192 – Be the BEST Product Boss Minna Khounlo-Sithep

You're listening to gift biz unwrapped episode 192 This is it.

This is my light bulb moment.

I'm going to see if I can figure this out.

Attention gifters,

bakers, crafters and makers pursuing your dream can be fun whether

you have an established business or looking to start one now

you are in the right place.

This is gift to biz unwrapped,

helping you turn your skill into a flourishing business.

Join us for an episode packed full of invaluable guidance,

resources and the support you need to grow your gift biz.

Here is your host gift biz gal,

Sue moon Heights.

Hi there,

it's Sue And thank you for spending a little bit of

time with me today.

If you're listening to this right as it's going live,

we are in the midst of the holiday scurry.

There's shopping,

there's planning and there's parties.

Oh, so much fun.

It's also the last week to promote your product in my

free Facebook group called gift biz breeze.

We have a holiday product showcase over there where you can

join the group and promote what you have going for the

holidays. I love this concept because all of us can support

each other and at the same time do some little check

marks off of our holiday gift list.

If you aren't part of the group already,

just jump over to gift biz breeze.com

ask to join and I welcome you in with a big

holiday hug and without further ado,

let's get into the show.

My guest today is Mina of the product boss.

Mina is one busy woman owning two separate businesses.

She's the owner of little labels which are writeable waterproof labels

for baby items for daycare and is also an Amazon best

seller. She's the co owner and cohost of the product boss

podcast and coaches,

product based business owners how to grow their businesses and connect

with other product entrepreneurs through masterminds.

She lives in Iowa,

is the mom of two little girls and loves living her

mission as mom and CEO.

Welcome to the gift biz unrepped podcast.

MENA, Thanks you.

I'm so happy to be here.

It's going to be such a fun conversation because from one

product based person to another.

So I'm really excited to dive in.

But before we do,

I like our listeners to get to know you in a

little bit of a different way and that is through a

motivational candle.

So if you were to help us envision what type of

a candle describes you,

Mina, what color would it be and what would be the

quote on your candle?

It would be a really simple white candle,

but the,

I really took it from a quote that I absolutely love.

It used to actually be on my Instagram bio,

my personal one,

and it is,

don't be afraid to go out on a limb.

That's where the fruit is.

So I feel like my candle be kind of a fruity,

citrusy scent,

but a white candle and then maybe some like floral back

notes. Kind of like Clinique happy if you've ever smelled that

perfume. I used to wear that back when I left my

house to work,

but no longer because I'm here in sweat pants every single

day now.

I used to wear that too.

My sister actually used to give it to me for my

birthday. Isn't it wonderful?

Yeah, it really is.

And so the fruit on the end of the branch,

and so what does that mean to you?

It's just all the things that you really long for your

own idea of success,

whether that's in motherhood or in business,

but you have to go out on a limb.

That's the thing.

If you want to reach the fruit of whatever you want

it to be,

but you can't just close the world off,

I guess.

And that's the hardest part.

Putting yourself out there,

Putting yourself out there.

And I think to continue with your analogy,

going out on a limb,

when you go further and further out,

that limb gets a little less stable.

Yeah. But then you're reaching and you're going for your goal,

so you have to go through that time of instability,

I guess,

if you will.

Yeah. It's a risk out there That it is.

Well, talk to me.

I'm really,

really interested in hearing about little labels and how that all

developed. So share with us a little bit about that and

the journey there and then we'll get into the product boss.

So I'm going to keep it really shorter.

It's such a long story.

Chapter titles or something.

I don't know.

Yes, so it started about three years ago and I have

And I did graphic design for those years and I used

to work out of agencies and doing corporate graphic design.

So I have big clients like banks and real estate management

companies and things like that.

And I would do their newsletters and annual report.

So I was doing that for,

at that time,

12 years and I was really burnt out.

So I'll doing all the creative work at night.

I just,

I didn't want to do it anymore.

So my daughter at that time was five,

but I was pregnant with my second daughter at the time.

I already knew who she was or what gender she was.

So I knew I was going to have another little girl

and I knew,

Oh well I guess I was assuming they would be very

similar pregnancies.

So I was just tired all the time and I gained

50 pounds for each birth and just a lot.

And I thought,

you know what,

I need to step away from doing graphic design because it

is just too much for me and I want to do

something else.

So all along being in in a entrepreneur for forever,

I knew I wanted to come up with a product and

so that's kind of how little labels came about was I

had decided if I walked through my day,

what problems could I solve?

And so a little labels was born out of me getting

my second daughter ready for daycare and needing waterproof labels for

her baby bottles cause I had to label every single one

and then also date them and everything like that.

And I did not want to do it with masking tape,

which is what I did last time.

And I went onto Amazon,

my favorite site,

and there was nothing that was just really simple labels.

I didn't want to order custom ones.

So I thought,

you know what?

This is it.

This is my light bulb moment.

I'm going to see if I can figure this out.

And so having had the background of commercial printing from those

annual reports,

I started from there.

Actually when I did that in your reports,

I would manage all the manufacturing of those annual reports too.

So it was like I knew the printing process,

I knew the project management,

end of manufacturing,

something start to finish.

And so I started with that knowledge of kind of manufacturing

in a printing setting and then started figuring out the process

because I knew that there was some way it could be

done in my head,

it was the version of an extreme label.

So it would go in a bottle,

but it would be able to go through a dishwasher and

it would be able to go through a microwave and it

would be able to go through steamer,

any of those things.

So that's kind of where I started in my adventure of

low labels.

I love that story and it almost sounds like we set

it up this way and we really didn't.

But the reason I love this so much is I talk

a lot with our listeners,

Mina, about if you're in a nine to five while you're

listening to this podcast,

but you have the interest in doing something different,

maybe you know,

whatever type of art or craft or anything that you have

that you're looking at monetizing and turning into a business for

yourself, the time that you're spending in your nine to five,

whatever it is,

could be really advantageous to the development of what you're looking

at doing next.

So you're talking about you knew production,

you had resources,

all of that from the graphics end.

And look,

you were able to apply it and probably move so much

faster to get little labels up and going.

And maybe it was the key to being able to figure

out how to produce it in the first place.

But the point being you're taking your nine to five a

paid job when you're working for someone else and you're able

to use that as a booster to get you into something

for yourself.

Yeah, for sure,

and I felt like I understood the problem because I was

serving one of my own needs,

so when you initially know you're meeting your own problems,

you understand that that's a problem.

Instead of someone being like,

Hey, you know what you should create and it's a lot

harder to tap into the,

Hey, you know what?

I think you should create type of mentality because people will

get that a lot because they're looking for a product and

then other people will naturally give them ideas,

but it has to STEM from something that you can solve

for yourself in a way because otherwise you don't identify with

the solution as well.

Can you share just a little bit without going into all

the details,

how long did it take you from when you had the

idea and you started getting samples and maybe testing and doing

all of that?

How long from when there was that idea to when you

actually had a product on the market?

Probably five months and that's extremely fast in my mind,

but I had a baby that was going to come out

of me.

I knew at a deadline I did and so I knew

that by the time that she needed to go to daycare,

I wanted to have something that I could actually be like,

Hey, this is actually something we produce,

which I didn't end up actually doing.

I didn't present it to her daycare,

but in my mind at that time I thought,

Oh my gosh,

this is brilliant and this is falling right into the right

timing. Got it.

Perfect all and so let's continue on with the story because

I want to get into some of the other things we

said we were going to chat about with our listeners here

today. When does the product boss enter into scheme of things

here? Not until much,

much later.

So fast forward a little bit.

When my daughter was four months old,

she had open heart surgery and so I did not do

anything with the business.

I kind of just let it sit there.

But it was already at Amazon at that time.

And so the month before I had put it into Amazon

and then a month later we were living at the hospital

for another month and this is how life happens.

Right. And then four more months.

I just didn't do anything with it.

Well, when I decided to come back to looking at my

listing, cause I would peek in there every once in a

while when I wasn't with my daughter.

It was just sustaining itself.

So all that leg work that I had done in the

beginning about figuring out Amazon and figuring out fulfillment and shipping

on that end was being utilized in that time that I

wasn't spending on the business.

So by the time that my daughter healed and it was

super fast,

she was back to normal and like,

I don't know,

like a month I would say.

I appreciate you sharing that because of course that was a

question on all of our minds.

How is she?

She's perfect and she never has to go into heart surgery

again. She's like this miracle little wild child of mine and

now she's really big and crazy and wild.

Okay. And then that let me focus on the business too.

Once she got into her normal routine,

it took me a long while to get into being,

feeling normal to like,

there's so many mindset issues at the very beginning of being

an entrepreneur,

but add onto that being a scared mom.

Right. And it was like debilitating for me for a long

while. Plus I have anxiety tendencies,

so I was anxious all the time.

And so then once I got over that I started reaching

out to people to have coffee chats.

And this might've been at the beginning of how coffee chats

happened on the online world because I feel like I was

there and I was like,

people would say,

Hey, you have a really cool product.

You want to do a coffee chat?

And we'd hop on and we talk about our businesses.

So it was even before the term coffee chat was coined

in a way.

And then I met my now cohost and biz bestie and

business partner,

Jacqueline Snyder on one of those coffee chats.

And it was probably a year after I had even started

putting myself out there.

And then it was actually her idea,

just start the product's boss.

She owns her own consulting business for fashion apparel brands and

she helps them launch.

And I had all this knowledge of the retail online platforms

of Amazon and Walmart and jet and various platforms.

And we thought,

Hey, this is a really cool combination because we would have

the most fun and crazy and wonderful conversations,

just the two of us.

And she had the idea of starting masterminds and I initially

said no because I had just stopped working with clients in

the graphic design,

you know,

just the year previous.

And I thought,

I really don't want to work with clients again.

And so we did a beta group,

she convinced me to do a beta group and we said,

Hey, would you like to,

to have some coaching from us for this beta round?

And we had a whole bunch of people sign up.

And then I found out that I really,

really loved it and that it actually helped me in gathering

my information and then figuring out what my tasks that I

needed to do for my own business because I was coaching

other people in how to break things down.

And then we started the podcast a couple of months after

that and the rest is pretty much history from there.

You make a perfect duo in those of you who haven't

listened, you definitely want to listen to the product boss.

Tell me if this is accurate to say.

I think for our listeners,

everyone here is a maker of some sort.

So they have a tangible product and one of the challenges

always is you can only grow so much if you're a

one person business because you only have so much time.

The more business you get,

the more work you've just made for yourself.

So at some point you need to either bring in more

people to make the designs,

have a factory,

start making it for you.

Somehow your business has to change.

So that's a lot of what you guys are doing on

the product boss,

right? I mean obviously with different elements.

You know like Jacqueline is more women's apparel,

but you're teaching people how to grow past just making their

own product themselves.

Right. I would say most of our listeners are manufactured products,

but we do have handmade ones too,

so they listen because I think there's a lot that applies

to just all product people.

Whereas there are so many service based tips and advice and

content out there that it's not so product oriented,

so I think it fits all product people.

Jacqueline specializes in startups,

so if you're launching something,

she's great.

I like to say I'm more comfortable with growth because I

love having data and then saying,

here's what I think you should do because in the coaching

of the product boss,

we don't actually have a lot of apparel and fashion lines.

She does that on her other business designer consulting co-op.

Got it.

Okay. What are you seeing are some of the biggest challenges

people are coming with hot tea topics for masterminds or just

overall challenges?

It differs for startup and for growth and for expansion or

scale. So for startup I would say it's almost always mindset

stuff. It's like that self doubt,

that feeling like you're burning time and money and then also

just knowing what your options are.

You don't know where to go and where to turn for

growth. A lot of it is how do you make more

money, how do you make more sales?

And then we help a lot of people with visibility and

what they should do for that.

And then for expansion,

it's the hiring and figuring out the processes of scaling from

there. So I think they're all different in our masterminds.

We have separate because of how deep we can go in

every single one of those topics with everybody because it's,

it gets really hard,

especially if you're trying to do it alone.

One of the things that we talked about,

certain tips that you can use for specific seasons selling objectives.

Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

Yeah, I think that the tips that I'll go over is

there's more like for how to scale a handmade business.

And you can definitely do that seasonally for making sure that

like in a service based business it's like if your content

is relevant,

right? So then in the products way version of saying that

it'd be if your product is really scalable in that timing

and in that season.

And so for instance,

if I were to scale little labels in the winter time

and then during Christmas season or if I would try to,

let's say I started putting my money towards Facebook ads and

everything during Christmas,

it would be far less effective than if I waited till

summer months where it's my busy month.

So you're pushing the busier seasons versus trying to outweigh the

slow months of being busy all the time.

So you're just okay with a slow month and you just

push the busier months,

if that makes sense.

So you would say,

I think this is an obvious yes,

but you weight your strategy so that you're presenting your product

during the time when people need it most.

You're presenting your best strategies.

So let's say your handmade and you have knitted hats instead

of trying to freak out in July when no hats are

selling, you try to just sell more in the winter months.

During this whole months you're putting together the hats.

This is your making season and then during the busy season

when it's winter time,

that's when you have products that you cross sell to.

In other words,

you would upsell or down sell or cross sell and then

you would try to make your transaction bigger instead of trying

to rely on units sold being the same all the time.

So you're just trying to grow the revenue and the margin

rather than the unit sold at a consistent rate.

It's a good point and something to consider for everybody who

has a seasonal type product because I do think that people

freak out a little bit if come the summer months to

stick with what you're talking about with knitting,

their sales are all down.

It's obvious people aren't needing the hats and the knitted booties

necessarily. Maybe you will because of air conditioning,

but things are going to slow down.

So the thought of taking a calendar and really thinking strategically

based on whatever product you have,

if it's only one or your product mix,

where are the heavier months?

And then I like what you're talking about is planning that

those summer months are the time that you're making the product.

So you're all ready,

you're primed for the craft show you're going to go to

or the heavy months when you're really going to be selling

heavy on at T or Amazon,

things like that.

Yeah, for sure.

And a lot of our products that we work with are

not obviously seasonal.

It's like lactation cookies and certain things that aren't,

like I gave a bad example with it being a hat,

but they don't have clear seasons.

But you do of have to pick a season for yourself.

So you can't be in launch mode all the time.

It's far more effective to just pick months where you're going

to be launching better deals and better transactions.

So in those months you're testing and then you can use

that to grow your business.

So instead of coming out with,

let's say like a new product for instance,

we often coach people to take their best seller and come

out with a variation of that best seller.

If it was a handmade good,

you would be coming out with a bundled version of that.

If it's lactation cookies,

it would be,

you know,

a two pack of lactation cookies.

It's very simple versus a whole new product that has a

whole new strategy behind it,

if that makes sense.

So it does make sense.

So you're using the down months for testing to perfect.

It might be price points,

it might be the combo.

It's like you're talking about,

it might be a product enhancement off of whatever your core

product is.

So you're testing all of that so that you're ready when

your heavy season starts to launch it based on the learnings

that you've had.

Is that right?

Yeah. So then you can scale in your busy months.

So during those times,

let's say,

I'll just give a few examples of what you should be

doing in your slow months.

You should be testing out different strategies.

That's where you're figuring out in your soul months,

Hey, these products are still selling.

Those are going to go on my all-star list for when

I'm actually deep into promotion.

So these are when I'm in my busy month and then

this is the price point I'm at.

During those slow months,

you could actually,

since your handmade,

you have the limit of your own time.

You could actually be getting a backlog of a waiting list.

So when you're able to launch in your busy months with,

Hey, we came out with this version or this variation,

then you're able to sell more,

like three times more rather than one exiting rather than keeping

it consistent.

And then you also test out where can I scale instead

of scaling my own work,

you could outsource your fulfillment.

For instance,

you could outsource your emails,

but if you don't want to check them yourself,

you could hire somebody on instead of doing the design work

with you or the actually hand execution of being a maker,

then you could have them instead package up something and send

it out.

So there's different ways to figure out your scaling.

And your slow season so you can actually implement in your

busy season.

It's a little bit of figuring out what your capacity is.

How can I streamline this?

What's my capacity and my slow months so I can whatever,

10 exit in my busy really go get a months.

What I'm hearing from you is you're really looking at that

from two different angles.

One is how do I become more productive just in the

business side overall to the point of do I hire a

bookkeeper, do I have someone helping me with emails,

et cetera,

and then the other is how can I really scale my

product? Either prepping and preparing,

building an audience.

To your point about the waitlist and keeping people with you

too, because I'm thinking that in slower months people have a

tendency then to stray where they might've really been a follower

of yours for a long time.

All of a sudden they might stray because your product isn't

relevant for them during that time,

so how do you keep them with you for the time?

Then when it's winter again or whatever your season is For

a handmade business,

it's especially important because you're trying to build that loyalty.

A lot of times you're buying from a person,

right? A small business.

So you have to keep that person as your loyal customer

because during the,

like, let's say,

you know,

we just had black Friday and cyber Monday.

A lot of times people would just come in as a

revolving door and those people are looking for deals,

but those deals tend to not work for handmade because they're

just looking for deals.

So if your deal is not with a person that's a,

like it could be just a coupon or that stumbled upon

your deal.

But if that person happens to be a loyal customer,

then during that time it's so much easier to convert because

they've already,

it's like they know you as a person.

Right. What do you think about a blog for someone who's

handmade to try and keep people with you?

I think that blogs are starting to be less and less

popular. So I think that if I would give a tip

for any maker,

it would be to do a lot of Instastories because that's

where people are consuming their content now and I mean,

do you read blogs anymore?

SU? I don't actually.

That was probably not a good example.

Okay. I'm thinking of one person in particular.

Her name is Jen and she owns a company.

Abby farms.

Jen, I wasn't expecting to use you as an example here,

but for you,

and she was on the podcast.

Oh my gosh.

Way back,

but she does a lot of exactly what you're talking about.

MENA Facebook lives,

Instagram stories about on the farm because they take and make

soaps and different types of products and they're based right on

the farm,

so they have so much fun content.

They show the kids running around in the fields and they

show the animals.

Then she's out at craft shows,

selling everything and it's so fun.

Even if you're not using her product just to watch what

she's up to because it's a life so different from mine

for sure.

That kind of thing.

I think to the point of what do you do during

downtime and how do you retain your customers?

If you could employ something like that,

we're a traditional blog might come into play is if you

were documenting recipes that you wanted to share with an audience

or if you are an artist and you share designs for

adult coloring,

for example,

things like that For the soap business,

that is wonderful that they are able to build that clientele

because no matter what,

it's still that seven touchpoints or whatever,

and actually nowadays they say it's even more like it's more

like 14 like double the touch points.

No kidding.

Yeah, so don't your slow seasons just keep touch,

touch, touch,

touch, touch,

and then that way they convert easier in your busy season

because then it's easier to sell snow or in summertime or

whatever. You know,

you can't sell ice in winter time,

you know what I mean?

Right. So you've already touched them those many times and then

it's an easy ask.

Got it.

Okay. We've spent ton of time on this seasonal tip.

Move onto another one,

Which is Exactly what we're going to do right after a

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I just wanted to make sure that everybody who's listening to

it, some maker knows that there's very creative ways to scale.

Even if you're a maker and you're still making your own

things. So touched on this previously about looking at your processes

and making them more clean,

making your business really lean,

but even if you're going to say,

let's say you want to get into manufacturing but you don't

want to lose that handmade touch,

you could shorten up the process a little bit.

Like let's say you did ceramic bulls,

you could create a mold that got the ceramic bulls to

a certain point and then at the end you do the

finished hand painting instead of the same idea of buying a

kill and hiring somebody else to make their own version of

what you created.

Do you see what I'm saying?

Like semi manufactured.

Yeah. Do you ever,

when you suggest that,

do you ever get kickback from anybody saying,

well then it's not really handmade?

A little bit.

Yeah. There's this perception that people feel like they need to

be a starving artist to confirm or validate that something is

handmade and that's simply not true.

I think that people invest more in the story of a

handmade person in that they finished this up,

not that they have to have the actual legit certain percentage

of blood,

sweat and tears that went into it.

You know,

when you think about music artists,

just because they're able to make it really big doesn't mean

that they're only playing in dive bars.

Well and they didn't build the piano,

the guitar they're playing on.

Right, right.

There's some people that they had to hire to help compose

the music for them and other people that they might've written

the lyrics,

but other people that cleaned it up for them.

So it's the same things like having part of your process

cleaned up for you.

That's a really good point.

And you know,

the other thing,

just to talk about it a little bit further,

is your still also creating whatever that mold is,

so it's still your style and your design?

Oh yeah,

absolutely. You'll see it even more in the maker world and

in the overall product world,

but starving artists and CEOs are not what they used to

look like there.

Now mom's doing side hustles.

They're now mom's building empires.

It's not like this person that's like in New York and

this one bedroom apartment painting all hours and then making no

money. Right.

It's not the principal.

The principal now is I have little baby mouths to feed

and I'm the new version of a CEO and maker,

so I think that it's getting away from that a lot

more because more people are bringing in extra income to their

households. No,

I love that.

Scaling it at a different way by shortening the processes.

What do you think about more production line instead of just

one off,

like making one bull from start to finish versus making five

then putting them all in the kiln and then painting them

all. I think that's another way to shorten the process.

Oh, for sure.

Like you know,

Jacqueline gave us example of even when you're filling up your

kid's party bags,

right? You're not one party bag move to the next,

you fill those party bags in an assembly line.

That's kind of the way that you have to think about

it. Also,

if you're setting up your shop,

you need to fulfill like have all your bubble envelopes in

a certain place and it's not pretty all the time,

but that's how you figure out where the bottlenecks are.

So if you need to hire,

you can hire somebody and here's their station and here's what

they need to do so you can still work on your

handmade stuff.

Oh good.

A tip that I like to give people that really want

to stay in handmade is that just base it off collections.

Let's say somebody has like what we were saying,

ceramic bowls and they're all handmade.

Those are probably a different category and might be like the

Luxe premium tier of your products.

Then you can have a middle tier for those people that

are going to your shop and being like,

Oh, I really need a gift really fast.

So you might take the same design and put it onto

a different process.

It could be like a print or maybe even even like

I produce product,

like the design goes onto an umbrella or something.

So then it's a cross product.

But just remember,

keep in mind you're serving the same avatar,

so make sure that your product,

if it's an umbrella,

it should hit someone who would buy an umbrella too.

So it can't be something that's completely a different product like

men versus women or something.

And then you're able to scale that way instead.

Yeah, and I've seen this in play.

I never really thought about this one before either.

This is so great,

but I've seen this in play even at our local craft

markets. We have a big juried fine arts market where the

artists still have their paintings,

their original paintings,

but then they'll have prints of the painting.

They might have one of their paintings on a coaster,

different types of things.

But it's all spinning off of their original artwork.

And of course the pricing is all different too.

Yeah, and those are for people who want like a GoTo

gift or we call them off the shelf items and then

if they want an original piece,

they have accessibility to that too.

And it could be a different product too,

but keeping in mind that it should be something that's based

off of bestseller of yours.

So don't just create a whole bunch and create versions of

that thing.

Only do this replication model in a way to your best

seller because then you know what sells and you'll also knows

what sells to your audience.

That's why you keep the avatar the same.

Perfect advice.

Okay, so you've given us three overall tips here,

seasonal, how to scale in terms of shortening the processes and

then collections,

building on collections.

Those are fabulous.

Yeah. Any final one we want to add or are we

good with the three?

I think So.

With collections.

Think about how you're selling in your busy season.

Going back to where I started on this whole conversation.

So are you cross selling your products?

Are you bundling them up?

So then your average sale goes from $9 $15 something like

that. And then based off your bestseller always because you know

what sells and then that way you're able to have kind

of a signature item without calling it that.

But you know what sells to your market.

And that's honestly what you're trying to figure out in your

first year is what is your best seller?

What's your most popular product?

Always try to spin off of your best seller is what

you're saying Always.

Because otherwise you're going in blindly and not using that data,

right? Because when you go off of your bestseller,

you're just doing like nothing fancy like a Tupac or a

bundle with it.

But those people are coming in for that one product,

like a gateway product.

And then you're able to say,

Hey, we also have this instead.

So that way you're not having to convert to all these

different options for them.

They're coming in and it's a really simple buying decision for

them. Perfect.

Love it.

Okay. You were referencing a little bit earlier,

right in the beginning actually about different types of platforms and

leveraging them in different ways.

Let's get into that.

Yeah, so many platforms,

especially for products,

right? There's the retail platforms,

which we're talking big retail like Walmart,

Amazon and everything,

and of course there's Etsy,

there's people who make a ton and scale on Etsy,

and then there's flash deal sites,

so we're talking Jane,

Groupon, Zulily,

and then there is brick and mortar,

so you could actually get into wholesale and boutiques and then

there's popup shops.

You create your own,

so a pop up shop at a local place or you

create your own website and drive traffic there and they all

can go hand in hand.

There's new platforms coming out all the time.

For instance,

Instagram is becoming its own buying platform because it's you're able

to buy right there.

You don't even have to leave the platform.

Right. Same with Pinterest and same with Poshmark.

That's another platform that came out for clothing and subscription boxes.

Now, subscription boxes are as big as boutiques with buying wholesale

from people.

How do you feel about,

how many platforms should you really be on to do them?

Well, I think that you should start off with one.

You should test as much as you can,

but when you figure out your main one,

you'll be able to at least have that and optimize.

So you're on one and then you optimize it like crazy.

So when I say optimize,

figure out what your keywords are,

make sure your ads are there.

If you're doing paper click figuring out that whole system.

So if you're on Etsy,

figure out whatever you can about Etsy and try to scale

on there and then move to the next one.

If you're hitting a whole bunch of walls,

that might not be your platform.

That's when you move over to,

let's say Zulily or Jane or whatever you can get onto

as far as handmade or semi handmade.

That way you can use that data to get onto the

other platforms.

So in this case it would be like,

Hey, I'm a bestseller on Amazon.

Can I get into your subscription box?

Or this is our most popular product on Etsy.

Do you think that we could bring this into the stores?

Cause I think it would really sell with your customers as

well. So you're able to pull data and expertise from a

platform and parlay that a different one.

Use it as a jumping board or something to get into

another one.

W so well we've talked about a lot of these platforms

on other shows,

but never the flash Zulilly all of that.

We've never talked about that before.

Can you go into more of what all those platforms are

about? Yeah,

sure. And we actually have a podcast episode about this too.

There are so many,

Zulily and Groupon,

those are probably the biggest ones.

The ones that are really known to a lot of people,

they take a big cut.

So unless you're manufactured,

and just remember,

even if you're hand-making right now,

you can manufacture a product that you could serve as getting

into these platforms.

And then they would leverage into,

Hey, here's our website and a coupon.

Come over here and buy this other product over here.

So keeping that in mind.

Okay, so you're using it as a funnel.

So if you get onto Groupon and Zulily,

they take a certain cut.

So let's say you're suddenly at $20 normal retail,

you were selling on like $10 for Groupon and then $5

of it goes to Groupon and $5 of it goes to

you. So just imagine you have to cover costs.

So that's a really steep discount one.

So it's similar to wholesale.

It is,

but at a larger scale and a deeper discount,

in a way,

it started out in that way of these are popups and

then people would be exclusive to those sales,

but now they're all online and even jane.com

if you're a handmade person,

you have to have 50 in your queue,

like 50 in inventory minimum.

Whereas if you're manufactured,

you have to have a hundred so there's all these different

sites, they're sassy steals,

there's group deals,

that's a deals with a Z at the end and they

have the traffic.

So they do flash seals to only last for three days

with different vendors.

And then you're getting on there as one of those deals

and then you're seeing what sells and what doesn't sell.

I found that they're very,

very time sensitive.

So if it's Mondays it's sometimes a better day than a

Sunday or a Saturday when moms are out doing kids' stuff

and mom life.

And then also in summer months they do themes and everything.

They could be like off to the beach or something.

And so then if you fit into that,

that's really helpful for them.

Pushing sales to pick your plum is another one as well.

Do you get customer information when people buy or do you

just provide the product and they fulfill and you just,

so it's strictly a money play really.

So you don't get the information and a lot of them

don't even let you put in an insert,

but sometimes they do.

So it's something to keep you read the contract.

Some of them are,

they fulfill for you.

So then it's like Groupon and Zulily.

You send it into them and they distribute for you.

But for Jane,

you distribute yourself So you would get information.

You've just mentioned so many platforms,

so I'm sure all of them are very different.

You don't get their information,

you go onto their platform.

So you have their name and address,

but you don't get their like email address.

So it's like Amazon then.

Yeah, so you're fulfilling and then you put in the tracking

numbers and it's all done through their system.

But the main thing that's really nice about it is that

you get surges of money into your business that you normally

wouldn't get.

So with the product business,

and you know this,

you have to have a certain amount of inventory and money

that you can convert,

right? That you can turn over.

And so you always need that incoming money because you have

to invest it in either more inventory or pay yourself or

any of those.

So it's nice to have that surge of money.

On top of that,

you're gathering data to what's reselling really well,

why did it sell?

Who is it appealing to?

What is their customer?

Is it a mom?

Is it a millennial?

So you're gathering data so it's even if you come out

even, I feel like you're learning a lot in the process.

Thank you so much for that information because as I said,

we haven't really talked about that before.

You mentioned product inserts.

Yeah, I love products insert so much.

I talk about this on the podcast so much too because

they're so cheap and they're pretty effective if you hit the

right person.

So like you could put something in there that's like,

Hey, on your next purchase,

get 30% off.

Or you could say here's an exclusive that we only give

to our customers and it's a different product that you're pushing

to their website.

You could say,

Hey did you know that 10% goes to this charity from

us if you go to this website and then they input

their email.

So it's just super simple because I mean inserts are like

you can do a business card size at like 3 cents

or something,

you know,

and you're just putting it in there cause you're fulfilling those

anyways. It's like having an optin but it's an insert.

Are there any don'ts for product inserts?

Don't put too much information.

One call to action.

Don't say follow us on Instagram.

Also by this year also here we are over here.

It's just too much.

It is too much for sure.

I'm kind of thinking with those product inserts,

if there was a way to capture email addresses to add

people to your list,

customer lists,

that could be a good thing.

Yeah, that's what I tried to do with the charity thing

because then people,

it gives them a reason,

right? It has to be incentive enough for them to go

to your website and put in their email.

So then like a lot of times charity is that or

a really good coupon or an exclusive product that only they

get because they were previous buyers and they happened to get

that insert.

Let's go now just as we're closing out to one final

piece of advice.

You'd give somebody who has a product,

they're making it on the side.

They haven't really started a business yet,

but they're thinking about it.

What would you say to that person?

I would say be very cautious of the advice and the

strategies that you get for service-based that do not apply to

product based.

This is something I've seen a lot of that people,

because I'm in masterminds myself and then I coach masterminds,

but the advice that's out there is very specific to service

base. So for instance,

I heard somebody give somebody advice about how to scale a

handmade business.

Their idea was to get into a whole bunch of trade

shows and be in like let's say five trade at once.

They pay for the boots,

they hire out people to be at the booze and then

they scale that way because they're in more visible places.

But that is like the most expensive strategy they could ever

have and they don't even know if those trade shows are

effective or the timing is right or if that's the audience

that will be wanting the product at that time.

Well and you can't train the staff so you don't know

how they're interacting.

You don't get any feedback from your customer or your potential

customers either.

Cause I think trade shows are such a great opportunity.

If you're there to interact with customers,

see how they're feeling about your product,

getting new ideas,

so many things,

Even picking up verbiage,

nobody's going to care as much as you about the stuff

that people say about your product.

So that instance,

it's because in a service based world that's the way to

scale is to get into more places.

But that doesn't work for product based businesses because it's so

risky and it's so money heavy.

And then on top of it it's just not the same

as simply isn't.

And I give this example all the time about for service-based,

they say to have a really good opt in,

right? Like have a checklist or have a free download that

people can not resist.

But for a product based person you should just give them

a coupon for their first purchase and they will almost always

pick that over a free checklist.

I love what you're talking about here in terms of service

versus product based.

Great information on that.

I really appreciate it.

So Mina,

at this point I'd like to invite you to dare to

dream. I'd like to present you with a virtual gift.

It's a magical box containing unlimited possibilities for your future.

So this is your dream or your goal of almost unreachable

Heights that you would wish to obtain.

Please accept this gift and open it in our presence.

What is inside your box?

So I have to say,

Sue, this was actually a really hard question for me to

think about.

I couldn't come up with anything that was really super specific,

but if I had to choose something because I was trying

to think of what's my idea of success,

right? It would be,

I would open that box and it would be utter and

unbelievable financial freedom.

So I have of course,

yacht in some financial freedom to a certain level,

but I would like utter unbelievable financial freedom.

Love it.

I love it.

I put this question out there because I don't think a

lot of people really think and define where they want to

go, but I also do it because it's the law of

attraction type thing.

If you voice it and say it,

why shouldn't it come to you?

It's 100% too.

That's why journaling and being in masterminds or anything are so

productive is because it forces you to say things or write

things down and then all of a sudden you've done it

and you haven't even realized the universe blessed you with what

you were asking for.

Right, and I know that this is true for me is

I'll think things,

but when I'm thinking it,

that image is still a little bit blurry.

But when you're forced to put it into words,

it gets really sharp and clear.

Yeah. Oh gosh.

Words are so powerful.

That's why I said under financial freedom,

There you go.

There, you know,

so gift is listener is I absolutely suggest direct you all

of that to listen to the product boss where you can

listen to Mina and Jacqueline talking all product based.

You can hear by what she's been sharing today,

how much great information she has in good direction.

So definitely go over and listen to them there.

Where else would you direct people to go?

Meena Our Instagram.

We have been totally an investing time into that platform for

sure. So stories,

I presume stories and our feet as well,

but it's the product boss is our handle and so you

can catch us on there and we're doing all kinds of

funny stuff.

I feel like in regular stuff we're just living mom life

a lot of the times.

Oh that's good.

The behind the scenes,

here's what else is happening.

Rounding out the life.

Yeah. Yup.

Juggling poopy diapers and spreadsheets at the same time.

No, that's an image.

I'm pretty certain now when isn't it on the page?

Well Mina,

thank you so much.

You have really brought us in a direction here with product

information in several cases that we've not touched on before,

so really,

really great quality information,

new concepts for my listeners to consider and direction to take,

that's really going to be valuable for them.

So for that,

I appreciate it and I've so enjoyed having you on the

podcast. Thanks so much Sue.

I love to being on here and I appreciate you having

me on.

Wow. Didn't mean to share with us such valuable information.

I agree with her online.

There is so much available for service based businesses but not

as much for product based businesses and she is an expert

here so I really appreciated her coming on the show to

talk with us.

I suggest that you relisten and apply what mean is talked

about that's right for you and your business.

We're coming on the end of the year and it's smart

for us to start thinking of how we can adjust our

up next week.

I'm going to stick with the holiday season here and I

can't wait for you to hear about a business from the

baking industry.

She is a product that we can all use.

Think Christmas cookies that's coming up next week on gift biz

unwrapped. I'll see you then.

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