one thing my father was always great at was creating an idea. And he really he always had this really solid base formulation of this cosmetic adhesive product that was used to attach hair systems to the scalp.
00;04;29;26 – 00;04;51;01
Speaker 3
But what happened was, fortunately, when I joined the company, a technology came out which was manufactured by another company that allowed us to add oil and water resistance to the formula, which was really the only one key thing that it was missing. Naturally, if you think about wearing a hair system on your scalp, if it gets really hot or if you work out sweat a lot, the adhesive breaks down while this technology allowed it not to do that.
00;04;51;01 – 00;05;11;15
Speaker 3
So we reformulated the base product. We rebranded everything inside of the company from the logo, the messaging to the website. And then what we did is we took that manual database that I built and we did a direct mail campaign, simple postcard front and back front was the new product, the benefits. And on the back was testimonials from two or three key industry figures.
00;05;11;15 – 00;05;27;16
Speaker 3
And there was only three of us in the business at the time. So we said, okay, we’re not going to send all 5000 of these out because if this really catches you no traction, we don’t have the resources to manage the inbound calls. So we split it into three and about four or five days after sending the first one, calls started coming in.
00;05;27;18 – 00;05;48;00
Speaker 3
Yeah, we really want to try the product so they’d order one bottle. That’s all well and good. Four weeks later, through follow up services and calls, they would reorder maybe three, four or five bottles and eventually over months that turned into wholesale orders of 25 bottles plus. So after 18 months, then we’re in a position where we increased our customer base hugely and we tripled revenue.
00;05;48;03 – 00;05;55;26
Speaker 3
So we were sitting in a really good position of realizing, number one, we validated the product and number two, we had scope to look at it internationally.
00;05;55;27 – 00;06;13;06
Speaker 4
Yeah, I really liked had a couple of things that jump out to me is, one, you listen to the customers and you tweak the formula to make the product better, right? That that’s, that’s awesome. Then use business intelligence as well as market testing. And so like you mentioned, you didn’t want to go out all at once because you’re crushed the operations.
00;06;13;06 – 00;06;30;08
Speaker 4
And so so those are a very, very excellent points there. So thanks for it. Thanks for sharing that. That’s awesome. My next question is branding. You had mentioned like part of this process was you rebranded new logos, new everything. Can you share with the audience like how important branding is to stand out with all the noise that’s in the marketplace?
00;06;30;08 – 00;06;47;02
Speaker 3
Industries have changed a lot in the last decade. You know, pricing well even in the last two decades. More importantly, branding is is vitally important. What I’ve learned from two perspectives from a company perspective and also from a personal perspective, because at the end of the day, be the world that we live in today, people like to buy from people.
00;06;47;02 – 00;07;05;09
Speaker 3
They don’t necessarily feel connected to a company unless there is a very strong underlying mission of that company that is impacting and changing the world in a big way. So the reason we focused on the branding is because at the time the branding was actually that bad inside of the company, that it really looked unprofessional and very mom and pop.
00;07;05;09 – 00;07;25;23
Speaker 3
We didn’t want to go full on corporate. We still wanted to retain that connection with the customers. So we kind of sat midrange. We were like, Let’s give the brand a personality. Let’s make it a little bit fun, but let’s let them know we’re serious enough that they should be taking us serious. So that’s what we did. You know, we palette, you know, palettes really like colors, oranges, blues, whites.
00;07;25;23 – 00;07;52;01
Speaker 3
And we implemented that then with with kind of a what I would refer to as a playful branding for a product. Then we ended up calling a ghost bond and, you know, as I said, it’s a scientific type product, but we didn’t want to market it solely as scientific. So we sat really firm inside of a space where people were so used to dealing with these scientific based companies that were just ramming technical knowledge down their necks and they couldn’t really understand it.
00;07;52;01 – 00;08;15;24
Speaker 3
They just really wanted the surface level points of how it performs and why it’s better. And then we we sat into that environment and we gave the customers what they were looking for because simply we just listened to what the feedback was. And that’s really the key point. So branding really comes from a perspective of knowing your customers and knowing what they’re looking for and then creating a brand inside of that, you know, inside of that to, to target the people you want to work with.
00;08;15;27 – 00;08;23;21
Speaker 2
As you’re going through that process, where do you see a lot of entrepreneurs kind of get off the path or go wrong on the rebranding?
00;08;23;21 – 00;08;40;27
Speaker 3
Because people are complex, you know, And in my eyes, processes should not be, you know, and that’s where I think I think people get caught. You should always spend time with your branding. It’s important. It’s important to really sit within it and, you know, sit in a place with no distractions. So you can totally focus on what you’re looking to get out of.
00;08;40;27 – 00;09;01;10
Speaker 3
But at the same time, if you overcomplicate it, you end up with this absolute mess that just doesn’t actually people don’t get it, you know what I mean? Like if you if you overcomplicate the branding process, I don’t I think you’ll confuse people. People want these really modern logos with real like, you know, sharp edges. And something that stands out are in our world now.
00;09;01;10 – 00;09;20;09
Speaker 3
It’s really gone more minimalistic, you know, with minimalistic and sharp edges. But sometimes people miss the point. I mean, look at all the you know, look at all the global brands that have made massive impacts. If you look at their branding, it’s a not a whole lot of them have those minimalistic sharp edges. You know, look at Coca-Cola, look at Salesforce, you know, look at Pepsi.
00;09;20;09 – 00;09;33;11
Speaker 3
They’re all well rounded, you know, spaced out. They they breathe, you know, they just work. So I’m a firm believer is that, you know, when you’re looking at a branding project, don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Just just look at what works and why it works.
00;09;33;11 – 00;09;57;25
Speaker 4
I like that it you know, keeping it simple and just focusing on there. And so my next question is something that you’ve touched on a little bit, Ryan, is, you know, we’ve talked about branding in the noise and in the marketplace. What is some advice that you can give to the audience, the listeners, about keeping their focus on what you know, what their goal is instead of like listening to all the other noise out there in the space, you know that everything that’s popping up, how can how can entrepreneurs keep their focus?
00;09;57;25 – 00;10;24;28
Speaker 3
One of the key things and the mantras I live by is simple solutions create the biggest impact. So I mean, in this day and age, there’s a lot of distractions, a lot of shiny objects floating around this new piece of technology here, this other piece of new business advice here, I really think if you do your due diligence and you commit to listening to a collective of a very small amount of people who you have confidence in that are able to, number one, either guide you or are giving you the right advice, I think you go all in on that.
00;10;24;28 – 00;10;45;10
Speaker 3
So I think you need to remove the distractions and stop listening to to the end of the day, not everyone has achieved what you’re trying to achieve or not everyone has achieved, even in some cases what you have achieved. So how in a lot of cases are they going to be able to give you the correct advice to guide you past the points, the sticking points that you have as you’re growing as an entrepreneur?
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00;10;45;10 – 00;11;10;12
Speaker 3
I do think probably the most key, most important part of it all is personal development. I think that’s where it all has to start. I mean, if you think about it, when you’re growing a company, whether you’re growing a company, you know, to you know, to have in your family, you know, or create a succession plan around for, you know, for to pass on to your kids or to someone else in your family or whether you’re creating a company to build strategic value inside of it to, you know, to play or position yourself for an exit.
00;11;10;12 – 00;11;33;11
Speaker 3
I think personal development is a start of all of that. And if you’re not, you know, constantly improving yourself or moving yourself into a more emotionally intelligent position, it’s going to be very difficult to keep up with the growth of a company that has an actual solution, you know, that that that the world can use, you know, because like at the end of the day, you have a product or service that provides a really good solution.
00;11;33;11 – 00;11;43;01
Speaker 3
People will need it, people will want it. So you don’t put yourself personally in a position to grow with that. You’re going to have a very difficult time. You’ll end up being the bottleneck of the company as you.
00;11;43;01 – 00;11;48;12
Speaker 2
Have been going through this neverending journey of personal development. What have been some things that have moved the needle?
00;11;48;12 – 00;12;05;16
Speaker 3
Were you only recently going back to even the talk that I did for the TED event, it was supposed to be about something a lot different, but it actually led me down a journey of actually focusing on some of the key things myself that over the last decade, you know, I kind of had to think about what are the key things that I’ve realized that have helped me on my journey?
00;12;05;16 – 00;12;29;23
Speaker 3
And I actually broke it down into five. It was really five things. And the first thing was, is that I realized that there’s no one coming to save you. You know, you sometimes have to be I wouldn’t say is arrogant, but like there has to be a little bit of ego there to, you know, almost be your own hero because there’s going to be a lot of times where you’re going to hate problems in the business if you’re looking for that instant gratification or that well done from people, it’s never going to come.
00;12;29;25 – 00;12;44;03
Speaker 3
You know, you have to be able to, you know, work on your own for a long time with no applause, no recognition. And, you know, there’s going to be a lot of nights where, you know, you kind of question if what you’re doing is, is, is right or you’re on the right path. But you just have to continue to have that belief in yourself.
00;12;44;03 – 00;13;10;16
Speaker 3
So I think if you don’t have that, it’s going to be very difficult because you’re always going to be looking outward for approval and you will ultimately fail very fast. The second thing for me was going back to even to something that you can asked earlier, I’ve learned that it’s vitally important to kind of, you know, manage your focus rather than your time, because if you can really lock in and remove the distractions, time becomes irrelevant because you’re so focused in on what you have in front of you that you can move through it as quickly as possible.
00;13;10;16 – 00;13;31;05
Speaker 3
And I think the only way you can really train yourself to do that is to just lock the door, put your phone on, do not disturb, have your set of tasks that are there in front of you. And regardless of what happens, just stick to it. Because like everything over time it becomes a habitual just pattern. You know, when you I suppose when you lock in and you kind of get better at that, you realize you’ll start to make a lot of progress.
00;13;31;05 – 00;13;50;02
Speaker 3
And you’re, you know, you’re also going to make a lot of mistakes. And I think another key thing for me was that recognizing and eventually realizing that, you know, progress is progress in any form. And really it’s only a loss if you don’t learn from it. It’s not if you stop. It’s really if you don’t learn, because at the end of the day, you don’t want to be making the same mistakes twice.
00;13;50;02 – 00;14;07;03
Speaker 3
You know, if you continually make the same mistakes, it’s going to hinder, it’s going to hinder progress. So, you know, in the in the losses that you have or the mistakes that you made, you really have to just sit down for a minute and think about what went wrong there. And I think that’s another key, key point. One of the last ones was surrounding yourself with the right people.
00;14;07;05 – 00;14;32;23
Speaker 3
I think that is vitally important. You need to make sure that you know, that you you keep close company with people who want the best for you. I’ve seen people over the years who have had really successful people in their circle, and those successful people have always made those individual individuals feel less than. And I think that’s I think that’s a danger because, you know, it’s one thing to have this collective of individuals that, you know, where that you’re well connected with that are successful.
00;14;32;23 – 00;14;46;04
Speaker 3
But if they if they genuinely don’t want the best for you, it’s going to be a very difficult journey because they’ll constantly make you feel like you’re not good enough. And if you find yourself in that position, you’ve got to change. So you need people who just want the best for you. I could talk about this all day.
00;14;46;05 – 00;15;05;22
Speaker 3
I think lastly, actually, you know what? There is one more thing. It’s I have this analogy, right? And it’s fear and fire. You know, basically you have to learn to control the fire because fire can be similar to anxiety. It can do one of two things. It can either burn everything down around you and you can sit there and watch it, or you can learn to control it and it can keep you warm.
00;15;05;25 – 00;15;23;02
Speaker 3
That’s a mindset shift. I think you have to be able to look at things from a different perspective and realized in lies opportunity, where all struggles exist and it’s about how you choose to position it and look at it. So I think being fearful is probably and having anxiety is probably one of the one things that every single person on this planet can relate with.
00;15;23;02 – 00;15;28;25
Speaker 3
But you have control over it, and it’s about teaching yourself to look for the opportunities in amongst the chaos.
00;15;28;29 – 00;15;38;24
Speaker 4
Now, I really like that analogy. That’s it’s adds some clarity. I think it’s very well thought out. Ryan How long have you been helping to grow the professional Hair Labs company? So I joined.
00;15;38;24 – 00;15;57;10
Speaker 3
It in 2009. We started it as a as a as a kind of a marketing manager. More so I actually started on the floor learning about the products, filling the bottles. I became kind of a marketing manager, then became a European director and eventually CEO. So right now my main focus is, you know, leading the strategic vision for the company.
00;15;57;10 – 00;16;13;12
Speaker 4
So about 15 years that you’ve been helping to grow that and so you just covered some of the size of it that for self-development, like what you’ve learned over the years and how that’s helped you, can you cover some of the maybe the business systems and business processes that you’ve helped put in place that really have moved the needle?
00;16;13;12 – 00;16;14;23
Speaker 4
Maybe the top two or three?
00;16;14;24 – 00;16;34;00
Speaker 3
Sure, Yeah. So at the beginning when we were trying to figure this out, right when we hit this bit of velocity with, you know, when we tripled revenue between, say, 2009 and 2011, we realized obviously we needed a better systems in place because our systems were really simple. It was like, you know, message goes out, phone call comes in, message goes out, email comes in.
00;16;34;00 – 00;16;48;24
Speaker 3
But there was no nurturing of the client. And to me we needed to build upon that. But at that time I wasn’t really sure is okay, I know what we need to build, but I’m just quite not sure you know, what the message looks like or how we need to build it. So I think, you know, it took some time to figure that out.
00;16;48;24 – 00;17;07;09
Speaker 3
But what we were eventually able to do is automate a process. I tried a ton of different funnels. We tried, you know, we tried landing pages, we optimized them for organic search, you know, for a period of time. We did a lot of investment early on in time and resources into SEO and that that carried us through like well over ten years.
00;17;07;09 – 00;17;23;19
Speaker 3
You know, we didn’t run in a single ad online with the company until about what are we to till about 2000, maybe in 19 or 20, everything was organic that we had built. So what we realized though, we had all these funnels and all these landing pages and then and then I was like, This is just too complex.
00;17;23;20 – 00;17;41;02
Speaker 3
Go back to the simple, simple solution. So the biggest the thing that made the biggest impact in the company was bringing it down to one funnel. It was a really simple survey funnel. They click three buttons to tell us who they are, what type of business they had, and we led them to an application form and we were able to automatically onboard all of these customers.
00;17;41;02 – 00;18;03;12
Speaker 3
But what happened was then over the last, say, 24 months, we eventually started to see a shift in consumer expectation from a professional. From a B2B perspective, you know, customers were they wanted quick access to the store, they want a quick access to the information, information that’s supposed to be protected, you know, from the consumer’s hands, because it contained sensitive information like wholesale and distribution information.
00;18;03;12 – 00;18;24;21
Speaker 3
Our professional customers started to have a behavioral pattern, like a consumer, like a direct to consumer clients, but in a professional capacity. So we had to change our wholesale systems, and we only ended up launching that new process in January of this year. Our conversion rates for new applications went up 40% and then our close close rates on new applications went up 30%.
00;18;24;21 – 00;18;43;11
Speaker 3
So there was a huge that was a huge learning curve for us. You know, that the evolution is always happen whether you recognize that or not. In this case, we recognize that. We recognize it a little bit too late. And we did lose some good opportunity. But look, that’s business. You know, you win some, you lose some. And going back to what I said, you know, it’s still progress and it’s only a loss if you don’t learn from it.
00;18;43;11 – 00;19;05;14
Speaker 2
You would talked about the early days of working on the floor and becoming familiar with in-house manufacturing. And I think that this is something that a lot of entrepreneurs think about is do I go to a third party and have them manufacture my physical product or do I do this in-house? And so can you walk through maybe some of those pros and cons that would help guide somebody who’s thinking about this?
00;19;05;17 – 00;19;08;04
Speaker 2
Do I make it myself or do I go to somebody else?
00;19;08;04 – 00;19;34;18
Speaker 3
Absolutely. And and I think it’s about at the very beginning when when the company started, the formulas were ours. We we developed them with the relationships we had with different cosmetic chemists. But we did contract manufacture for a long, long time. When I started with the company, we were contract manufacturing. And when I started on the floor, some of the experiences that I started to have when I was, you know, learning about the products, filling bottles, making sure stock rotation, you know, the shelves, restocking the rotation was right.
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00;19;34;18 – 00;19;58;23
Speaker 3
I realized that, you know, I suppose the pros of having a contract manufacturer are number one. You get the products either pre bottled or you get them in drums. Really simple stuff. You bottle them then and use some of the cons to that that were inconsistent batches you know batches that the preservatives weren’t right mold started to grow in them late shipments pushed out manufacturing dates depending on how important your order was in the fulfillment line.
00;19;58;23 – 00;20;17;26
Speaker 3
And what we found as we started to exponentially grow, we actually found that most companies couldn’t keep up with our demand. So we had to make the decision to heavily invest in manufacturing in-house. And we’ve only started doing that in the last few years. So we have now, you know, we have now a full kitted out lab with manufacturing equipment.
00;20;17;28 – 00;20;48;09
Speaker 3
We’ve expanded our manufacturing floor space from 10,000 square feet to 50,000 square feet. I think over the last two years, we’ve we’ve had to reinvest probably close to about $7 million in our operations to get it to the point where we had the ability to service all of our clients because of the way the company is going. When you look at pros and cons, I think naturally you would see the cons in going in-house would be the investment, the overheads then increased dramatically because you need engineers, you need technicians, you need chemists.
00;20;48;09 – 00;21;07;24
Speaker 3
If you’re in a position where you’re scaling, I would I would say it’s always something to look at long term If you are not finding the good relationships with contract manufacturers, you know, because of the experiences we’ve had over the years, I would be confident to say we do a better than probably 90% of the manufacturers out there because we know what the problems are.
00;21;07;24 – 00;21;28;07
Speaker 3
Most of these manufacturers have went exactly into that manufacturing. They haven’t built the brand from the ground and actually experienced year on year what the real pain points are when you’re scaling a company. So that’s where I think we we have the difference because we can fill those holes. But I would always say, you know, from a pros and cons perspective, I think it’s about what you want for the company long term.
00;21;28;07 – 00;21;48;14
Speaker 3
If you have a good contract manufacturing relationship where things are consistent, stay in your lane and focus on growing your brand. But if you you know, if you want to impact the industry that you’re in by bringing a better service or bringing, you know, more products that, you know, most people can’t make into the you know, into the industry, you might have some thinking to do.
00;21;48;15 – 00;22;02;24
Speaker 4
Yeah, that’s I like that. You know that you know, if everything’s working well, they’ll change it. But if you’re having issues and things like that, it might be worth checking out. You know, another thing is like any time you jump through hoops, some of your competitors are not going to do that. They’re going to stay in their lane.
00;22;02;24 – 00;22;10;29
Speaker 4
And so now you kind of build that moat around your business and you’re able to, you know, to react quicker to any kind of supply and demand or any issues. And so and.
00;22;10;29 – 00;22;30;13
Speaker 3
I’ve actually had this point challenged with me before, But, you know, it hasn’t kind of led us wrong yet. We we have a heavy investment into a large range of cosmetic ingredients that we have on the shelf that can create multitudes of base formulations for many different cosmetic products. This is something that most cosmetic manufacturers don’t really do.
00;22;30;13 – 00;22;53;06
Speaker 3
And somebody comes to us, we have so many based formulations now, we can essentially take a contract manufacturing process that takes about 16 weeks. We can bring it down to four. That’s the importance of investing in your processes, you know, because you have to be confident enough that you can rotate the stock and you can sell through it, but you’re also going to get a lot more customers because they’re going to be it’s going to be much quicker to get to market than most of the competitors that you have.
00;22;53;11 – 00;23;08;22
Speaker 4
And that’s a huge competitive advantage getting to market faster. You can you can gain that that market share, especially if it’s a new a new formulation, a new product. So I really like that. All right. Let’s see here. We’ve talked about, you know, kind of like how you’ve worked, you know, business systems and processes that helped you grow over the last 15 years.
00;23;08;22 – 00;23;16;05
Speaker 4
Let’s pivot into now in 2023, in the world of digital marketing, what’s working best for for you? What do you see it as working best?
00;23;16;06 – 00;23;38;11
Speaker 3
I think our most powerful asset at the moment is really in relationships now, and I’m talking about with, you know, say, whether it be influencers or whether it be media personalities, you know, for example, RCO efforts over the years have been chipped away by competitors in the marketplace who are either investing more in SEO than we are now or they may be just doing it a little better, that that’s the truth.
00;23;38;11 – 00;24;03;21
Speaker 3
But where we’re finding our most power is that we’re building relationships with a lot of media personalities that end up getting coverage in massive publications. And those publications are syndicated. You know, for example, what was a four or five weeks ago, Doja Cat used our product at the Grammys and it was syndicated and picked up by InStyle, People magazine, loads of different places, and then isolate the syndicate that you can’t you can’t fight that type of exposure, you know what I mean?
00;24;03;21 – 00;24;22;09
Speaker 3
So the power is in the relationships you’re willing to build. And that’s kind of where we’re at at the moment. I think if you have a brand that’s either on the rise, look for, you know, media personalities that are within the limits of what’s achievable for you, you know, see what kind of you know, see what kind of relationship you can build and what deals you can put together.
00;24;22;09 – 00;24;39;05
Speaker 3
Because at the end of the day, whether you whether whether you like to believe it or not as a brand, some of these media personalities have more than likely already used your product if it’s if it’s directly related. And that’s what we found. We found that there were so many film studios, TV studios, you know, celebrities using our product that we never knew about.
00;24;39;05 – 00;24;48;21
Speaker 3
But only when we start building these relationships, we started to tie it all together when we’re getting feedback. So never underestimate, you know, what your brand is actually doing in the marketplace that you know. Well.
00;24;48;23 – 00;25;03;09
Speaker 4
I want to dig just a little bit deeper on this one. So how would you go about building those relationships if you if you know someone’s using your product, what you reach out and say, hey, you know, we can send you a bundle or would you work up a deal with a commission? Or how would you go about building those relationships?
00;25;03;09 – 00;25;24;17
Speaker 3
So there’s a couple of ways to do it. Most celebrities or any type of, you know, influencers that have a decent reach already have an agent. Those agents are quite responsive because that’s their bread and butter. It’s what makes the money. So it’s about reaching out to the agent more so than the personality themselves, because at the end of the day, all they want to do is stay in their lane and do what they like doing, you know, that’s why they have management in the first place.
00;25;24;17 – 00;25;43;02
Speaker 3
So I would always say the first key point is find their agent, reach out. What the approach is from there depends on the product, the industry, whatever it may be. I can only speak from my perspective on what we do and it’s quite simply going, look, I believe there’s some synergy here and you know, if your client was open to exploring it, we would be happy to have that discussion.
00;25;43;02 – 00;25;57;18
Speaker 3
And in most cases it won’t get you on the phone with the media personality. But you know, it will it will get you quite far in the process to see if it’s a viable opportunity in some cases, You know, they may be looking for, you know, affiliate programs to make a commission off off of sales that they passed.
00;25;57;18 – 00;26;14;06
Speaker 3
You know, other ones they want flat fees and some of them will actually just work with the brand because they feel connected with it. You know, we we’ve had cases like that as well. But I think you have to be very mindful when you’re navigating that that that that industry because that part of the industry, because you can very quickly burn a lot of money and not get much for the return.
00;26;14;10 – 00;26;23;16
Speaker 2
All right. So we’ve we’ve talked a little bit about professional hair labs. But can you to our audience, who’s kind of wants to know more about this business, can you share with us a little bit more about the business?
00;26;23;17 – 00;26;44;10
Speaker 3
Yeah, high level, a cosmetic manufacture. So we manufacture hair care, skin care, body care, self-tanning, all sorts of different cosmetics. And if we don’t have it in our line, we can custom formulated. We have a really good a good team of chemists on board that that work you know we have an island and yet look like for anyone that’s in the industry we have a solution to provide.
- Paige Tate & Co. (Producer) - Griffo, Ilana (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 200 Pages - 01/15/2019 (Publication Date) - Paige Tate & Co (Publisher)
00;26;44;10 – 00;26;59;16
Speaker 3
So if you don’t even end up doing business with us, at the very least conversation will allow you to leave it with a lot more information than you had before you started. So that’s what I always say to people, Look, we’re in the industry, we’re in to make a difference and make changes and to contribute ethically and, you know, effectively.
00;26;59;16 – 00;27;09;27
Speaker 3
You know, whether someone decides that we’re the right partner for them or not, you know, is up to them. But I firmly believe we have a lot of information that we can share which can help people regardless of whether they do business with us.
00;27;09;28 – 00;27;10;28
Speaker 4
David, any more questions?
00;27;10;28 – 00;27;12;11
Speaker 2
No. Let’s get into the fire around.
00;27;12;11 – 00;27;15;25
Speaker 4
For every guest we have on. We’ve run them through the ringer with the fire around. Are you ready?
00;27;15;27 – 00;27;16;15
Speaker 3
I am.
00;27;16;15 – 00;27;18;00
Speaker 4
Ready. What is your favorite book?
00;27;18;00 – 00;27;19;06
Speaker 3
Relentless. Tim Grover.
- Audible Audiobook
- Tim S. Grover (Author) - Pete Simonelli (Narrator)
- English (Publication Language)
00;27;19;06 – 00;27;20;20
Speaker 4
Excellent. What are your hobbies?
00;27;20;20 – 00;27;26;22
Speaker 3
I only have two. I love to play basketball and I love to play music. So those are the two things that keep me sane.
00;27;26;23 – 00;27;31;00
Speaker 4
Awesome. And I like it. What is one thing that you do not miss about working for the man?
00;27;31;00 – 00;27;48;01
Speaker 3
The red tape. I am a firm believer and you know, look, I know compliance and processes are very important. As any entrepreneur will understand, removing the red tape is vital to progress. And sometimes you have to think a little bit outside the box. So, you know, getting getting caught up in red tape is something that I do not miss in the slightest.
00;27;48;01 – 00;27;53;25
Speaker 4
All right. Last one. What do you think sets apart successful entrepreneurs from those who give up, fail or never get started?
00;27;53;25 – 00;28;12;00
Speaker 3
I think it’s mental fortitude. You know, it’s need to look at its ability, the ability to look for unity inside of failure. And I think, you know, if you change your perspective to look at, you know, things that don’t go right for you as an opportunity to find success, I think that’s going to be what set you apart from 95% of the other people trying to do the same thing.
00;28;12;01 – 00;28;15;03
Speaker 4
Excellent. I appreciate it. Ryan, over to you, David, to close out the show.
00;28;15;03 – 00;28;24;18
Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely. So, Ryan, I want to thank you for being a guest on the Firing the Man podcast. If people are interested in learning more about you and your journey or professional here lapse, where should they go?
00;28;24;18 – 00;28;44;14
Speaker 3
Yeah. So the company has profiles on every major social platform Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn. My main hangout personally is LinkedIn, but I do have, you know, personal social media accounts where I kind of I kind of try to separate it. My LinkedIn is kind of more for the professional side. And, you know, you kind of get more of my familial life on on, on the likes of Instagram.
00;28;44;15 – 00;28;54;29
Speaker 3
I like to keep that a bit of personal touch where people know that the person behind, you know, their would be their the face of the company is in someone who’s robotic or doesn’t exist at all. Absolutely.
00;28;54;29 – 00;28;59;18
Speaker 2
Absolutely. Well, very nice. Well, thank you so much for being a guest. And we’re looking forward to staying in touch.
00;28;59;18 – 00;29;01;05
Speaker 3
Absolutely. Thanks for having me, guys.