[00:00:57]
Arlen:
Welcome to the e-Commerce Marketing Podcast everyone. My name is Arlin Robinson and I am your host. And today we have a very special guest, John Roman. After leading several successful sales organizations in the telecommunications and software space for almost a. Decade. John began investing in companies pr predominantly in the e-commerce arena. A college friend was, was launching battle Box in early 2015, and John knew he had to be involved, so he invested in it, offering advisement and a limited capacity battle box. Started to see ex exponential growth in the the demand for John’s time crease. So in early 2016, John made the decision to step away from his sales leadership role with the software company to join battle. And on a full-time capacity. So in July, 2019, battle Box Group acquired Carnivore Club for an artisanal meat subscription box in October of 2021. Battle Box and Carnivore Club was acquired by Emerge Brands for 18.95 million. John currently serves as the chief executive officer for the Battle Box group, and, uh, is here today to, to tell us a little bit about how to Content and the community to grow your business.
Welcome to the podcast.

[00:02:13]
John:
John. Man, that was a, that was a mouthful. , 

[00:02:15]
Arlen:
right? Right. Yeah. You, you’ve done a lot, man, and a little bit of time. You know, as I, I mentioned in the, in the intro there, you know, starting from, you know, joining Battle Box on a com, you know, kind of on a small basis in 25th. Teen to, you know, having it be acquired by the battle box group and the carnivore, uh, club, you know, at, for 18.95 million. That’s definitely nothing to sneeze at, you know, that’s quite an accomplishment.

[00:02:37]
John:
Yeah. It’s been, it’s been a journey. Sprinkle in the pandemic in the mix of all that. Right. Sprinkle in a, a TV show on Netflix. Right. We’ve, we’ve gone, we’ve, we’ve had a lot of experiences and Gotcha. We were able to grow and learn.

[00:02:50]
Arlen:
What’s the TV show that was on, in, on Netflix.

[00:02:52]
John: 
So we have a Netflix original series, it’s called. Okay. It’s called Southern Survival. You can open up Netflix. It’s, it’s Global cuz it’s a, it’s one of their series.

Gotcha. You can just open up search and Netflix and type in battle box. Okay. Or you could type in Southern survival when it comes right up.

[00:03:06]
Arlen:
Gotcha. Gotcha. That’s awesome, man. And yeah, you’re speaking of the Pan Pandemic. I, I could take a, a brief look at the site, of course, battle box sales subscription boxes for survival gear and was really what it is.

And I could imagine during the pandemic, I, I, if I’m not mistaken, you probably saw some explosive sales or, or you know, at least people were a little bit more thinking of survival types of things and things that they needed to buy in. You know, we’re in kind of the, uh, scenario when everything shuts down, 

[00:03:34]
John:
right?
The, the end of times. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We were obviously, I think most e-com brands did super well during, during the pandemic, um Right, right. But survival gear and cured shelf stable meats. With Carnivore club. Yeah. Those are both kind of recipe for absolute domination when everybody is locked in their homes and Right. And, and needs to order stuff. 

[00:03:55]
Arlen:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s good stuff. Yeah. And I, I, I think kind of marrying those two brass together definitely makes sense. Cause I see that with the survival gear and then the, you know, the, the, the shelf stable meats is a, you know, kind of a huge thing that definitely kind of go together.

Well, well, that’s awesome, man. That’s a, that’s good stuff, and definitely congrats on the success that you guys have had. As I mentioned at the, at the end of the intro today, we’re gonna be talking about content and community. How do you marry the two, so to speak, to create a really, a strong e-commerce brand?

And so that’s what I really want to start out with. But before we do get into all of that, why don’t you tell us a little bit more about your background and you know, specifically how you got into what you’re, you’re really doing. 

[00:04:32]
John:
Sure. So, man, you talk about, I guess 2015, right? Eight years ago, you know, battle Box LA launched eight years ago on, on this month.

[00:04:40]
So if I looked back then and said, okay, I’m no longer in in sales for B2B companies. I’m now involved in a direct-to-consumer e-commerce subscription niche brand, I would’ve not thought that was even, even a thing, right? I, uh, pure happenstance, so I. In 2015, I was investing in companies that were, for lack of better words, crossing my desk.

[00:05:02]
And really that was only being done through the network and, and friends that, that I had grabbed and, and, and connected with at that point in my life. So in, in early 2015, I, I think there were a total of six. Companies that I invested in, in, in, in some capacity. Mm-hmm. and the other five complete epic fails.

[00:05:20]
Oh, wow. Lost, lost all of the money. Oh, wow. But, but Battle Box was, was the lucky one. Right. Battle box. Okay. Did well, and, you know, continued to exponentially grow. Mm-hmm. . So it’s pure, pure happenstance. The, the, the, the strange thing is taking, oh, I knew at the time, which was very little marketing, more just how to sell to, to decision makers, right?

[00:05:40]
To, to medium, large sea level, suite decision makers. I knew how to, how to have meetings with them and how to, how to sell a solution and you wouldn’t think that there was much correlation, but, but learning the marketing and the direct to consumer, Piece it, it was very, very natural and you’re taking a lot of the same learnings and just, obviously it’s not apples to apples, but they transitioned and made sense on a lot of the same tactics and way ways you would look at problems.

[00:06:05]
Arlen: 
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s a good testament to the fact, like you said, that some of the, the main marketing fundamentals can cross over no matter what, you know, industry that you’re in. What you’re selling, you know, as long as you kind of focus on some of the core fundamentals, they, they do carry over. So a lot of people don’t realize that, but yeah, they, they definitely do.

[00:06:27]
It’s, you know, there are definitely some unique things, of course, when you’re selling online, direct to consumer that, you know, you do have to be mindful of as far as, you know, kind of reaching customers, social media, that type of thing. But yeah, when it comes down to it, you know, it’s the same fundamentals and the bottom line.

[00:06:42]
It all comes down to focusing on having that great product. You know, you don’t have anything unless you have a solid product and that really meets the needs of a, of a community. Absolutely. And, uh, you know, so, so speaking of community, this is kind of where I think where you got have kind of set your, your, your, your pace and have been able to have the explosive growth is because of the community.

[00:07:03] And so a lot of brands these days kind of hear about this. They hear about, okay, building a community, Listen to the blogs, the, the podcasts, and everybody’s talking about a community, whether it’s through the blog and this unique specific content. Um, but if you’re kind of in the beginning phases and you’re like, all right, where do I even begin to start a community?

[00:07:25]
You know, even by, maybe even just starting by creating unique content, what, what do you do? What. Your be your initial advice when you’re looking to start a community for your brand.

[00:07:33]
John:
Sure. So there, there’s a, a, a bunch of ways to get to the same, the the same end goal of, of building that community. To your point, one of the, one of the easiest is just through content, right?

[00:07:43]
Yeah. And it’s content that is engaging, it’s content that’s going to get people to interact with it. It’s not just a 15 second video card sale of, of your product, right? People don’t wanna see that. You look at how consumer behavior is changing and shifting and consumer. Is, it’s constantly moving, right?

[00:08:01]
It’s, it’s never in the same spot. But we we’re seeing this trend and it’s, it’s occurred for a very long time now, but it’s continuing to trend in the direction where consumers wanna purchase from a brand that they can connect with, identify with, have some sort of bond. Mm-hmm. and this not for all products, right.

[00:08:19]
You might not care about that for your toilet paper. Yeah. Or your, or your peanut butter or mm-hmm. , insert one of those essentials that you kind of need, gotta almost look at the need, want scale. Yeah. And, and see where that product. On, on that scale and the, the farther you’re away from absolute need and closer to want, the more important it is to connect with that consumer, right?

[00:08:39]
Yeah. Because they have lots of options. And if anything that we’ve learned in the last couple years, especially with the amount of podcasts and, and content you’re seeing on it, everybody’s talking about how easy it is to start a business. E-commerce business and take my course and do this and do that, and they make it sound very, very easy.

[00:08:55]
And the barrier to entry is, is, is pretty minimal, but the reality is it’s just adding another option to the consumer to make a decision on. And yeah, that’s where that community building piece is, is paramount. So back to original question. It’s content, right? Content? Mm-hmm. is the. Engaging content, but not, again, not, not a hard sell on a product, right?

[00:09:15]
Mm-hmm. , you’re test content, test the full spectrum of things you think an audience, your audience might engage with, right? It doesn’t have to be a very deep down on the niche of what your product is. It can be just things that you think would be relevant to that audience, to that demographic that you are marketing towards, and, and testing it and finding out what people want to engage with.

[00:09:37]
Yeah. There’s, you know, past that there, there’s other ways. To, to create community. So we started, it’s now a Facebook group, but it originally was a Think Reddit style forum. So right when we launched the brand, shortly thereafter, we had battle box forum.com. Mm-hmm. . And it was a very old school bulletin, board desk platform where if you were a customer, you could come in and, and back then actually it just was, it was open to anybody, right?

[00:10:01]
Mm-hmm. . So you’re having these like-minded individuals, people that like to go hiking or camping, or maybe they’re, maybe they like survival gear, but really all of the buckets. Of demographics and, and likes and interests that our customers had. This was a place for them just to meet other people. Mm-hmm.

[00:10:17]
and now it’s shifted years later. It’s a Facebook group. It’s an exclusive perk, if you will, of being a active subscriber to our subscription box. You also get access to this group, but, but either versions of. That, right? You’re, you’re building community there, right? You’re putting these people together, whether they’re interested in your product and buying, or they’re just interested in your product or your content.

[00:10:37]
If you can get ’em all in the same room, you’re gonna quickly see like they have some commonalities and, and friendships can be formed and mm-hmm. and relationships. And then all of a sudden you’ve created, you’ve created this community, you’ve created the, these groups of people. And it’s not easy though, right?

[00:10:51]
It takes a lot of work. Right. In the infancy. It’s engagement is huge, but it, it’s, you don’t just, you don’t just create it and hope that they come. Right. You have to, you have to make it make sense. With, with the group, we were, we were in there every day. Every single one of us hosting, interact. Someone wanted to post that.

[00:11:07]
It wasn’t one of us. We were definitely responding, commenting, engaging with them. Mm-hmm. letting ’em know, Hey, this is what happens when you do that. And it, it almost starts snowballing. Right? I see. Um, you see someone else do it and then they post and they get everybody engaging and it’s, it’s just a, it’s a snowball effect.

[00:11:22]
And next thing you know, you know, a group of 20 in Southern California are meeting next month to go hiking. Wow. And you see cool things like that and you’re like, man, that’s, that was what we were trying to accomplish. Yeah. And it’s a, it’s a weird approach. Businesses need sales. Sales is the lifeblood.

[00:11:37]
That’s how you grow the business. But we, we always take this approach where all of our decisions are, are based upon how does it impact content and community for us? And by focusing always on those two, the sales almost come indirectly. Now, don’t get me wrong, we run Facebook and TikTok campaigns and Twitter ads and Sure ads across the gambit and right middle funnel.

[00:11:58]
And if we do all. But it’s, it’s segmented and it’s at the correct time. We we’re really focused on this low barrier entry, top of funnel. That’s massive. And we’ll let people, based on their, their behavior on our site or on platform, determine what segment they go into. And at some point it does, we do ask for the business.

[00:12:16]
We do offer them deals. But we don’t, we don’t lead, lead that way, which is a little bit non-standard. Yeah, yeah. 

[00:12:22]
Arlen:
Yeah. I’m, I’m glad you mentioned that because I think that’s kind of be the focus when you’re cre when you’re trying to create these types of communities where, yeah, you, you, you can’t really lead with the sale because that’s, Gonna turn people off.

[00:12:35]
It has to be more organic. As you guys mentioned, you started with the basic forum, or, and you know, you got like-minded people together. You know, people are into camping and survival type things. And, you know, they, they saw the commonalities that each other had and then just kind of went from there. And then of course, as you guys.

[00:12:51]
Were kind of, I guess, moderating it, putting content out there, suggesting ideas, putting posts. Then that’s kind of a, where you, or any brand that does something like this comes off as the authority and then that’s where I think the power is, where people will be like, you know, you guys have become kind of the go-to group for, you know, survival.

[00:13:12]
Where not only are you guys the authority, Other individuals that are in the group that are, are providing a lot of value to it. So it’s not just you guys, it’s people that are in the group.

[00:13:21]
John:
Yeah. It’s, it’s you, you nailed it. And I think that that applies, that mindset applies to whether it’s direct to consumer or b2b, like provide value, ask for nothing.

[00:13:31]
Just provide value. Yeah. And it’s crazy. What, what accomplish. From from that, just, it’s the, it’s the way business is done. As the, as the behavior of purchasers changes, they that’s what people want. Yeah. 

[00:13:43]
Arlen:
Yep. E exactly. And what I see a lot of times, because it’s been talked about a lot with the face group, group groups, is all of these other platforms to create your own community, create your own portal.

[00:13:55]
And a lot of brands are, are, are trying to do it. Where, like in, in your case, you said with your subscription service that include. Access to the community. A lot of brands are doing that. But where, what I see and I, where I see a lot of brands failing is they, like you said, they put it out there. They just expect it to just automatically, you know, come together and people for just immediately jump into it.

[00:14:19]
And so what I see a lot of brands doing is they’ll start it and then I’ll, I’ll go to these different communities and there’s. Just like no activity at all. And then, you know, it’s not moderated and there’s no engagement in there. And then, you know, they may do it for a little while and then you just, they just leave it.

[00:14:34]
Yeah. I, I, I, I definitely agree that it’s, it’s the type of thing that you have to be heavily involved in. Your team’s gotta post, you’ve gotta have that engagement and you know, it’s just gonna, it’s gonna take time. It’s definitely not a way to, to kind of build. In community. I know different things that a brand can do or events that’ll happen.

[00:14:53]
Maybe you have an appearance on a, you know, a national or global stage or a show. Yeah, you can get a v a lot of viral activity on a short amount of time that can happen. I see a lot of that happens to different brands, but as far as the community growth after that viral event is, is where. Still gotta put the work in.

[00:15:11]
John:
I think it is. It’s still a grind. It’s a long game. Yeah. It’s not, yeah, it is. It’s, I mean, there’s, you could probably, we could probably name a dozen aspects of, of business that it’s the same thing, right? Yeah. Exactly what you said. People start putting it in. Mm-hmm. And they don’t get that instant reward, instant gratification.

[00:15:28]
And they, they give up. Yeah. Yeah. It’s true.

[00:15:29]
Arlen: 
It’s true. And it’s a tough thing because, you know, we all. To an e-commerce brand, there’s, there’s a lot to it. You know, you don’t have a lot of time. You gotta be constantly concerned about your sales, your revenue, the profit, and things that take time. You, a lot of times the brands may kind of pull away from, and they start doing and they say, okay, I’m not, I’m not seeing the ROI in this.

[00:15:49]
Is this really even make sense? And 

[00:15:51]
John:
so yeah, TikTok is probably a best, a great example of, of us for that. So we, so we had, let’s see, I’m trying to date this. Okay, so, so I grabbed our, you know, battle box, no e that handle at TikTok in early 2020, okay. Sat on it. We made zero posts until February, 2021. So two years ago this month.

[00:16:12]
And at the time, you know, probably everybody thought I was a little bit crazy, at least internally. Because like, I’m, I’m super, super confident. I feel we’re already late to the TikTok game in February, 2021. I was wrong about that. We weren’t, we weren’t late. We were still on time Okay. With, with getting up.

[00:16:28]
But I felt like we were late and, and you know, we, we weren’t as early as, as I would’ve liked, but talk about just trying to figure this out. We’re going to this platform that at the time is. Is is mainly just a bunch of younger generation dancing. Right. and I have this, I have this gut, and I was like, no.

[00:16:44]
Like our customers are there, are gonna be here too. Mm-hmm. . And we didn’t dance. That wasn’t, that’s not our brand. We’re not, we’re not gonna do that. I think I, Brandon is the face of our brand. Yeah. I got him to do one silly dance one time and it was, it was painful. Right. But it’s just, that’s just not us.

[00:16:59]
And for literally, 6, 7, 8 months and I’ve, I’ve documented some of this because we were going and trying to learn and just trying to navigate this without much success, but we just stuck to, no, we’re going to continue to do this consistent posting. We’re gonna try all these different types of videos on here.

[00:17:17]
We’re just gonna keep trying it because there’s something there. And it’s the same thing we just kept going and thank goodness we did. Yeah, eventually hit a hit, a hit, a banger above video, and then a few months later, another one, another. And now it’s our biggest channel. Wow. Which is just mind blowing that two years ago it was zero posts.

[00:17:33]
Mm-hmm. and six months of failing to now become our largest. Yeah. It’s, it’s the same thing, just most people would’ve probably given up, but That’s right. You just can’t, when you’re, when you, when you know that something needs to be done and is right. Mm-hmm. , you just have to kind of have blind faith at times and continue down that journey.

[00:17:48]
Yeah, 

[00:17:48]
Arlen:
yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah. And then that’s a good point with TikTok initially, you know, when somebody thinks about your brand, what you guys sell, the survival gear camping type thing. So you’re like, all right, TikTok, you know, the younger demographic, are they even thinking about this stuff? the uh, the first start is like, yeah, this is not gonna work.

[00:18:07]
So I definitely see where you’re coming from as far as, you know, still trust in your gut and just knowing that, yeah, this, this. TikTok, there’s, there’s definitely a community there for us, and we just gotta 

[00:18:17]
John:
stay the course. My entire team just thought I was crazy for six months. , 

[00:18:21]
Arlen:
right. Yeah. I understand.

[00:18:23]
I’m talking to many other brands, but I’ve, I’ve, I’ve also talked to other TikTok evangelists, so to speak, and they, they, they preach the same thing and they say it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. And there’s a lot of businesses that you may not necessarily think of that can benefit from it, but they, they can, 

[00:18:38]
John:
you know for sure.

[00:18:39]
Yeah. It um, , it’s just kind of mind blowing. Mm-hmm. , how, how amazing their algorithm is compared to, you know, all, all of the other main social platforms, algorithms. Like, I’ve never seen something, whereas a consumer within a very short period of time mm-hmm. that for you, page has mm-hmm. been curated and tweaked and it’s exactly pretty in line with what you wanna see.

[00:19:02]
And like you and I, Arlen might be identical people. Right. Very, very similar. Right. But like, our tos are gonna be vastly different because mm-hmm. , it just knows. Just little variables, how long you’re on a certain type of TikTok, and then the next one that they, that’s similar. How did you interact with that one?

[00:19:17]
Yeah, like it changes on a dime and it’s just, it’s impressive. So with that being said, I have confidence that it’s going to figure out who wants to see our content and show it to ’em. 

[00:19:27]
Arlen:
Yeah, yeah. For sure. Sure. Now, you know, earlier on, of course, you mention. What you guys did as far as the kind of the tools that you used to get this out there.

[00:19:35]
You mentioned you started off with just a basic kind of Reddit type forum. You then kind of expanded that onto, you know, Facebook groups and some other types of communities. If you can kind of speak to some of the tools or other resources that you’ve used. To really make all of this happen, to kind of keep this community going, moderate it and manage it and, you know, what were the tools that you used and, uh, how all did it work?

[00:19:57]
Sure. 

[00:19:57]
John:
So, so the forum was just a, and I I wouldn’t suggest that we’re now on the Facebook, Facebook group. Yes. And I know some people are pretty polarized on Should you have your group on community on Facebook? Yeah. I mean, I, they do a really good job, right? It’s really easy to moderate. Mm-hmm. , uh, there’s all kinds of mechanisms in.

[00:20:14]
To, to, to ensure It’s a, it’s a great experience where you can have rules in place where if someone, if, if anybody says a list of, I don’t know, maybe 70 words on a comment at all on our group, the moderating team gets an instant notification of that. Okay. And it’s reviewed to make sure it’s, it’s not negative or inappropriate or mm-hmm.

[00:20:32]
or something else that’s against, against our policies. So I’m a big fan of, of Facebook for, for the groups and you know, maybe at some point we’ll, we’ll outgrow it. Yeah. But, uh, we don’t have all of our members in it. We have about 8,000 or so that are Okay. Are on the group. Mm-hmm. . So it’s a, it’s, it’s not a, it’s a decent size and, uh, I, I enjoy it.

[00:20:50]
I enjoy it. Now there’s. There are the issues. People complain all the time. I’m not on face, but unfortunately, you know, at a certain point you have to try to just appease the masses. Yeah. You can’t, you, you just have to manage that way. Yeah. Uh, but other than that, it’s, it’s really all, all of the platforms to your point earlier, like Yeah.

[00:21:06]
Even TikTok. Now, is TikTok gonna be successful for every brand? No. Right. Like, Just like Pinterest performs great for some of our brands and does not perform well for others. And same with Twitter. You, I think you’re, you put content out on all platforms and you, you find what’s working and which platforms, and I think you double down.

[00:21:24]
You lean in on, you lean in on those. Yeah. And then you, and you don’t just write one off. I think we’ve, we’ve had a back and forth relationship with Twitter where mm-hmm. , it’s never, it’s never given us what we were hoping for, but we continue to test on it. Mm-hmm. , we don’t just write it off, like there’s still audience in there for us to, for us to 

[00:21:41]
Arlen:
connect with.

[00:21:42]
Yeah. Yeah. That, that’s a really good point because yeah, with anyone that does any marketing, you do know that, of course you gotta do testing. It’s just testing. It’s always, I guess, the, the, the phrase with. Stuff is, uh, a b t. Always be testing as far as you know, there should be a, B, c when you’re selling.

[00:21:57]
Always be, be closing, but a b T will always testing and yeah, a lot of times you may think that okay, you can test on a certain platform and try different campaigns for a certain amount of time. It doesn’t work. Pivot, move to the next one. And then naturally you may think, all right, I’m not gonna go back to that because, you know, we tried that, it’s not gonna work.

[00:22:16]
But I’m, I’m glad you mentioned it because, just because that one campaign that you tried several months ago, Didn’t work, you didn’t get the right community, didn’t resonate with the audience at that time. Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not gonna work several months later. Cuz there’s a lot of factors that can, can change that.

[00:22:33]
You know, there’s definitely a new people on the platform. The platform may have changed a little bit. Their algorithm is on constantly changing as well. So yeah, you, you do have to consider those factors and don’t necessarily, like you said, write, write things off just because it didn’t work at that instant.

[00:22:49]
Yeah. 

[00:22:50]
John:
So a great example of that. Is YouTube, so mm-hmm for us, YouTube, we were slow and steady. 50, or sorry, not 5,500, maybe 600 new subscribers every month like clockwork for years. Okay. And then going into the end of 2021, actually the be begin end of 2021, December, January, 2022. Mm-hmm. . So not that long ago, YouTube changed some stuff on their go, giving a.

[00:23:16]
Of credit, way more credit than they previously had done with their YouTube shorts product. Okay. Direct response to they are afraid that TikTok is maybe stealing their lunch . How do we, how do we fix this? Well tweak the algos so it treats this YouTube short stuff as, as gold and the creators will follow.

[00:23:36] And we saw 500 subscribers like clockwork every month. And we were at about 55, 50 6,000 subscribers in December, January, December, 2021, January, 2022. And all of a sudden, our reels content or our shorts content, the same content that we had been posting on reels, posting on TikTok, yeah. All of a sudden was being treated differently.

[00:23:56]
The algorithm changed. Who shot up to half a million subscribers in, in the course of a. Wow. Not doing anything different. Mm-hmm. , all of a sudden the content was just, when we didn’t give up on it. Yeah. We, we kept, you know, trying to grow YouTube mm-hmm. and the, all of a sudden this short, short form content now was worth way more to them than it was previously.

[00:24:14]
Yeah. A matter of months.

[00:24:15]
Arlen:
Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. That’s such, that’s a great testimony to, to, like you said, you, you had it out there, you didn’t give up on that, but then just. The, the platform made the tweak mm-hmm. Where they’re, like you said, trying to compete with TOS and all this short form content and yeah.

[00:24:29]
They, they’re giving a lot more, I guess, priority to those views, the views of those shorts and Yeah. It’s just those backend tweaks that Yeah. You know, happen. Yeah. Well, yeah. Good. That’s the good stuff. I’m glad you mentioned that, boys. We get ready to, to wrap things up, what I wanted to see, If there’s an any example of, you know, with either with your brand or any other brand that you’re familiar with that has done just, you know, great job with content and community building and if there’s something that you can highlight from 

[00:24:58]
John:
what you’ve seen.

[00:24:59]
Sure. So I’ll give you a non-traditional answer here. Okay. So I, I do think some brands and do do a good job. Us we, I think we do pretty well. We’re constantly trying to improve. We’re always a work in. But where I’m getting the motivation for now is very, very unusual. So we’re talking about brands and building the content and community piece, right?

[00:25:20]
And you build it on top of the brand. And then the result is, you know, here you’re starting to see these creators, whether you wanna call ’em influencers or creative, Mr. Beast of the world, right? Yeah, yeah. Where they built the C and community and. They built the businesses and brands on top of it. Yeah.

[00:25:36]
And by going in that different order mm-hmm. , they, Mr. Beast launch launches a fast food ghost kitchen model and he’s nationwide, whether you’re, whether Arlen you in Orlando or me in Atlanta, we pull up Uber Eats and we both can get the same thing. And there’s not a brick and mortar, like, it’s just mind bla mind blowing.

[00:25:54]
Mm-hmm. that they’re now accomplish. In the different order. Yeah. So, so my, my advice is look at these creators. Mm-hmm. that, that have these large followings and look at the type of content they’re putting out in the community they’re building cuz they’re building it all before they build the business.

[00:26:09]
Yeah. Which is bizarre. But I think you can take a lot of the learnings from their approach towards content and community. Because if you can replicate that on your end, you’re just gonna. This fanatical loyalty among your customers. 

[00:26:21]
Arlen:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You, you’re right. It’s a different take on it cuz like you said, it’s, yeah, these creators, you know, at the outset of them getting out there, becoming an influencer, posting content, they’re probably not really even thinking about, you know, building a business per se.

[00:26:36]
You know, their, maybe their mindset is to, you know, maybe promote other brands, other products. But then when they’ve amassed such a huge community, then it’s, I think it’s, it kind of makes. Then they, they, they have that loyal following, like you said, people are almost fanatical about mm-hmm. following them, consuming their content.

[00:26:54]
They’re like, all right, how do we double down on this? How do we monetize it? And it’s like, you do, you almost kind of have an instant kind of customer base, if you will, of, you know, of course, you know, they people, people still have to pull a trigger, use the credit card there, but that loyalty is already there and that’s a tremendous.

[00:27:12]
John:
Yeah. And maybe, and maybe that’s, maybe that’s what I like about it, is you’re looking at this content and community, the content they’re creating, the community they’re building, and maybe it’s because they’re, they’re creating it with, with no secret agenda, right? Yeah. They’re just putting their passion into creating this content.

[00:27:27]
And consumers can tell, consumers can spot real, real from fake, right. I think a lot of times. Don’t give the consumer enough credit. Yeah. They know. They know when something’s not real. 

[00:27:36]
Arlen:
Exactly. Exactly. And yeah, you nailed it there. And then that’s kinda where the, we’ve seen such growth in like the Mr.

[00:27:43]
Beasts of the world that’s been able to, like you said, launch these ghost kitchens just because Yeah. They, they, they’re the real deal. They’ve already as. Established that relationship with this following, the trust is already there. They come off as an authority on a lot of subjects. And so yeah, that’s, that’s really what you really need upfront.

[00:28:02]
And it’s, yeah, like I said, it’s, it is a reverse order, but yeah, they’ve, they’ve really been able to, to kind of, kind of win over a lot of people and, and, and sell, sell a lot of product that way for. Well, great, John, this has been an awesome discussion. You know, it’s very timely as we’ve all seen, you know, with this, with the tos, building this community, there’s a lot of ways you can go with it and I think what really resonates with me and with a lot of, I know our listeners as well, you gotta start and it’s not gonna be ends.

[00:28:28]
You know, if you don’t have anything going, don’t have a community Facebook group. Just get it going and then just slowly build it, build it, build it. You may not see an initial return, but it’s something that’s a long game and it can definitely help compliment your sales and build that trust there with your community.

[00:28:43]
For sure. Well, uh, you know, like I, I always do with all of my guests. Is like to switch gears on my final question, just so our audience can get to know you a little bit better, if you don’t mind sharing one closing fun fact about yourself that you think we’d be interested 

[00:28:55]
John:
to know. I’m an avid sports card collector.

[00:28:57]
Okay. So, okay. All, all of these, it’s not product , it’s, it’s my midlife crisis. Uh, I’m, I’m acting like I did when I was 12 years old and getting athletes printed on cardboard. Gotcha, 

[00:29:10]
Arlen:
gotcha. Yeah, I was wondering what those boxes were, but, so, okay, so you’re, yeah. I got a, a, a friend of mine, a buddy of mine, a gold col, a high school buddy of mine is in the same thing.

[00:29:18]
He’s a really AbbVie the card collector as well. And, uh, I never really realized until I started kind of following some of his. How, how much business is behind this? Oh, it’s insane. What you can really earn on some of these cards and the collecting. It’s, yeah, it’s a, it’s like almost a whole subculture there.

[00:29:34]
Mm-hmm. And not a lot of people really realize that there’s a, there’s some big business behind these. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s, that’s good stuff, man. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. And uh, yeah. Good. Wish you with success with that as well. But yeah, it’s a, it’s like, it’s more than a hobby I know. And it, you know, like you said, it’s almost like a business there.

[00:29:50]
Business you, yeah. Yeah. For, for sure. Well, lastly, before we do let you. You don’t mind letting our listeners that wanna reach out to you and pick your brain anymore about content and, and, and committee building, what was the best way for them to, to reach 

[00:30:02]
John:
you? Sure. So, so I’m most active on LinkedIn. Okay. I try to be active on all channels.

[00:30:08]
Okay. But, but LinkedIn just is, is my favorite. Gotcha. I also have online kto.com. It’s just my blog, so I’ll, I’ll give use. Case studies stuff we’re working on. What, what I like to do though is include stuff like, I just don’t wanna include the victories. I wanna include our failures, because to me, that’s where we, we really get the learnings and, and figure out how to be better, stronger, faster later.

[00:30:31]
So, you know, if you go in, in the backlogs of it, you’ll see like four or five failed TikTok attempts. Um, and just trying to document what we do and what’s working and what’s not working. Gotcha, 

[00:30:40]
Arlen:
gotcha. Well that’s great. We thank you for, you know, for sharing that. I definitely, that our listeners reach out to you, try to connect with you.

[00:30:47]
On, on LinkedIn and, uh, you know, ki Brain, you also mentioned that you guys had the original Netflix series, was it, uh, Southern Survival. Mm-hmm. , they, they could check out, learn a little bit more about your brand and then how people are utilizing, you know, your products and their, their day-to-day lives. So yeah, thanks for, for sharing that as well.

[00:31:03]
Awesome. Well, awesome, John. Well, we appreciate you coming on the show and, uh, I’ve learned a lot nor listeners and viewers have as well. And appreciate you on the e-Commerce Marketing podcast. Thanks for having me, Arlen.

[00:31:11]
John:
Appreciate it. Thank you for listening to the e-Commerce Marketing Podcast. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate, review, subscribe, and share it with everyone you know.

[00:31:25]
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[00:31:50]
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Podcast Guest Info

John Roman
Chief Executive Officer for The BattlBox Group