Insane SIDE HUSTLE that made $500,000 in the first year!.

we're good all right welcome to the podcast thank you so much for coming on and I'd love to just quickly introduce yourself to the people watching all seven of them and we'll get going yeah so my name's Kate I'm a content creator from Melbourne and I also run my own company with my sibit siblings can I start over no you just go for it just play it up do whatever you want go for it go start over Kate I'm a content creator from Melbourne I run a small business with my siblings um and I also create content for other small businesses as well cool awesome I didn't actually know about the other content for small businesses so that's cool so we're gonna we're gonna get

into that too um okay so I'm running some notes here because you already gave me a whole bunch of stuff to talk about already which is good but actually what I wanted to what I wanted to start with is like take it back to the beginning because I don't know the beginning because you just popped up in my comments and then I started following you so I've been watching you recent ones um but where does that like how did this journey start where did it come from yeah so I started my small business uh 2019 and then over the pandemic yeah it blew up um and then we started on Tick Tock ah interesting yeah so we were primarily marketing our brand through Facebook groups

and stuff like that just organic and what about yeah and then there was this thing called Tick Tock and it was like well we better get on this pretty quick and it took us a while to figure it out but once we did it just skyrocketed everything uh so that's that's how that started and then from there I thought this is really cool I kind of want to start sharing a little bit of my own life so I made my own account and that wasn't doing much either it was it wasn't that interesting if I'm going to be honest with you um and then I posted this video of me painting my fridge with chalkboard paint and I posted it thinking nothing of it I

thought it was pretty boring myself if I'm gonna be honest went for two minutes and it was just when they brought out the three minute feature yeah um and I put my phone down and then Chloe and I my sister and business partner um we were due to jump on a live a tick tock live to promote the business and so she was on her phone and I was on my phone and the comments coming through there was an abnormal amount of people yeah on this live and the comments coming through were POV you just saw this girl painting her fridge and now she's selling you earrings and I was like who are these people what do you mean Chloe pulls up her laptop and

she said Kate that that video is at 80 000 views already yeah and I thought this is this is not normal this is yeah this is going to be a bigger video than we've seen um and it ended up I think I checked the other day it's now sitting at 25.6 million crazy of me painting my fridge with chalkboard paint yeah yeah yeah like it's just it's not that interesting um but apparently a lot of people thought it was is it I haven't seen this one so which is quite interesting is it um like time lapse or is it like you talking about you painting it like your normal style that you do yeah so it was yeah little clips of me painting the fridge

and then over the top it was like the Siri voice oh yeah yeah okay funny that's so good 25 million that's crazy yeah um and oh so I'm gonna I'm gonna hit myself I want to go back a bit so the is the brass and bone is the small business that you hit that's the one we're talking about right the current yeah um and when you started there so it's your brother and sister yeah yeah cool and what is how's that work I tap talk to me a little bit about the business what it does why why it started where it come from like give me that backstory yeah so it started in like early 2019 I went to Japan and I found all of

these really fun earrings that I was obsessed with and I knew that I couldn't find at home and I bought this massive Hall and I just realized I'm not wearing anything I don't I might in my okay you're shocking um yeah I brought them all back and I thought I can't find them here I wonder if I could find them online and maybe start selling them myself and so that's how it started I was working a call center for roadside assistance making my website in between phone calls and teaching myself basically and so that's when that started and since then it's kind of taken over mine and my siblings lives kind of it it has it's massive for us so Nick is more of the

logistics and finance so he's the the brains uh Chloe is she's great she's creative and marketing as well but she's she's so good at customer service oh yeah she's just such a sweetheart and she's coined calling our followers lovelies oh yeah everyone's lovely um yeah and then I guess I started it I have my finger in all of the pies so marketing creative and I guess I boss my siblings around I love it they're so good why not yeah so how did you get all into it like is it from the beginning you just decided to do it all together or is it grew like more of you edited like how was that but how did that go about it so I started it yeah

and it was at that point just a website and I took it to my sister and I said this is a website and she said oh cool let me make a Facebook post and the first one we did we made a thousand dollars and we were like we're rich yeah this is it we've made it mum um yeah and um so yeah that's kind of how it started and so yeah she obviously brought herself on board and then when things got bigger and more hectic Nick jumped in because he was like this needs structure and it needs to be organized you need to be able to ship things out properly and stuff like that so it kind of just naturally happened that way I I

joke that they were the only two dumb enough to jump on yeah yeah yeah fairly are the only ones usually yeah now that's cool and what what was the time frame like so he said July no what'd you say in 2019 yeah early I think it was yeah July yeah and in what time frame are we when your sister joins and then what time frame when your brother joins oh my a month yeah really so before the end of the year you're all in there yeah our first year we yeah we were all in there and it was it was all three of our full-time jobs by the end of the year so before the before lockdown you're all doing it or about lockdown sometime

during lockdown yeah it it we just started it and then lockdown was shortly after yeah okay yeah so it was over that lockdown period that it really started to build oh yeah yeah yeah yeah so we were in lockdown and Nick and I were still working from home with our headsets on for roadside assistance taking calls and wrapping earrings yes that's so good yeah and then because yeah we were still getting paid from our job but building the business and then it kind of got to the point we released the Vodka Cruiser earrings and we were like we can't do we can't do both anymore it's just we've just gotta do it that's so good I love that that is proper um side hustling yeah

I love it um don't get any ideas to get earrings um deposit earrings they could say questions questions we're just planning earrings merch for Tears um no I love that so like tell me then because like and I think this is interesting for people to hear like let's say that first 12 month period and B as specific as you're okay to be but like what was that from a revenue perspective to give you confidence like what was coming in on a monthly or yeah so by the end of the first year we'd done half a mil cool massive yeah yeah and then that was it was it was that year that you guys were like let's all go right because in their years and tell

me about that 500k because that's a huge number for first year but it disappears very quickly especially in product-based businesses yeah but tell me about like before we get into like how much that actually turned into for you guys like what was the like if we think about it spread over the whole year how was it like was it um quite linear in its growth or was it pretty rapid like what was it spikes yes so earrings very seasonal yeah so you take that into account we also released the Vodka cruises as well um which was our first twenty thousand dollar day um that was insane for us we just thought like we were all crying and our mum was there and we were like

we've made it put this one on the fridge it's so good yes that's awesome though yeah and then so that was a big spack for us um and then the holiday season so Christmas and stuff like that yeah and then anytime a video would go viral on Tick Tock that would be that's when it goes that would be three weeks go go non-stop packing making all that yeah so it's very like it's very spiky as opposed to like any sort of um I mean there's seasons in terms of holidays and stuff because there's normal shopping Seasons but like you don't just have this like normal linear graph or even like a hockey stick graph it's like it's Jagged and then you throw festivals in there

as well and it's like interesting yeah and do you like put your um Harry Styles concerts as well that was a big one for us the lead up to Harry Styles was huge Chloe and I actually went to Harry Styles and we were we were there and we were seeing girls wearing out earrings which we thought was really cool and then we were leaving and the girls would come up to us and be like oh we saw you we just wanted to say hello and like get a photo and we were so stoked that's awesome how cool is that yeah and do you see it like do you um strategically go after that so like you know this concert's coming up and stuff and then

you make your videos for that I haven't seen I haven't watched many of these ones I've watched most of your ones but like how do you do that like do you go are you purposely going his stuff for that festival or are you just strategic in like making videos pop off at that time yes so we respond to Trends a lot if there's something on Tick Tock or what have you all happening in um yeah just the media I guess well we so the reason we got the laser cutter so our pieces are laser cut before we got that we were importing our our items from China and then we found that we didn't really have an edge anymore because everyone saw our success and

wanted to mimic that which was great we actually loved that yeah but then we thought well we've got to be original somehow so we got the laser cutter and what the laser cutter has allowed us to do is to design a pair of earrings and manufacture them in a matter of an hour cool so we can jump on those Trends really early it's not as profitable as the stuff we were importing in terms of you know costs and labor exactly but we're able to jump on those Trends yeah and do that kind of stuff so that is pretty cool and then and I suppose like if you're if you're getting the orders we need that sort of stuff are you making it to order then

or you do pre-make a bunch so we try not to um yeah do made to order yeah uh we get really caught up and then when we're trying to take care of all of that chaos we then uh slack off on the tick tocks and stuff like that so we try and make it all beforehand yeah um we did a challenge where we designed 100 pairs of earrings in seven in five days that was really hard yeah yeah and we weren't able to pre-make any of them yeah it was just we've got to pump out the design so that afterwards was all made to order yeah I think that got them caught up for like two weeks yeah crazy yeah that's awesome yeah and then

um talk about like tell us a little bit about uh the growth since then so the first year is half a mill how's that sort of changed like year two year three year what we're year four now yeah yeah how's that changed it's actually it plateaued yeah at some point um and so now we're working our way through finding out what the next type of product is right I think we've reached uh most of the people that love the quirky earrings which tend to be um teachers and and a younger demographic um or whoever jumps on the trend and likes that kind of earring so we've kind of plateaued and now we're expanding out into other products as well yeah okay so and under the

same brand yeah yeah okay cool and health like you know you don't have to give me full specifics but how much more than that are you sitting in not much more not much more so I was kind of teetering out at the top that's real interesting right I don't think people like see that enough that businesses have natural limits to them in without fundamental changes like because where's your audience um I didn't notice that when I looked at the site it looked like it only was australasia okay that's interesting yeah no no but that might have just been the way I read it yeah um okay so you ship everywhere where is most of it going so Australia and the US okay cool yeah yeah

and is one bigger than the other are they pretty even no Australia's bigger than yeah that's the issue is the shipping rates so our orders that we do send out to the US are bigger orders so between two to three hundred dollars yep um so our customers in the US will hold off in buying every launch and then they'll make one big order which suits them yeah yeah and there's um there anyway like I suppose you probably haven't got your fundamental shift is probably having enough volume in the US that you have 3pl over there yeah yeah and then also that would require a lot of forward planning as well in terms of product and then we're not as flexible with jumping on Trends and

sharing that across all of our social media because then the US will feel left out versus exactly Australia yeah and there's a lot more Capital needed right because like do you like actually that was like I'm going to jump to that question now like have you thought about that from a scalability point of view like bringing investors on have you had people come after you investors not serious ones okay yeah just my investors like like as in like small town guys yeah yeah so no big guys have you wanted that are you happy with where it's at like like what what's your mindset on that like on growth what's the plan global domination or stay where you're at and just build slowly it's interesting because

it depends on which siblings give me all the scoops so Nick world domination love Nick Nick's my mate yes yeah yeah yeah cool yeah um uh we joke around that I'm a I'm a cash Grabber I'm a cheapskate but I'm a cash Grabber so whatever's making us money I'm happy yeah and Chloe just wants to keep everyone happy okay so she would prefer to keep it small and make everyone happy and yeah and when you say people is that literally everyone or just customers is a big thing everyone says you just everything yeah yeah and so two two big means too many people means you can't control it yeah yeah and I have to like for Chloe and I to Becca over the price and

we're talking the difference between like four dollars she'll be like no no no no no no no and I work well we're running a business here we have bills to pay we've got these Grand plans that we want to we're gonna need money for and you know we need to charge what they're worth and yeah and we need to cover the bills and she'll be like no no so I'll get her to 2.50 what is the um oh I'm jumping around the place here but I'm taking notes I come back what is the idea around pricing can we get the shot for a little bit um to have a look um what is the strategy of pricing like how do you price them what's your

what's your model for that it honestly depends on labor yeah how long a piece of area a pair of earrings takes us to make um we're in automatic price changing yeah because you probably price it as Australian dollars I do automatically does it okay well that's fine we can sort of understand where these are yeah okay so sorry I cut you off and then it also depends on so these lava lamps here yeah they glow in the dark so that sheet of glow-in-the-dark acrylic on the base is a lot more expensive than a standard um sheet of acrylic yeah so we have a price calculator that we've set up and we put in the the cost of the materials um and then time of Labor

that we we estimate yeah um and then it gives us a rough idea of where we should be pricing it and then we either round it up or round it down depending on how flexible Chloe's room um tell me a second before I start dissecting this a little bit because I I love I love pricing pricing is a fun topic to talk about but before we get in who's your competitors like who do you look to and go there they're doing it well oh you like what they do or even like even other sort of fashion brands that you're like I like their Style and what they do there aren't many yeah because what we do is what we like to do and we don't

like to focus too much on what other people are doing because then that kind of so instead of like thinking about like competitors then think about like what are brands that you think from a consumer's point of view they sit at the same level as you a level in in terms of like um like for instance there is Lamborghinis and then there's Toyotas right like that level like not necessarily it's not always price but it's um there's a there's a perception of value right yeah yeah people think a Louis Vuitton Co is worth more than a coat from Kmart yeah um at the end of the day the utility factor of it they both keep you warm yeah yeah but of course you're not gonna

pay five thousand dollars for a coat from Kmart so so there's a there's a a perception of value if you think about your my perception on on our value is you know where Boutique in terms of these are our designs and and I think they're at a that they're at a higher price point than other earrings like this on the market um and that's because they're our Unique Designs and we work really hard on making them cool and we work really hard on getting our feedback from our customers and asking them what they want to see because at the end of the day we may as well make earrings that they want and they want to purchase and they also feel involved too so yeah

definitely on a boutique level in terms of specific Brands I'm not I'm not really that's okay that's okay we don't need to because the Usain boutique's like a real good thing for me like and and maybe Nick will really love me of this and maybe Chloe really hate me but like I um so my sort of view on pricing is twofold is uh the first bit is pricing psychology so pricing psychology is a there's heaps of study on pricing psychology like in some of it's just basic stuff right like left hand rule like the left hand number is the most prominent number right so there's no point in charging 62 for something yeah it must may as well just be 65 or 69 or drop

it back down to 59. so there's that simple basic stuff but then there's also like um people get stuck in this uh your your model which is Cost Plus and the Cost Plus model is like what a lot of uh so in Hospitality because that's my whole career right like most of my careers are silly if you go to like a four-star or below uh hotel or like even in the same breadth restaurants they don't really have star ratings but like you kind of know if it's a high-end restaurant or like mid-range and Below yeah mid-range and Below often work on a Cost Plus but devices and there's uh in that mid-range or in that cost plus model everyone who isn't the cheapest actually lose

and they struggle and the reason why is because it's cheapest uh doing it purely based on volume they're going wide Market volume place so this think supermarkets yeah so that's where I went to cleaning products in the supermarket right yeah how can you sell a bottle of dishwashing detergent for three four dollars and be making so much money your volume yeah and the issue is that oh and so so before I get into the issue so that's that's the one way they they win and all the ones in the middle lose um and then at the height and they'll kill because they can do low volume massive margins yeah you know we're talking like 5 000 markups and stuff not more than that hundred thousand

percent markers like on top of their products the guys always in the mid-range always tend to lose long term yeah uh because of two things they they don't do enough volume that they just become too big to fail and or they don't have enough money to do the right marketing to level up to hold that status yeah and so they sit in this mid category where you constantly have to iterate to try to keep people and so when you see like plateaus of Revenue you have a real problem there of like going how do I stay fresh to keep that Plateau which you already know because you're trying to make other products yeah but then now you get into other product lines which bring more

cost lines which more complexity which then makes it harder then you're like and then like I don't wanna I don't want to like [ __ ] jump into the future here but like what happens is they you get to those other product lines and you go [ __ ] we're making less profit than we used to because of all the other [ __ ] we have to do now yeah [ __ ] we should just scale back to the simpler life and listen to Chloe yeah and be like this is we should just come like do what we're doing before yeah so like this is like real hard thing when you get into pricing level like where do I sit and at scale it's hard to go mid-market if you think about Australia

you think about how many mid-market clothing stores are gone yeah they all got wiped down yeah especially all the men's mid-market store because men aren't fussy right so me and I are going I'm gonna get real cheap stuff or I'm gonna ball out and get all the cool stuff right that's we don't play in the middle we're just like cheap crap clothes it's interesting that you say that now because I see myself doing that too is I'm I'm to my core a cheapskate but yeah I will splurge but when I splurge I buy nice and I'm not you're right I'm not gonna mess around with the the middle tier there and I now that you've said that I probably would put us closer to the

middle yeah in the middle tier I think you are yeah yeah looking at your pricing yeah because when we were selling the products that we imported um we were sending out so many pairs of earrings and we were still making the same amount that we were now but now it feels like like less orders needed to go out less less packing we don't need to hire as many people to help us pack those orders in the busiest Seasons but I would agree I think we're in that middle tier I can't see Chloe agreeing to go and higher no and I don't know if you need to it's just like there's a different there's other things you have to do but that's a real interesting thing

about that like low or high and like um I'm just using Conor as an example because like I always give a [ __ ] about being Cheapskate but actually like him and I both uh like kind of think the same and stuff like and he gives me [ __ ] about different things and I give him [ __ ] about different stuff but like I won't spend money on things like a car or I won't spend money on a thing like a house or stuff like that because there's no value to me right but then like we were joking one day in the car because he's like it always gives me [ __ ] oh we always talk about how I give him [ __ ] about having cars and I think they're stupid and

bloody but then I was like telling him about this fifteen thousand dollar coat I wanted to buy and he's like he was like what the [ __ ] like are you [ __ ] kidding that's five of my cars yeah can you [ __ ] say my car's still expensive it's 15 of my cars that's how much of a cheesecake I am yeah and it's it's dumb because it's what we value but like yeah a lot of us do do that we don't play in the middle often we either go like we value this stuff so we'll spend the money on it or everything else will spend here and like I'm like that so I'm cars I don't value them at all so we have um we there's a thing here

called mevo which is a paid by the hour sort of car nice and they just parked down the street and that's all I use right so I just use it as I need it it's like Uber cost the same as everybody drive yourself um but that's how a lot of people think so they don't often play in the mid-market and they're not at a volume play anyway because like everything's expensive these days so if you play in the mid Market you're like I can't have as much here um I either need to play real high or play real low and there's only a few Brands which is why I want to just wrap that up because there are a few Brands who did it real

well okay or they sit at like the upper tier and like like think Nike yep so Nike's not expensive it's I mean isn't it's not high in fashion but it's definitely not cheap no not cheap at all but what they did real smart is they had a broad range of products yeah so if you go to Rebel Sport exactly you got the 30s and the 60s and the different price ranges 20s and stuff but they have like um what the way they did it they went to like Rebel Sport and they're like all right Rebel Sport you can have all our plain teas all this sort of stuff you can have that that's all about cheap range um all our Basics and you can't get

that anywhere else but soon as you go to Nike store yep it's all high premium all premium and you go into an actual Nike shop and there's like very few products but it's all their premium stuff and they sell it like really expensive yeah but you get a Rebel Sport and you can pick up a Nike singlet for like 20 bucks yeah but you go to Nike store and the cheapest thing is 80 yeah so they were able to like go okay we got the same brand but we have but we know there's one target audience that shops there and one target audience that shops with us direct and so we sell them differently to each other how you do that is something would have

to flesh out but like or you'd have to flesh out but like that's another way of looking at two so Chloe gets to go well look the people who can't afford it yeah or the people who are at more modest budgets yeah we cater for you but then like we've got this real premium range and and I think for you guys because you can't really have a you can't go to Rebel Sport to stock your stuff or whatever and don't get into stockists with the model that you got you're doing fine you're like you don't really need soccer we tried didn't go well at all I would hate it yeah because they don't do it on consignment right they do it all pre they like

as in you have to give it to them before they pay you yeah yeah unless there's small tiny stores who can't do it but I would say that you just have um like what if you just head you just guys bought out like you wouldn't call it this but like a Couture range right yeah which is just like maybe more premium product or whatever and they just had like they're like 300 earrings and I've pitched this 300 earrings well okay you go to a jewelry store go to a jewelry store whatever yeah gold earrings yeah yeah we yeah that would take a it would be a whole new realm of earrings then and yeah that would be incredible yeah I I don't I'm not I

just sit there 100 off the couch I'm thinking Logistics now yeah but like could you could you make a premium right because could you go for the party earrings to like like a little bit more sophisticated like going out for dinner like a really nice dinner but they're still cool in personal personalities yeah and they're using more premium product or and then you're like okay these are you know in the hundreds of dollars yeah but you but it doesn't take away and you just do one or two like you just trial it yeah absolutely give a crack yeah because actually the profit margin on that will be way more yeah because perceived value of rear metals and whatever you do I mean you probably wouldn't

get into rare gyms or anything like that but you know what I mean like you get into rear middles and stuff you could do something that's different and premium as opposed to laser cut stuff yeah like is there a different way to do it that's what the the ones that sit in the middle that work at those ones they have the bolt the bulk Market Mass Market stuff and then they have this little one up yeah I don't know if you're giving me ideas what could you do have you had no calls for other stuff yeah so we we have been looking into Fun chunky silver rings with fun gems in them and stuff like that um and the thing that has been holding us

back is that they would be quite expensive not only to manufacture but to sell yeah and then there's the Chloe in my brain that goes are people gonna buy that but if we have a small moq to start with it's not gonna hurt yeah like even if you just did like I mean like let's say like like something like this right like how many units of what other normal range would you sell of this how many how many units have we sold yeah something like a normal range that you have what's a normal um amount that you sell of a normal range well yeah it depends so these two so the dripping gold days in the Psychedelic butterflies they're really popular so they're in the

hundreds maybe even thousands yeah um the butterflies did semi-okay yeah around the hundreds Okay cool so if you did like a small run you'd have to be in the tens yeah for like a proper small run yeah yeah so like you could do like we're only doing 50 of these or yeah even even smaller just uh and we love doing exclusive products as well like limited edition and stuff like that we do that all the time yeah um sorry cake again usually we um we set things as limited edition then we realize we actually really like them we want to stock them and then we kick ourselves but what were you saying no um actually I'm going to come back to that too limited edition

um I was just saying um you why don't you start a storyline that is about hey we're being we really wanted to make this thing but for us to do that this is the price point it has to sit in and just get you know because your users like get their feedback like before you even start do it anyway yeah but just get the conversation started that this is what's happening and you just go like and almost Prime them with the information of yeah this is what we're doing and why and exactly get them ready build the storyline up then build the highway instead of just sending out an email blast yeah tens of thousands of emails being like hi please spend three hundred dollars

exactly yeah it's been three months like product prototyping and everything getting it right and show that journey of doing it because you know you guys obviously pretty open books about stuff yeah and then and then just see because if it doesn't work then you just be like what else should I do yeah but if it does work yeah and you can do and you can start to push out this top tier one yeah that that gives you that that's where your revenues can start to change because and actually you don't even need your revenues to change your revenues can stay the same but you get a high profit London yeah because you because look there's only so much profit you can have on a 33

pair even if you're making them for a dollar like it's still only 32 dollars but you're selling something for 300 you could you could make a hundred dollar profit yeah easy yeah yeah and so um okay that's cool I'm gonna go to limited edition one do you know um do you know the guys uh [ __ ] what's your name um Crop Shop Boutique um what's her name the bikini model um she lives in Gold Coast uh Rachel Dylan no I don't know okay so Rachel Dylan is like full-time bikini Champion whatever anyway she's like a sports like she's like Body Sculpting sort of person right um yeah you bring her up because she's she's got a do Crop Shop Boutique that's her brand so they were

so sad so my partner as a gym junkie loves her like because she does all the gym stuff anyway this is her brand that she made crop shot I love this um and she so crop shot Boutique is is Rachel Dylan's brand yeah and she um has obviously got collaborations of heaps of people that she does and all sort of crap but it was just her she started but what they did is they did like a limited drop and they sold out in like about a minute and a half or something right because they they they're massive these guys they doing the hundreds of millions probably across the group that they have yeah but they were so smart they were like okay look guys like

you'll complain because we didn't have enough of this so we've got a limited run but you have to understand like we haven't made these so we're gonna have to made them there's an eight week wait eight weeks and they just you know what they did they just lift it open yeah there was no limited time no and it just went bananas yeah and then they just getting all manufactured because they got all the money for it so like that's a thing like you couldn't do it all the time because it'd become stupid yeah and people are so smart like they would Cotton On you can't you can't lie to the internet and it was the first time they did it so you guys are kept

doing this limited edition so if you keep doing it and then you just know if one sells out that fast yeah you just go all right this is the one everyone wanted it there's all these abandoned carts that we can go after whatever it is um and you just open it up yeah and just go for gold and then just go there's a big and then we make the exact same earring for the next three weeks the Nick goes mad yeah I'm gonna be laughing away at the bank he'll love it yeah but um yeah so they're quite crazy like Rachel Dylan's ridiculous like what she's been able to build she started it all off a um like you know like buying PDF [ __ ] training

plans oh yeah yeah that's how she started wow and then made like an app and then did like group classes and she'd get like thousands of people doing this group groups yeah all sorts yeah yeah anyway mental yes so good um all right that's not your brand get rid of her brand she's got enough um okay I love it this is so cool um I love that how where you guys at because I wasn't sure I really wanted to know like I wasn't sure where the size of it was it's really interesting to hear it have um had hit it peaked out real early in its Journey yeah he went so fast and then it went there which is really interesting yeah um I do

think that unless you can change the product style I I honestly don't think product lines is the right way yeah um it adds so much complexity don't don't don't go our Stan said so yeah [ __ ] I'm not the authority here but it is real hard like you know why I know this is that every single Hotel like as I I had 12 jobs in 11 years and hotels I moved around a lot because they send me into fixed places yeah and the first thing I did in every single place was rip out all the menus all the products and just simplify and put Less in yeah because every time people are like oh we need to make more money let's add another product let's add

another service category let's add another service time whatever and all it did is it made it less efficient no one was coming in we just Diversified our Market things didn't go well yeah and it cost we may have made a little bit more money but our profit margins were just wiped out more staff more costs more Logistics more that stuff the real trick to making more money is to reduce item lines which is why nike.com has [ __ ] all on it compared to their actual whole Suite of stuff because they from their point of view where they what they sell is like get customers to buy the buy a pair of Jordans per Air Forces you know whatever they got a few things um when I

say if you they still have heaps but they have far less than what they actually have across their whole range that they sell at Rebel Sport or right all their other things and you can't do that because you're not a multi-trillion dollar [ __ ] Empire that rules the world yet but I think like what I would do is um either my advice would be to either try and you know go into that next premium category um or think about Investors yep because what investors do is they don't care about a loss over the first couple years right they care about establishing scale yeah and so your your scale here is setting up um setting up three powers and shipping in the US and then you've been

able to sell in the US without shipping rates yeah and then it's on yeah because like you think what if it tell me how much of that half let's say half a mil whatever the revenue actually is but the half mil Mark percentage-wise how much is Australia I'd say probably about it's 70 Australia 70 Australia I'm just guessing yeah and that's going to be because you've got a more heavier presence there but also because the shipping rates are way better in Australian Australia posts intern like local shipping rates are actually really good so if you think like 70 of your 500k is Australia but you could actually grow the American Market to an equal size an opportunity if you were more present yeah in that

place there are 15 times bigger something like that than the Australian Market oh and population in population Revenue a market-wise there way bigger right yeah so like you could go if you could sit up there right with the right investors to back all the production and actually just have a team who can like you just have a team there with their own Cutters and stuff yeah there was a company called that would be so cool yeah and it's doable but you have to be Keen to take investment and that's a what's your scary yeah what's your thoughts on that scary yeah yeah I well I I like control in in that sense and um handing that over to someone even if you know they do

know more than you and they they have all the right things and they have the money it's very scary yeah because then you're not only uh being held accountable by yourself yeah um yeah it's scary but there's a couple things more people let down in that sense I can let down myself um but anyone else that I that's scary yeah one of the things to think about Autumn best is that people um get a bit worried about is that like it's not alone they're investing so they're risking their money on you you don't want to find someone who comes in and invests and tells you what to do you want someone to come and who in who will invest and give you support where you

need it because they know this is your vision yeah yeah because they investing in you not the idea yeah like your idea is not new no at all not even by long shot but that's okay what's new is you guys and the way you do it that's new and it's a can't be replicated yeah only you guys can do it so they invest in that and they allow you to do and that's what like the couple investors that have talked to us which we're not going to do but a couple of them who have talked to us we've they've said I said like I don't want to like I make stupid hiring decisions I spend money on stuff that I shouldn't spend it on like

I I don't I do it because it's my gut feel and I'm playing real long game I'm playing a real long game approach and they've all said to me like that's what we want to invest in yeah we don't want to invest in a marketing companies like yeah I mean marketing companies that are staying it's [ __ ] stupid it's a dumb investment right so you should think about that saying like if you ever did like if you really like I think a lot of people go oh let's make incremental changes and slowly grow but that doesn't work you have to like fundamentally re- design it yeah if you could borrow it to like what is like for you you know many many as of what I've

written for your approach what does that mean to you what do you think that means to you like what is that uh security mostly growing up we we didn't really have a lot of money yeah um and so now that I'm old enough to be able to change that for myself and I recognize that security is the first thing and then whatever comes after that is a bonus yeah um what does security mean for you uh probably that it could all just disappear tomorrow and I'd be okay cool yeah yeah so and when you say okay does that mean like I'm okay forever or I'm okay for enough time to get back on my feet probably well I think I'm already at the point where

it's if it was to stop tomorrow I'd be okay for enough time until I'm On My Feet Again um so I think it would have to be at least a couple of years for me to just go whoa that all is it's gone now poof I don't know how it happened yeah not that it would yeah I've been thinking that for the last four years and it hasn't happened yeah yeah so yeah yeah do you know how awesome goes away do you know how they have no it happens when that people like businesses overstretch the wrong ways that's how it does because then you get into like unsustainable territory no long-term growth the difference of you guys the way you guys would do it is

if you stopped building Community yeah I think and stopped connecting with that Community as well because we have such a strong community at the moment that Chloe jokes she could release the ugliest pair of earrings and they'd love it just because we made it um one of our best customers is called Gemma Gemma if you're watching this hi um and we call all of our best customers and there's a big group of them we call them our Germans I love them yeah and they're we love them and you publicly do that uh we have done internally internally yeah yeah um because we just yeah we love them and they love us and yeah yeah that's like incredible real like Supreme bricks sort of stuff like

yeah you know the Supreme just like made a brick and a crowbar and stuff I love that yeah we could do that you should make brick earrings this is the first day yeah that's so funny yeah we name some of our earrings after our customers as well oh that's cool yeah and they love it that's great yeah um on there how many designs are you up to how many lines have you done um so many there was at one point there was 360 earrings on the website that were live and that wasn't all the ones that we had drafted as well we so many we've done two of The 100 earrings in five day challenge so yeah I don't know why I didn't learn from

the first try but I wanted to do it again um so yeah so many so many pairs of earrings that's so crazy um and you're still selling them because you've still got stock and so you just keep selling until they run out or how does that work um I think we keep selling until that one's kind of dead yeah you know we'll restock small amounts if if it's an older pair but people still want them and we get messages and emails and stuff saying can you bring this one back and so we'll go well only one person wants them but we're making it for them anyway we may as well make five and then we'll go back on the Shelf so yeah easy yeah all

right cool I love this story this is great because I had no like it's gonna sound real [ __ ] but like I couldn't tell from first glance where this was and how it is like you really have to get deep into the law of it tonight which is cool because it means it's like um the brands that have if you know you know are the best yeah because then their Community only their Community Days and so they they love their feeling of like if you don't know it you don't know yeah yeah which is you can see it like even with our stuff on Tears like the people who know tears know we're taking the piss yeah they get the joke and you know people like

I love the person who's like on our recent videos like uh tell me you haven't seen a Tears video without telling me you haven't seen a chance um which makes me want to flick over to you yeah and your brand because I don't know if you know much about our company but actually we're more about personal Brands than we are Company brands so tell me about your Tech talk like you blow up on this fridge video yeah that was your personal one right yeah so you beloved on the fridge video um and what is like how's that Journey been because that's must be a different Journey to the brass and Bone Journey yes yeah so tell me about that right yeah so um it started

with the fridge video and that blew up and I really I rode that wave for a very long time um I think my Tick Tock name at the time was uh fridge lady um yeah and I was obsessed with that fridge I still have it it's on its last legs um but I really got stuck at that point I was like great I've got a famous fridge but what does that mean like how do I what do I do with this from there and I knew I didn't want to be predominantly a DIY page like a like a craft page because although I love doing that stuff I've already made the mistake of turning one hobby into a business um and I love that and

I don't regret that but I then had to find another hobby right so I do love my DIYs but that's for me and sometimes I share it still on on my page um but I really yeah I was a bit stuck and also churning out DIYs as well very time consuming yeah um so I knew I didn't want to do that and I sat on that account for a year at about a hundred thousand followers and I was too scared to post anything else outside of DIYs or the fridge because I was afraid I'd lose followers yeah yeah but it's normal yeah yeah so I sat on it for a year and then one day I was just like what is the point of having

a hundred thousand followers if you're not gonna tell them anything or you know they followed you for a reason so just give it a go and I've grown that I think maybe over the last six six months yes I could be it could be a bit longer yeah yeah um I think it's now at 177 000. um yeah what's the tag again AUD HD message oh yeah it's Kate oh it's okay Three A's yeah three T's sixes yeah there you go yeah no no no no no no no go back and it's the one that pops up down the bottom yeah no no keep going keep going delete um you know you know you must get this I don't know if you get this all

the time but you know like when you commented the first time you know what the first thing that me and my part went through our partner said what oh that's Kitty Ritchie oh yes no I do yeah all the time because from a from a far away tiny little thing you kind of or you don't look like it but from that little you could be mistaken you'll be mistaken and we're like that's so much and then you had the followers too so I was like oh maybe it is yeah um way better because I was like that's kind of funny where she come from out of the blue because anyway but these guys are probably like who the [ __ ] Cody Richards yeah especially Connor he

would have no idea um Home and Away reference very Australian thing yeah um so you blew up you've been growing it you started talking to them again that's happened in the last six months is it still growing like in a pretty steady sort of pace or is it kind of like goes in waves yep waves definitely yeah it depends as well what kind of content I'm deciding to make right at the moment I'm on the let's get to know Kate train and the views are low and that's fine and I'm pretty comfortable with that that's better content I mean maybe because I just come into it but I like this sort of content yeah the content that I was making before if you scroll down

a little bit My Views were very consistently in the hundreds of thousands if not millions and that was great and I was making money but it it was kind of a bit salesy and it kind of like I liked it yeah here we go yeah so yeah a few million ones like the Amazon videos and stuff yeah you got categorized as a product person eh yeah and I didn't want that either so now I do a mixture of of both yeah um this was my puzzle phase where I was uh making clear acrylic puzzles and this is the fridge phase so yeah there you go that is so cool oh yeah you can tell I really melt milked this yeah 100 where's the big one

the big one will be quite far there you go 25.6 crazy yeah um yeah that was it before yeah yeah nice ah hey two minutes and 14 seconds it's a quite a long video yeah yeah yeah and people complained about it in the comments too it was so long yeah they watched the whole thing and they didn't have the scrubbing feature either so to see the end of the video they had to watch the full two minutes oh because they hadn't come out yet didn't it hadn't come out yet and then I showed it for like a split second and they couldn't pause fast enough to sit so they had to watch it again they were so mad that's so [ __ ] good and did you

do that intentionally when you made it it just just came out that way there's and there's so many little Easter eggs in this video that made so many different demographics of people comments so I mentioned um Gray's Anatomy in there I mentioned uh Jake Paul in there just like randomly I'm using a paintbrush that's actually a makeup brush and that made the makeup Community comment and so yeah it was just it was yeah a crazy combination yeah you know this is currently Joni's hypothesis and actually I wonder if this is it part of it as well the more topics discussed yes and she is like because we're talking about this length thing the other day and now I've gone back into work mode here talking

to Conor about that [ __ ] but like and because we're trying to decide so that's the makeup brush I love it we were trying to figure out the same thing for us like why have some of these long ones gone off is it is it full retention time like what is it is it the long like they might be only be 20 retention because it's four minutes long that's a long time they're on it and stuff like that but then like Joni had this hypothesis of like no you like you talked about nine ten different things in that video like all of those people who like those keywords have been shown it to see and then and then because they all liked it it went off

I wonder if that adds I feel like I've seen people do that eh yeah I feel like I feel like I've like got into that and I've been there for a while I wonder if we should um yeah I reckon that's a good testing thing she had like I I know it's something but I didn't I wonder if it's like more important than we think the video still has to be good yeah still can't be [ __ ] because they're gonna watch it again people who loved oh they were so quick that's so cool I didn't even see it again there you go [ __ ] that's over there and I think I really grabbed people at the start because I said that I was painting the fridge to

leave passive aggressive messages to my housemates and so people were really sucked in on that narrative as well so good yeah that's so good because people love to hate people people love to hate you yeah they love it yeah they love it and I love it I love that they hate this yeah dude you know what I'm gonna we're gonna paint the fridge um I that's so good yeah so okay but tell me like um the thing I was really uh I was really wanting to get into is like you your link tree is just like affiliate marketing all the way down how's that gone like it was it real big when you're doing all the product stuff and sort of tailored off like and

it was working really wealthy yeah I was getting in the thousands yeah go to the go to Kate's one on her page on the top of her Tick Tock yeah um and I think that was also timing as well because I was posting those videos at the tail end of last year in the fourth quarter so um it was around Christmas time lead up to Christmas people are in that spending mindset um and I was yeah I was pumping out the videos of you know my favorite Amazon products yeah and I was getting millions of views on them um and they were fun and I liked the money coming through because I'm a cash Grabber um but yeah so my uh most popular um affiliate

one is the air purifier oh yeah um they're amazing honestly I'm not even you don't even have to use my link like get one they're so good they're only 100 bucks so incredible they suck the dust out of your air and like put it in there put the link in the podcast um yeah yeah yeah no go Kate's link stands link and see which one people click on everyone loves to hate me I think out of spy they'll go and buy it on mine I'll just call it Joni's Lincoln in the little [ __ ] life yeah yeah and then yeah the electric scrubber and the robovac although um I need to come clean about the robo back I actually hate that thing it needs to go

yeah I did love it but it went through my cat's number twos throughout the whole house and it smears it everywhere three times and after that I was like Daryl get outside you are unsabbatical I love it on sabbatical see you later yep now I need Daryl 2.0 with the sensors like I need to spend money on that one man Cheapskate doesn't like that but yeah that's so good so so talk about it for a little bit like you don't have to give me fully specifics but like for people at home like when you're doing this and you're doing it well what are you getting from like a weekly basis from affiliate links like what's some Revenue sort of numbers give me whatever the number

makes sense yeah so in one month um I sold 20 000 worth of the air purifiers yeah um and that's twenty thousand dollars for them and so I get a 10 affiliate on that so like two grand the air purifier video Alone um so yeah how many videos is that one two three I think I've done about a couple Yeah couple the air purifier one if if ever I need decent views I just whip it out and give it a clean I'm not joking I'm not joking yeah I love it yeah if I need a dopamine hit so good I'll clean the air purifier I'll do it I mean that was I like you know like jokes aside I love that ability to just be

like um yeah I need to dopamine here I need I need views like we know what's going to go and crack it yeah and that was like the video that we did the other day like joining I knew like yeah we're like probably didn't know I was going to go as fast as it did but then it tell it off real fast but like have you noticed just sorry yeah side note Tick Tock views nothing Peak yeah just all of a sudden Peak and then drop off yeah like taper out it's very strange I've noticed across all of my videos recently yeah massive Peak and then nothing whereas you know it would be um in the first hour you'd get 50 000 views and you

go okay this is going to be about a million views and you could predict it it changed probably December Jan we're fully the first time it changed and then it changed again I think February March we just saw another change where it did it um yeah I just think it's like I think I think like still if the content's great it's just showing it to so many more people that listen less people like it yeah and then it's like okay yeah we've found all the people who actually like this and that's enough yeah um whereas to get into the 10 or 11 million like it yesterday real good like yeah we've only got over five mil I think we've only got 10 videos or 12

videos over that Mark maybe something like that hey you've got a couple on yours eh I had one on 13. 13. didn't you have another one that was a before five didn't you have the second car like three three yeah um yeah it's hard to get past that five mil Mark I and especially now I think it's even harder like this time last year or Another Sunday last year but like late last year yesterday's video would have been at seven mil six mil easy yeah because the the how fast like it was on for half uh no an hour it was up for an hour and I had a call from the unsociable guys from Scotland the guys over there because this is like a

full code everything we're doing right they he like raim he's like bro that's going off I was like what's going on he's like your video you just put up was like I haven't put a video up yet I haven't even done my Vlog it's like not yours no it's watching your instead because do you Stan and I'm like oh Bro [ __ ] sorry and I was like watching it I was like holy [ __ ] and they're just gone and I was like oh yeah yeah it's definitely a mill but then yeah then it tails off yeah but but we also get like spikes every night because of the US when they wake up in the morning to get another round of spikes um Okay cool so that's

quite interesting so your affiliate links um and not that weren't doing too bad when you're trying yeah so now what sort of volume comes through there because there's real different content it is so sometimes I'll post videos like this one where I was cleaning my bathroom drunk but I'll still use the product yeah I love this whole series like just one night deteriorating yes before you left it was so [ __ ] funny it was like I have so much to do let's get drunk and meanwhile I'm like posting like celebrities at my table because I was like I've just I don't want to be doing this yeah um yeah yeah um so so when you do stuff that are about stuff it still gets people going

into click yeah so if you actually scroll down a bit there was one that what I didn't intend for it to be a product thing but it made a little bit of money it's when my landlord stuff was going on slow down a sec uh phase oh yeah keep going yeah here we go okay so see that 1.3 million there so I was just talking about how I had a house inspection coming up because I had some issues with my landlord um and I needed to clean my oven um and I was just explaining the story over the video of me and I was using the product but this one did quite well as well and I didn't even say Lincoln bio or no but

I think people commented asking like where is this from and stuff yeah yeah yeah just told them it's in my bio yeah so showing it and then people get overseas with it yeah just go and buy it yeah yeah but what does that cost what does that cost to buy 50 bucks yeah so those sort of low cost items that people can just consume real fast yeah and they're great too just FYI another another little Shameless plug the reason I was asking about it is like have you looked into much about what's happening with Tick Tock shop um I've heard a little bit I actually went to a conference recently where Tick Tock was on the panel and yeah it's quite interesting yeah I know

it's yeah it's cool like the guys are like unsociable that we're doing the thing with so they because it's in the UK fully and they do mostly e-commerce those guys say where we do most Professional Services and B2B stuff they do mostly e-commerce businesses and it's real cool for creators because like you do a product but they buy it in the video so so they don't have to go to your Lincoln bio and then it's set up so that when you when they buy it it's like Amazon they it's already set up in the background how much your commission comes to your Tick Tock account oh it's gonna make things so much easier as well purchases will go through the roof yeah so I think

like actually like I was never um I never really thought for a lot of people yours is a bit different because you've got you get you were getting consistent views but for a lot of people like the link and buy stuff not a real good way of like consistently making money unless you're like real unless you are actually getting millions of views all the time well because that's the thing right once that video starts to taper out that's now that money making machine is now gone yeah they don't come back and and the peak's not high enough to like live on that for long enough right like let's say you did 2K in a month it's like great but like you live in Melbourne so

that doesn't get you far so nice Pocket Change yeah but you think about if I don't even have to leave the video and I'm just like oh yeah I'll buy that yeah and it's all built in like my payment system's built into Tick Tock so I can just buy it they don't even scroll through this stuff's more focused when you don't have Community like going on in your videos like because if you've got community like they're gonna follow you anywhere so is it more for non-career stuff oh yeah I do its best no I think I think yeah I think I think you're right but I think also that's a real good point that if you've got a community who love you they'll go and

support you by buying stuff right yeah but you also want to capitalize on going viral as well and you're reaching you know millions of people that don't give a [ __ ] yeah they don't care who you are because 1.3 million only 10 of them are you followers yeah so like you know you want to capitalize on the other 90 yeah but also as we know like getting people to go to your buyers one of the hardest thing to do like in in this whole world which is if they don't have to I can just buy straight up yeah also a lot of people like to they see the product and they know that you have an affiliate link so they'll go and open up a new

web browser just so that they don't give you the Affiliates really yeah people do that I know I know honestly but if you're making it easier for them anyway and it's genuinely easy then I'm grabbing your money yeah mine is so funny it's so funny yeah which is what I liked about Tick Tock shops I actually think it's like a real I think you should definitely keep on top of it yeah and watch it watch what's happening in the UK yeah go watch some of the guys if you really want to do it more um and not just you but anyone listening like go look at what the um influences and the creators and stuff in the UK are doing now to do it because

they're all doing it and like e-commerce businesses like well that's the only way we're going to market now because it's so much easier and they just give commissions the way I want to finish up real quickly is where are you going what's next what's the future well I know you you don't like uh well you don't want to personally buy a home I want to yeah but I want to turn that into a money making machine obviously so we could pay for itself um and I want to renovate that and so I think that would be my last yeah next series I don't know about flipping houses forever just one just one I'm pretty happy with that um yeah and then maybe upsize further down

the line but that's for me personally where I want to take this yeah um that's cool yeah because then it'll go off yeah yeah yeah and it's DIY which is fun I'm going to be doing anyway may as well film it um and people will love it yeah um and just everything like because if because you got the following it already and if you plan it out right you can just have every single expense covered by Ed or affiliate links that would be great of course you can yeah of course you can yeah yeah 100 like you've got a good engaged audience you've got the other stuff like you just got to plan it out properly yeah um because a lot of those big Brands

even things like Bunnings and stuff they do heaps of I mean [ __ ] donated a Bunnings ad once you build like a table or something agency anymore anyway yeah um and lastly is it all you like so you're um you like what about ads and stuff like that like how much of that sort of stuff are you doing uh as in like brand new brand deals and stuff I get a few not map I'm pretty picky I know I like to joke that I'm a cash Grabber but I'm not going to yeah so it's my face in front of a brand that I don't believe in so I am quite picky and I also love to negotiate so um yeah yeah a lot of Brands don't

like that so yeah they always want just especially when they're doing like non-agency people they're just like oh here's someone we can get for real cheap yeah it's getting real cheap yeah they got like um there's this deal I probably shouldn't say it too much on camera right now because it's still in play but like um there's this one for one of our staff it might be in this room um and as soon as they found out that he had an agent which is me yeah that [ __ ] got super really like the [ __ ] but uh but yeah it still it helps for people to um uh you should just you should just have an email address and reply back as your agent yeah yeah you

should just do that yeah it would save me about 10 emails back and forth it would just save everything yeah you should just do that that's just a hack yeah just like put in an email address that's like something something could make up some [ __ ] yeah so-and-so's agent at blah blah and then just go back and then they're like oh because because automatically they all they were like 50 or 100 increase the price yeah wow because they have to account for agents fees true they said they know yeah they instantly it goes up yeah and they and they know that agents know the rates yeah yeah yeah that'll be my trick because if you're in an ad negotiate just add in the extra tool on

top yeah all right anything else you want to add before we wrap up because I think the guys probably want to go home yeah no I'm all good cool well thank you for having me yeah thanks for coming on that was cool it was cool to hear the story about brass and Bones because I wasn't sure yeah the whole like where it goes from so that was really cool so thanks so much cheers