How To Leverage Social Media To Sell Your Products l GaryVee Audio Experience

people get emotional about names every time my buddies or anybody get really caught up in it I always remind them that McDonald's sounds like a corner Irish Pub on the Lower East Side I really do believe that names are made we built this brand to address this market and then realized wow this category didn't even exist We are Becoming advocates for these women I love that yeah it's just we don't talk about it we're stigma stigma like it's a real [ __ ] transition and if you like don't know what the hell's going on and you're hiding it you can't sustain being a happy person right back to the audience real quick obviously we're getting very consumer product nerdy so that's just that's where this episode's going so bear with us attention is the number one asset bayner Nation how are you excited for another fresh episode uh we are here in the summer luckily you are not seeing anything um because I have a massive black eye cuz I took a huge elbow in basketball yesterday Ross Brown you were uh on call on alert uh Ross works at vayer so it was really funny any and he was on my team by the way he was my own teammate that helped me directly in the anyway Michelle and Sally are here I'll let them explain uh what they do for a living but this is fun I'm trying to do more podcasts with entrepreneurs and people on the journey and uh I think these two ladies uh will bring a lot of value to the audience and in return I hope a lot of you check out what they're up to so ladies great um

thank you for having us I'm Michelle I'm co-founder with Sally for woman s um womanness is a modern approach to aging through supplements skin care and sexual wellness products and really what we found was that so many women don't understand what's going on with their bodies as their hormones change their 40s and 50s and there was literally nothing out there and we had our own personal experiences that identifi this huge space and so we built this brand to address this market and then realized wow this category didn't even exist and it's really hard it's awesome um this who you are I'm Sally the co-founder of woman ass with Michelle um so we really created a whole new category and it was based on our own personal experiences so for me I was in my late 40s going through menopause yep and didn't realize that what I was experiencing was actually menopause I knew that I was menopause but I thought menopause was just hot flashes and here I was like experiencing sleep issues LOL laido proud to say yeah of course I mean it happens to it's human it happens to so many people I think one of the great things of last 30 40 years in society is we are destigmatizing a lot of things right I mean to your point like even menopause like just like even it right to your point in the way that we defined it for two decades hot flashes even that in the first place was a whole new destigmatization and now we're just going deeper and actually defining it properly instead of half pregnant yep exactly so again I knew that I was going through this and I finally found a female doctor that educated me about menopause and at the end of the appointment she said here's a list of products that you can get on Amazon yeah checked out those products and I was appalled not because she couldn't she didn't find the best products out there she did it was the caliber of those products they weren't made with clean ingredients the packaging was very outdated the names didn't speak to Modern women like us it was all in all just not an inspiring experience and to that point what were you how did what was your career about how did you grow up so I grew up at Target I worked in the corporate office building brand working with external designers had an amazing career for 24 years right so that is why your filter of looking at all this you were bringing that one's professional self to this and that made you see the opportunity I always known inside Target as like you know the one that was finding the white space the trends um looking you know further out trying to think about are you good at that I think it's just part of my DNA as a person I think it is a lot of its intuition I think Michelle has the same sort of intuition and um how did you back up how did you what did you take what would you do in your career once intuition struck did you have a process once you felt something we did um what I you know at the beginning we did a lot of research with women okay now you're going to I'm going actually even further back in the Target years would you just send would you send those hot flashes of Brilliance pun intended to a research department or did you have a process that you would dig longer into so you know I left in 2010 so you know back when I was there doing kind of like throwing pixie dust out there to find the next big idea it was really a few of us I would say the merchant head of merchandising myself and maybe a couple other people that would really evaluate the idea and if we like the idea it was like go time now it's all about making it happen yep so you know human Talent absolutely human Talent so you were Target for a long time in corporate and between 2010 and you doing this what did you do so I spent the next 12 years or so owning my own business Consulting building Brands very and then I went inside at click Brands which owned who but where yep and helped Hillary and Katherine the co-founders of who what where turn their brand from a digital brand into a very successful line of product and placed it at Target understood and built out every component of that along with the team of course and for you what was your career about um I start well I went to business school after business school I worked at fiser consumer healthare then was at timing for 10 years I worked at Real Simple Magazine and talk about intuition I went into the publish I was working at fiser I had an interview at real simple with the publisher and I looked at him and I said this should be like Martha Stewart we should have a line of products I can figure this out for you I'm gonna build out all these different categories for real simple and actually that's how I Met Sally because I went and pitched Target and we got the deal but that I didn't know how to do that just figured it out just said this is what this brand should be cuz I was a huge fan of the brand yeah so I was there for 10 years and then was at home shopping network for four and Sally and I had been friends all this time and we kept saying to each other one day we are building brands for all these other people one day for ourselves one day we can do this but what's interesting about it is that you know you look at it from a real business perspective like white space focus groups all the things we launched woman s and it took on a life of its own of being so personal because we are just destigmatizing something and it becomes this thing where our customer customers are emailing us saying thank God you're here I didn't know where else to turn what was the first skew we

launched we had 13 when we launched because we wanted to be legitimate in per menopause so we didn't want to wanted to be horizontal you wanted yes we wanted a problem solution brand what was here's a fun question we're getting obviously on the podcast jumping back I'm very focused on it back to the audience real quick obviously we're getting very consumer product nerdy so that's just that's where this episode's going so bear with us wh which one of the 13 SKS did you think was going to do the best did you do you recall back then of which one you thought would drive it and did that materialize or did something else pop we thought let neack would be number one it's the neck and deete serum and it's got a very I mean it's great product it has a cooling roller ball great name neck yeah and it's our hero product so well because the was oh my gosh so many people men included now hate their neck yeah and it's a sign of Aging by the way it's literally something I heard the other day just like normal like life just somebody a guy bringing it up are talking about their next now because it's one of the first signs of it you know you're kind of used to like looking at your face and then all of a sudden you're like on a zoom call and you're like what what's happening the wrinkles on the neck yeah absolutely sagging and things that there's less oil glands there the skin kind of thins faster there so it was we knew it was going to be a home run yeah I mean so much bigger than we thought it would be funny our like one of we our second and third best SKS are related to vaginal dryness so we have a vaginal moisturizer I thought it would do well I'm I was surprised that it's our second bestselling skew on Amazon and you know women will talk to us about their skin and they'll other things and then eventually it gets to of course you know their vaginas are dry yeah it's real life

you know don't forget America's so funny like for everybody who's listening that lives in America like you'd be and let me say it this way for the people listening right now that are living in America that don't have the luxury or the Serendipity or the life's uh trails to have had a lot of time outside the US like we are let me say this very simply as I can we are [ __ ] prud MH this is a prud prude country you know we're incredibly awkward when it comes to the birds and the bees and sexual like you know vaginal dryness is not as like weird in Europe and Asia other parts of Latin America so you know I'm proud of us I feel like this is I feel like sexual Wellness I will probably never get to get around to this but I'm the kind of person that wish is at some point in his life that I could understand the impact on happiness in our 33 million or so Americans if we were better at not having so much stigma around sexuality I believe there is an enormous happiness and economic impact if we had a better relationship on this subject well it's about connection and intimacy and being you know connected to another person which overall is a problem today you know shadows and darkness are always bad they're always bad and the more we're uncomfortable of talking by the way us being uncomfortable in talking about money as a society has hurt us so much yeah like there's not a 22-year-old in America that doesn't pop out hit that has any knowledge about money unless their parents taught them right it's insane well in our own bodies too as women yes we don't even understand menopause y we did some research a couple years ago and we had like the scale of menopause literacy and it was like 30% that is yeah a failing gr I couldn't agree and we're smart women it's not a matter of intelligence it's just we don't talk about it we're stigma the medical community is not trained in menopause yeah you're right so there's all these factors and then you're right as a prude Society you know we're not openly talking about it and you really take it out and that's why women are it's another reason why women leave the workforce they're not feeling great they're not sleeping great they don't feel like themselves they're sweat they're having hot fleshes in board meetings and a lot of women are like I'm out and so by the way not only out professionally out in the relationship right absolutely uh dented I wouldn't say out dented in their motherhood like it's a real [ __ ] transition and if you like don't know what the hell is going on and you're hiding it you can't sustain being a happy person right it's going to affect this is a major issue right and if you're not sleeping well it's impossible to juggle all those things along with aging parents right and as you get older you tend to pay attention to the news a little bit more which you always [ __ ] you up it's a compounded thing so back to the business how old is it three and a half years and

what's the most surprising positive and because there's so many entrepreneurs listening that you can Inspire what is the most frustrating pain right now like God damn it look at us too we knew I'll speak to mine V friends my intellectual property yes I am the guy when it comes to social media Andy used to run my social media he runs V friends and we don't have it fixed the way I want to it's like perplexingly funny to me and it's because we're fighting on too many fronts yeah right and we take that one for granted because we're good at it right um how about for you two what has been the surprising and maybe you have separate answers let's allow both of you to do that what's been the surprising like this went way better and it might again these are entrepreneurs it doesn't have to be marketing might be how well you two have worked together or maybe how retail maybe because you were Target gals how well Walmart's treated you just business what has gone surprisingly well and what is a stunning three and a half years ago I would have said to you this is going to be a problem you're like impossible Gary what's a stunning frustration okay what's gone well I think surprisingly well right because the net roller you thought was going to go well it did go well I'm talking what has caught you off guard in the positive I I do think the reaction from our customers I think theem and like the outpouring of support has been like surprising because I think we came at we're very like business you know like our corporate careers and all of that and here we are so close to the customer practical yes oh that part we're so close to the customer and she tells us how she feels and I think that's surprising to me like I didn't realize it would change our we are becoming advocates for these women love and I we didn't expect that in our first you know like right doing our forecast and business plan um that's I mean the word scale how are you going to scale are why aren't you scaling fast enough well that sounds like you're either talking to retailers or investors either one the v i mean talk about vac like how by the way I'm sorry interrupt because you whispered mainly investors we're also in a very this again I'm trying to make this valuable for the audience we're in a little bit of a pickle where money got expensive you know like you know it would be a little bit more fun to have these convos 5 and a half years ago when interest rates were where they were and things that nature so I'm sure you know but it's so funny that you said the thing that's going well is the consumer the thing that's not going well as are the investors that's what I would wish for you okay right it's a lot better than the alternative great customer great reviews that's the good part of the business the hard part is the you know getting Capital at a price that excites you to accelerate your business exactly how about for you too I would say the positive Echoes what Michelle's saying I love the surprising positive is how open women really want to be we've been doing these like menopause parties where we have experts speak we speak and women are having fun they're drinking our hot flash Margaritas they're openly talking about their sex life it's great is group usually 35 to 50 nice and um so I think that's exciting I think women call us personally and talk about you know their needs their sex life and you know I never thought I'd be I Dr Ruth especially with sexual Wellness I never thought I'd be giving talk about Ancon talk about an icon of this Dr Ruth just passed unfortunately um talk about way ahead of your time she was so ahead of the Curve she's such and the frustrating thing like iting is our intuition was right to launch our brand in 2021 it was we felt like this it was coming this ground swell was happening around midlife and Women's Health and we knew Millennials were going to age into per menopause I my what I'm surprised about is how long it takes when you're building a new category to educate everyone not just the consumer is further the retailer than the retailers for sure and investors some really get it and some don't get it yeah I get it that Mak and so it's been really interesting when you think about you know four years

where is prod predominantly sold what's the number one channel our DC your personal D number two Amazon number three and Al Beauty very nice we're in great partnership with you know Michelle the CMO she is the [ __ ] best I'm obsessed with her oh yeah she she's the best yeah was on a panel with her that's very nice so that's the third is close is there a fourth four it starts to fragment from there yes yeah and we really want to focus I mean we have a lot of opportunity in just those three places and how supply chain good everything's made in the US and not during Co it was rough now we're in yeah what about marketing we spend all our marketing dollars on meta for DTC conversion and Google go can I give you a humongous piece of advice doing that no by the way no actually I would argue that meta continues to be the scaled underpriced platform Bes literally besides Super Bowl as a media channel meta's value of actualized attention against what you buy is actually remarkable the problem is that most people don't realize how much the DTC game is Chang the last 24 months you've need to make a much more specific strategic focus on organic social right now your performance team internal or external is predominantly if I'm guessing right cuz this is 99% this may not be what you're doing but it's literally 99% they're trying to do ab testing and proper work on optimizing assets to convert against KAC and LTV what happened in the last 24 months is organic social has changed from how I grew up where you get as many followers as possible and a percentage see it to the algorithm the AI yeah is so good now what you should be what every brand of your size and uh age is missing is a bigger commitment to organic social and when the organic social over indexes that becomes the performance ad you right but the problem is and I know why I'm right and the reason there's 99 the other way the problem is it's scary to spend more money on organic because what if none of it does well then it goes to zero the problem is you're in the hamster wheel of the K and LTV game and you're in lower funer performance and you're not building as much brand right you're getting it because it's such a great product and it's you were so right on the hypothesis and Hollyberry this and Washington DC that and I'm paying attention so I'm aware you're hitting it but you need to get very serious about organic social yeah we agree you need to do more of this like this will send you the footage of this you need to clip this and use it I see filming some of it like the founder story is huge yeah but then just in general the testimonials as the stigma goes away and more women are willing to give you testimonials on video that will be huge but organic social like Tik Tok is super important for you yeah and there's every woman has a story to tell and they're interesting but more importantly Tik Tok gets so much organic reach when it's when it hits and it's much older than people think oh yeah I'm on Tik Tok allfor everybody under 70 is and so those are Subs

okay I'm sure you thought about being on this show we've got a substantial audience of by the way a wild mix the amount of category buyers at Major retailers the amount of investors the amount of entrepreneurs creators who may want to do things with you have a pretty substantial wide audience here what have we not talked about before you scoodle out of here that you maybe wanted to talk about before we got here but the way the combo's been moving I want to give you that opportunity what do we not touch on what do you want people to know what are you curious about how do I bring you value here for the last couple minutes I think one thing that we haven't talked about is you know what is it like to create a brand in your 50s I'm now 60 and it's a very um you know it's a very different experience after I mean it's good because you feel like you have more conf idence more wisdom your network is so much larger that you can depend on yes and um so I just encourage your audience to not be afraid to try something new in their 50s maybe even 60s well you've walked into the right place I would argue that one of the core pillars of my content career over the last 20 years has been my Devastation of how we treat age like absolutely like first there's I mean back to the roller in the neck like first of all you definitely know this women surely didn't look like you at 60 30 years ago no really I mean the gold and girls weren't their 50s you know like the world's changed that's because humans live longer right the reason like we and so we're going to I mean the thought of like starting a business at 60 in a world where many many people are going to live to 90 healthy so what are you going to do like for the 30 years between 60 and 90 like play Go like right like I think that's I promise you this audience doesn't need to hear that message cuz I pound the [ __ ] out of it right I think it's so exciting and I know both our parents Michelle and my parent they worked into their 80s so Mom and Dad yeah both of our parents I will die in my desk I'm pretty convinced yeah I'm hopeful it keeps you healthy it keeps you relevant it keeps you excited yeah what are you supposed to do right way big shout out to people that can quote unquote listen a lot of people are not as fortunate as it sounds like your parents and us are if you hate your job yeah it's not very and it's your career and you hated it but you did it to take care of your family or whatever how life Twisted well that makes a lot of sense of like I can't wait to be 60 and go to Florida and fish but when you love it yeah the hell else are you gonna do right or start you know and go fishing but maybe on the side do something you've always wanted to do to so I just believe thatw you know I think it's so important to have um yeah check outw us. com that's number one for everybody w m a e I'm sorry A M I'm sorry w m a n SS course Doom so check outcom that easy to get or did you have to buy that it took us a year to come up with a name womanness was her daughter we were literally like weeks away from going to present our that was available. com or was it was available what a it was all checked out 20 bucks on Go Daddy like nobody you didn't buy it nope wasn't well we no we did remember it was about $1,000 we had to buy the domain nothing but we yeah it all cleared out and but it was so hard to get a to come up with a name they're so trademark is crazy and people get emotional about names like I'm very funny like every time my buddies or a young entrepreneur she or he or anybody get really caught up in it I always remind them that McDonald's sounds like a corner Irish Pub on the Lower East Side right yeah like what is Wendy's what is Nike or Google I really do believe that names are made I really do yeah so but people get very romantic about the names when they're building a business well now I you of course but it took us a long time to get there well anyway but yeah so check obviously I've want your whole audience to check us out um and to you know for anybody who's an investor or who's A in retail yeah this category is only going to get bigger Millennials are aging in they are very comfortable with their bodies and they're going to want to know what to do what's going on the addressable Market is enormous and I think anyone that's paying even half attention knows that to be true and I think what you two need to execute on is you want to make sure you're there when it really hits the crescendo and not regret this is why I'm pushing you so

hard on organic social you have to outflank everyone from a demand creation every retailer is going to line up and investor if everyone wants it yeah right now you are in performance land we are good news for the first time in the 20e history of social media if you do brand on social it leads to better performance take things that over index organically and move them over take some of the money from working media move it over to creative because the creative Effectiveness will be so much greater against the medeor spending yes everyone's so scared to take the selling money out but when you and you put it into creative and the algorithm confirms the interest from the consumer and bring it back all of a sudden you can take 10% of your working media dollars out and get two X the value and you build brand yeah the problem is just like Super Bowl the Super Bowl is the best ad in marketing but if you make a bad 30- second video you just Wast a lot of money the problem with what I'm saying is you actually have to know how to do it right but that's on YouTube it's your business you have to figure it out yeah so anyway please take that thank you for being on thank you so much this is great by the way all the Young Dudes cuz there's a drillion of you listeners send this episode to your moms all right see you