Felix: Today I'm joined by John [Tescarano] from Beast. Beast creates grooming and personal care products for you and other beasts of all kinds to smell, feel, and experience and was started in 2015 and based out of Nashville, Tennessee. Welcome, John.
John: Thanks for having me.
Felix: The idea behind the business all started back from a passion of yours to create a specific type of brand. Tell us more about where the idea, where the motivation behind the business, came from.
John: Sometimes I say it came from early middle age, but it kind of came from a combination of things. I was working in my prior business, which was personal care products more for women. This goes back over a decade now. At the time, I saw guys starting to become more interested in grooming and personal care products. Guys were... The beard trend started happening. But beyond that, guys just started upping their grooming game as we say now at Beast. Also, I was getting into my late 30s: life, a lot of responsibility. I was looking for a combination of things I wasn't really finding out there in the marketplace. I say it kind of started in the shower, but something that would just wake me up: turn it up. And it was really kind of a hobby. Like, "All right, we got all these women's products. Let's take some of the best stuff that's happening there..." and some really good stuff was happening there... "and let me just crank it up. Let me turn up the eucalyptus. Turn up the peppermint. And just kind of wake me up in the shower." That's kind of where it started.
Felix: And this entrepreneurial journey of yours started before that. You kind of hinted at it a bit. Tell us more about that. Tell us about all the different kind of ventures you started in the past.
John: I've always... I don't know. When I was a little kid something happened and I always had this anxiousness to do something different. I go back to elementary school. My friend and I, we made bracelets and would sell them to other kids. And we set up a little booth. At a fair, we sold them to parents. That was the first venture: little yarn bracelets. Flash forward to college. Some friends and I, we started a magazine on campus. And this is 1999 at this point. Other people were doing tech startups and we did a magazine on campus. It was called Mental Floss. Worked on that for a while. I ended up going to law school of all things. My two friends kept working on it and ended up turning it into a good media property. I went to law school. As I say, I paid 150,000 dollars to meet my wonderful wife. Practiced law five years. Then the financial crisis happened, so I was there... I remember being in a big building in Philly in a big firm watching the stock market drop and being like, "Well, I might... Things are changing."
Out of that, I started a new business, and that was that prior business I referenced that was products for women, with my father-in-law who was a dermatology professor at NYU and had a private practice up in New York. Initially it started just to meet a need for his patients, a lot of whom were women. Then eventually out of that grew Beast.
Felix: That's definitely an amazing journey. You mentioned that you went to practice law for five years before jumping back into the startup life. And I think this is kind of like a path that others might have taken where they might've had some entrepreneurial pursuits early on and then decide to take a different path and then decide to come back. Talk to us about that transition. Like, you hit the ground kind of running. Or how do you transition back from a more typical job back into startup life?
John: I guess there's no easy way to do that. They're very different, especially going from a law firm where there's a very distinct career path that a lot of people thrive in. I really didn't. I felt... Where some people really grow, I felt really stifled, but it was really consistent. So moving to a startup life, all of a sudden there was no structure. The structure was whatever I would make of it. I mean, there was the first day. It's like, "Wow, I can do anything I want." At the same time it's scary. You can do anything you want. If you don't make the right moves, it's on you. It's all on you now. You are... Heavy lies the crown. You start a business. Congratulations and best of luck. I think you have to know yourself. You have to think about... It's more a science now. I think over time starting a business has become more of a study and a pursuit and a science and you think about your habits, establish good habits, because in the end a lot of what the books say you should do, you should do.
I stumbled a lot at first getting back into it. I played golf. I had some savings from being a lawyer and quickly I went through those savings and quickly had to learn how to create a business that could make money. I also had a newborn baby at the time, so it was a really... It went from being a fun time, an exciting time, to a really real time really fast.
Felix: I think one important thing you did hear was kind of highlight that there are benefits to both the corporate, the more traditional, path and the startup path. It really is about what's the right fit. You're right in that one might seem attractive but you have to make sure you're reflective in deciding what's right for you. You had mentioned that starting companies is becoming more of a science. I think that's an interesting take on it. Can you speak more about this? What would it feel like when you... in the early days I guess when you're first starting your first companies compared to now?
John: At the time, especially in consumer brands... and I'm assuming a lot of listeners probably some... A lot of them are going to have some kind of product like I do. I backed into it out of fun, really. I talked about I wanted to create something that woke me up in the shower: wakes me up, makes me feel something. That's a good start. Ultimately, you're trying to get to product market fit. There are now books and books and books and classes on product market fit. How do you identify... It took me like five years to get there. The original brand... This original brand was called Sasquatch with the tagline tame the beast, and we got a cease and desist over Sasquatch. Then started rolling with just Tame the Beast, and all along the way the formulas are changing. I'm making little improvements, little improvements, listening to customers. But this is playing out over years. Then ultimately... We also had a trademark on Beast, and ultimately started... "You know what? What do customers really like? What motivates them the most? What gets them excited about the brand?" We did surveys. You hear a lot through customer support. Just give it enough time and the customers will tell you what you should do.
Ultimately the brand became just Beast. We still put Tame the Beast on some products, but there's something about just that word Beast that's really... Number one, I'm really lucky to have gotten a trademark on that in personal care products, but number two, what could that name be at its highest and best use? It took years and years to really hone in on that, but I think in our case we could've expedited it by doing more surveying and potentially focus groups. There's different tools you can use to try to expedite that process. But in the end for me it was years and years of listening to customers, taking feedback, and making incremental improvements.
Felix: So lots of... A couple questions actually. You mentioned surveying and focus groups and what you're getting at is that there's kind of these rules to the road or maybe these processes that are well defined that at least will not necessarily guarantee your success but are almost required in order to be successful. If you were to start all over again, given that you have this serial entrepreneurship and that... If you were to start a business again today, what are some of the most important rules of thumb or details or processes that you have to do and you have to get right in order for you to even be... for it to even be possible to be successful?
John: Beyond some of the branding things, which are super important... and within that it's like both maybe a science and an art or a craft. Great name helps. You need all the social handles, URL. Consistency is super important. People need to find you. They need to be able to find you on social and find your website and have it all be clear, consistent. I've read that a brand in a position in your mind, and that... We need ease and we want it to be fast. If people can find you easily, regardless of what your name is... That consistency is super important. And then if you're in tangible goods, you need the systems of delivering the product to them. So obviously website, host provider. You need good fulfillment. Fulfillment's probably one of those things that gets overlooked a lot but that is one of the most important things, is your customers' experience with your brand after they've had the digital experience. And then customer service, marketing. Every one of these things becomes a department in and of itself.
And then within marketing there's new customer marketing versus exist customer marketing. Some people call it re-marketing, but they're different experiences. What do you want people's first experience with the brand to be versus their next experience? And each one, you're going to develop systems, email, text. There's all these customer communication channels that we have and are changing. These days people are using a lot more text than email, but email is still critical. There's your paid ads. And around each there's choices. Apps, providers... Same with fulfillment. There's a million fulfillment providers and many of them don't do a great job. It's an ongoing process to get that right for us.
Felix: You mentioned consistency almost methodical or measure in your customer's experience of your brand. How do you make sure that this happens: that you are being consistent? I think when you yourself and you're starting a business... Hopefully it's easier to be consistent when it's just you, but as you scale up you grow a team and there's more things that are not in your immediate reach or immediate purview. How do you make sure that the brand stays consistent?
John: I think having good people and good systems is the answer. When you start out... When I started out, I did customer service, I did marketing. I was every department. You have a direct link to your customer, so when someone has a problem... the canary in the coal mine is a lot of times customer service telling you and being able to respond fast. And if you're doing it yourself, early on it's great. You know. But then all of a sudden you got people and systems that you have to have to scale and I think it's having good tools. You have to start looking at metrics more and more. "What is our response time on customer service?" And there's plenty of apps. We use an app to help with customer service. There's a whole ecosystem of apps. You pick one and roll with it and look at the analytics and look at the reviews and have systems of seeing those reviews in volume, so where you're reviewing them: product reviews, site reviews. Everything public-facing about your brand and then potentially surveys. We've started to do that more. Just simple surveys. Sometimes just a text or an email to customers. "How was your experience? Is there anything we can help with?" Just with no real purpose around it other than to be helpful. You learn a lot.
Felix: I want to make sure this is very descriptive and tangible for the audience. Can you talk to us about the systems you have? Or maybe we'll start off by saying what are... How do you identify what system to build or to focus on first as you're building out your business?
John: Probably the biggest decision is the eCommerce platform. This is Shopify. We use Shopify. I think there was a time where there were a lot more options in building an eCommerce platform. Some companies would even build their own from scratch. But that's the biggest decision. We've always chosen Shopify, so let's say you roll with that. Maybe that's the iPhone of platforms. Then you have your apps. Just like with iPhone I look at there's a robust app store and every person... and I've consulted with some friends too and you reach this moment where you have your brand and what apps do you need. You need a developer and you need someone to build your website and there's going to be choices. Do you pay someone to start it from scratch? Or do you make a choice?
So like customer service, we use Gorgeous. It's one of a number of customer service apps but it sucks in... Really, you have to go through it and sometimes you learn out of necessity and find a solution out of volume. The volume tells you what to do. You start having Facebook comments, you start having text responses, you start having emails. All of a sudden it's not manageable for a small team so you need something to suck it all in. There's a problem and then there's a solution for it. That's just one example. But around other things, fulfillment, that's a really important early decision for a lot of people. Is that helpful?
Felix: Yeah. I think one of the other key aspects of this is around when to jump onto tools. I think there's... I see sometimes pretty often where there's a brand new company, brand new business, and they got lots of tools right off the bat. How do you know when to invest in tools? And not just in paying for the tools, but you obviously got to do the training. Then there's just a lot involved in investing in tools. Tell us about how you make the decision.
John: And money, too. And each app may or may not have a charge. And sometimes it's like... I have three daughters. We try to manage their screen time, and it's like a similar thing. And sometimes you get the in-app purchase and before you know it you're like, "Man, this was free, but now it's a lot of..." And then I'm sitting there trying to install this thing and get it set up for them and I'm like, "I've spent all this time on this." It's a challenge. At our company, we have... there's a number of us now. Our CFO, for example, he's really conservative. Doesn't want to spend an unnecessary dime. Doesn't want to introduce more complexity. So it's a trade-off, whereas I'm inclined to try the latest and greatest shiny model. I definitely think it's a balance. Through experience I've learned just be cautious. Make sure there's a true need for this. And then there's a decision. Like, maybe you don't outsource it. Do you outsource? Do you not outsource? Do you get an app? Do you not get an app? And sometimes we ask our developer, too, "Is there a simple solution rather than installing a new app?" And there's always challenges. You install a new app: installation process, integration. Before you know it, you're banging your head against the wall with this or that aspect that you didn't anticipate.
I think you just have to be cautious and not overly stress. You're not missing... That's a thing. I think it's fear of missing out. We all assume that there's some magical app that'll do this or that and not... Look, if you got a good product and you can get it in front of people... That's the two hardest things: making people aware of your thing and... That's number one once you're all up and running. You can have every shiny app in the world but if no one knows you exist then no one wants to buy what you got. It doesn't matter.
Felix: I think that's important: that the kind of gear or the tool... it should not be a crutch if... or cannot be a crutch... if the products or the brand is not something that people want or that they're aware of. You mentioned earlier that how it's now more of a science but you've learned the kind of hard way. If you go on the long way where you're stumbling through and trying to figure it out. And when you're going through that... also for listeners out there that are also kind of going through this where they're stumbling, just trying to figure out one thing at a time, one day at a time... What helped you? Or what let you keep going, especially when you didn't have as much of a blueprint as you're seeing these days? Back when you're just kind of stumbling in the dark, what helped you keep going?
John: I think that goes deep. I think that goes deeper. I think fear of failure. And I've thought about that. "Why do..." I think wanting to achieve something, wanting to... I think it's personal things that push me on when even some people might've advised me not to keep going in a really competitive sector. You go to any store and there's no lack of shampoos on the shelf. It's not easy. It's not like we invented something that didn't exist or that... It was a very competitive sector. I think it's really just believing that there was a... believing in the brand too, that there was something about the Beast brand and the name and the feeling. I think positive customer feedback and reviews help: that you have customers that get it, what you're trying to do, and you're making them feel better. You're improving their life just a little. They go in the shower and they have a more elevated shower experience in our case. That feels good.
Having some kind of purpose beyond... and then over time the brands evolved some too to incorporate an eco-friendly side too. Growing up... I grew up in south Florida and I spent a lot of time at the beach snorkeling. I was a beach rat. There were coral reefs there that aren't there now. It's not that they bleached. They're gone. They're sand. Trying to incorporate that made me kind of sad to something positive with what I was doing, that helped to. So having a purpose to what you're doing beyond just the making of money. Now we're starting to reduce plastic in our product line and looking for ways to deliver a product that people want and need but minimize the impact. I think the combination of all those things is what drives me.
Felix: And you mentioned one thing, too, about what started all of this... You said, I think the words were, you were anxious about wanting to create something. There's something bubbling inside you that you want to just create things out in the world. I think a lot of people can resonate with that. I've this kind of dichotomy between the creator versus the CEO or the manager: the creating versus the scaling and maintenance and maturity side of the spectrum on what you tend to focus on. As someone that is a creator, that wants to create, have you found this transition difficult: If  the product that already exists, now it's all about kind of scaling and getting it out there. Have you encountered issues with this transition?
John: Yeah, I have. Early on, as you said, trying to create something people want. [Y Combinator's] motto is make something people want. The process of doing is different from having a business where people want it... how to make it more efficient, how to grow it, how to increase brand awareness. Those are more execution things whereas the first stage is more of a creative enterprise. Now I have a board of advisors, a board of directors, and it's learning to report to other people. All of a sudden it introduces a certain level... It's having a boss, having bosses. You started this thing maybe bucking against being in an established company or organization and then you're creating... I mean, I aspire to having something that is established. Bit by bit it becomes bigger and more regimented and structured and you need systems. I almost think I could answer this better. It has been hard. It is a hard transition and I think I've had to... I've talked to a people, talked to other people, who have made a transition. It's good. All I can say is talk to other people who have been there, done that, for sure.
Felix: And maybe... Is it easy to recognize when you need to shift focus to work on those skill sets of execution verus... Is it clear? That line between, "Okay we're done..." not done... "We should now devote more time to execution and making it more efficient and getting and fulfilling and delivering and scaling." Is it clear when that time needs to happen?
John: Not... I would say a lot of people, and myself included... I'll speak from my experience. I over-created. I created too many products. You get into a certain mindset of creating... And we created some pretty cool stuff. One of our most recent products is a great product: Beast Gold wash. Here we have the Olympics coming up. We've got an Olympian and team Beast. She owns shares in the company. She's going to be in the Olympics. Kelly [O'Hara] on the US women's soccer team. But I think there's also a real argument that maybe we shouldn't have created Beast Gold only because we have, from an efficiency standpoint and its scalability and all these business lessons... I had people telling me, "You need to stop creating. Look at the business. Look at the dollars and cents. Don't run out of money. You run out of money, game over." And profit does matter.
I think I over-created. I think it came... I knew it was time to stop because I had people tell me, "You got to stop." Smart people, finance guys, said, "Listen, you got to stop. You got to shift." Having people around you who are smart will tell you, "You need to start cooling down. Now it's time. You need to stop." Because on my own, I didn't get there.
Felix: And this kind of attitude, I'm surprised that it's coming up down and didn't just kind of end the journey earlier for you if you were so prone to over-creation. What was happening in the early days?
John: It nearly... This brand originated on Amazon, so on Amazon... It's interesting. You look at a lot of brands that launch, I would say more cleanly, on their own website. Maybe they only have three skews. Maybe they only have five skews. When you only have one skew... But on Amazon, ironically it fed my urge to create and fill holes on Amazon. "There's nobody doing something quite like this. Let me launch that. Let me launch that." You're right. It nearly ended the journey. That mentality definitely... I did have a marketplace for the things but not everything sold. "So let's create... If we do this, it'll sell." But I definitely nearly ran out of money a number of times. And hopefully people listening will avoid that: will find a way to do it. The methodical approach that we're taking now is now we have customers telling us what we really want. We can listen and we know what to make next. We plan more in advance, have a budget, be responsible, and then focus the creativity around a specific project. That's a much smarter approach. And yet I see so many friends with businesses and they just create, create, create, create. You need to be self-aware of that and have good people around you that will reign that in.
Felix: Like maybe there are pockets of creativity that you can express by going deep onto a product or I've heard people saying they can get creative with many things along with the kind of supply chain that's not just about your skews.
John: I heard... sorry to interrupt... a great quote that some... When we went to go do a commercial, he said, "Give me the freedom of a well-defined creative brief," and I thought that was a great phrase. It's like there is something liberating in knowing we are creating around this. Here's the box we're playing in. Let's do that.
Felix: There's kind of a speed element to that too where you know the boundaries, where you're kind of protected by the boundaries. You can move faster and maybe try more things within those boundaries. You mentioned that these days your private development begins with the customers what they want. Tell us about that. I imagine you getting tons of emails, tons of feedback. How do you decide which ones are actually worth pursing more?
John: I think it's a combination of listening to the customers and looking at the marketplace. You reach a certain size, people start replying to your emails. I would say anyone hear, we'll almost give people free stuff just for feedback. It's so invaluable. Especially the people who... I will say this: not all feedback is created equal. The customers who maybe have... they clearly know the product line, they've tried a lot of stuff, and then they write something thoughtful, that's where... And you hear that from multiple customers and you're like, "Okay, there's something there." And then you maybe go back out and look at the marketplace and say, "There is a need for this product next. This makes a lot of sense." Then you have to look at the R and D side too. How hard is it going to be to make it? How long will it take? What will it cost? I think it's kind of give and take in that way.
Felix: That makes sense. You had mentioned that you look at the customer feedback and the marketplace together. Can you tell us more about that or give an example of how you use those two together to decide if it's worth a product creation?
John: Let's see. Now there are a lot of beard oils on the market. That's one example. There was a time where there weren't many at all. The oils were out there. Something like argon oil or jojoba oil. Those are great oils for hair: head hair or beard hair. They're very smoothing. Women knew this before guys and then the beard trend happened. But now there's a ton of beard oils out there. It's like we've definitely had people ask for different varieties of beard oils, but is it worth investing much more into? Is it core to our product line now? Where's the trend going? Kind of analyze how much... It's the business side, really. You have to balance the customer request with the business you're in. Maybe that's one example. There's one or two other examples that I'm going to save for me, because we've definitely had products that we know is the next great product to make. There's stuff happening in maybe other sectors.
We've actually kind of moved towards being more of a unisex brand and we have some unisex offerings. It's kind of... We started as a men's brand but we've kind of moved men's to unisex. I think there's some products that are in the women's area that are really... I think both women want them cheaper... There's sometimes what's called a pink tax. There's articles on it out there where women will actually buy a product from a unisex or men's brand just because it's cheaper because they know it's the same damn ingredients and there's this premium being charged. It's incredible. I think there's an overlap of what the customer's telling us and... Like, for skin care for guys that women want cheaper too, where there's kind of a market opportunity and the customer base... A lot of our customers are saying, "Make something like this."
Felix: That makes sense. Speaking of the move towards more of a unisex brand, you had that experience with your previous company, Lock and Main, and you mentioned that... I don't think you had much experience in this field, right? How did you even get started when you're entering into a field, a category, that you're not a customer, you're not an end user, and you might not have that much experience? How do you even approach an industry like that?
John: With dumb optimism. I think being bold, being... just wanting to learn. I think just kind of searching for opportunities, sometimes that's all it takes. You're just looking opportunity. You're hearing and you kind of dive into something. I definitely dive into the pool first whereas other people might check how deep the water is. I'll just go in. That's what happened. I just kind of jumped for better or worse. Lock and Main, we carried other people's products to start, so we were a pure retailer, curator, of specific things that, to start, women in New York City wanted and were having a hard time finding. We were still serving a need. That's opportunity. You hear the need that's there and you have, in this case, people telling me, "There's a market here." But then over time you learn the industry and it takes you in a different direction. I started learning. I got to know some celebrity stylists. I was like, "How'd you make it? You launched this brand. You're not a chemist. How'd you do it?"
Eventually just cultivating relationships led to me having a relationship with a lab, a cosmetics lab, and I think sometimes you just get... If people just... We all kind of want to see each other succeed. I'm really competitive but I also really want everyone else to succeed. That... Not the first lab, but maybe the third of forth lab, they picked up on that and they started working with me even though I wasn't paying them anything or didn't have a lot of money just because in part their business is that they need the next latest and greatest brand but they also, I think, just wanted to see someone, an entrepreneur, succeed. Same with the formulation. We're bring in a dermatologist to help advise me and it kind of went bit by bit like that out of my prior company until I was like, "I think I have a unique brand here that people might want to buy."
Felix: And one other thing that you moved into next, especially when you were starting Beast, was into becoming eCommerce director at a women's apparel and accessory retailer: Able. You mentioned that you helped triple the company's online revenue in 12 months. Tell us more about that. What were you doing? How were you able to triple the revenue in just 12 months?
John: At that point in time I had sold Lock and Main. I sold that business. Beast existed but was still, let's say, getting off the ground. I wasn't 100% sure how big it was going to be and that I had really cracked it with that brand. Just a friend introduced me to the CEO of Able, and their website is livefashionable, or livefashion-able, dot com. I just fell in for their mission. They are, I believe, the first Tennessee B corp, but at the time they were doing nearly a million dollars in revenue organically just off people word of mouth. They're a national company. Just off people talking about them and sharing them. And their website was having like 20 second load times. They had kind of a legacy [woo commerce] site. I just was like, "If you guys sped up the site, improved it some, and launched a little marketing around this mission I think this could grow really fast." This is Facebook ads pre-iOS changes this year. It was a little different world, but I just saw simple things they could do. And they had a beautiful message too. Their statement was beautiful products by women who have overcome. With a product image on a faster website with some digital ads, they grew quickly. Their mission is to create jobs for women. It's a combined mission like many B corps. It's to make a profit like any company but also fulfill this social purpose.
I guess the other thing, too, is I walked in the office the first day and this woman gave me a a hug. She had a whole history. She had been recovered from addiction and she was just so... I just remember that day walking in. I was like, "This feels good."
Felix: So a company had a great story, great mission, and you stepped in and removed a lot of that friction that people were experiencing when they wanted to buy from the website. A lot of that I'm sure you carried over once you started Beast. What else have you done that you feel like has had the biggest changes in terms of growing the brand, in terms of getting people to be aware of it, to give it a shot, give it a try? What has worked for you guys?
John: The Beast brand is similar to Able. You have to... There's no magic. I think there was maybe a small period where it's like Facebook ads are these magical things, and they kind of were for a period, but then I think a lot of people saw there is a limit. Then the secret got out and like any marketplace prices go up and things change. As always, I've heard this 360 degree approach to marketing, but for us we've spent a lot of time creating content ourselves. If you go to our YouTube channel or Instagram account, we have a lot of images and videos going on. That... I think perhaps video is something I point to. Creating... Again, it's like whole conversation about don't over-create, be careful over-creating, make sure you're not just spewing stuff out there. But the right video with the right selling points of what's different about your product or service and brand can go a long way. And then just sharing it organically and of course testing it in ads, in paid ads, and just measuring conversions.
But for us, yeah, we've created a lot of videos ourselves and we've kind of dialed in on that process some where a lot of times I'll start the script. I'll write the first script. Maybe in the shower the idea comes. Get out of the shower, go write it down, and then put it through a process where... Don't send it to the team. Sleep on that video. Make sure it's good. Because a lot of times, a lot of ideas we have in the light of day you're like, "It's not a good idea." But for us I would say good, concise video content on brand... And not to over push our YouTube channel, but we spend a lot of time there. YouTube.com/tamethebeast. You can see some of our hits, some of our misses. But for us that's been a good area to focus.
Felix: Talk to us about the angle, then, behind the videos that you're creating. Is it... Do you try to focus on making sure the product is the center of attention? Or is there some kind of storyline that you try to do? How do you decide what's the right balance when you're creating videos? Specifically for YouTube.
John: I look at video and image assets and all of it as part of... Again, you launch and create a new product, you're going to need all the assets to go with it. Once you make that product decision to create, there's a lot of work that naturally follows. So new product, new collection: why did you launch that... why did we launch that product? What are the selling points? People have low attention spans: three seconds, six seconds, eight seconds, somewhere in there. Differs a little by generation but it's short. We're hyper smart at reviewing media, so you got to get to it quick and you have to really filter through what's really different about this product. What do people really want? And look at other people's commercials in the area. What are they... We look at Old Spice. I hate plugging another brand, but they revived a legacy grandfather brand, and how'd they do it? What are they touching on in the commercials? What can we learn from that for us?
There's a lot to an effective commercial. For instance, one of our products is the Extreme [Yaup]. It was actually the first product where I thought we had something. It was the Extreme Yaup Beard, Hair, and Body Wash. We're like, "What's unique about this?" It's the feel. You put Beast on a bottle, what are people's expectations? Over time I learned you expect something. You want to feel something. You want to smell something. Beast is an experience. What's unique about... So we came up with some great copy for it. I think that's one of the top videos in our YouTube channel. There's this husky voice and it's, "Extreme Yaup Beard, Hair, and Body Wash. With an exhilarating eucalyptus tingle that's a nice reward for being an adult." And then there's a roar.
And then the other thing I would say is think about a jingle, too. Actually, someone from P&G, Procter and Gamble, early on told me, "Come up with a jingle." So for us right now it's our roar. We throw just a beast roar, which is actually a combination of an elephant... It's like three animals that our sound person meshed together. Like a rhinoceros... He was just playing with animals and meshing them together. He was like, "I think this is it. This is the roar." I was like, "That's it. That's the roar."
Felix: At least it will be distinct when you hear it. Something that's most important thing. Now, talking about the website, one thing that I noticed is this build a set feature that you have in a website. Tell us more about that. What was the idea, the reason behind, having a part of the website about building a set of products?
John: Back at Able, I saw that people want customization. There's something sticky about that. Those people who customize spend more time on the site. There was even data saying... looking at different customer cohorts... that they were more loyal customers, the more you kind of dig in with a brand. And for us, we want to get people... Part of the mission that drives us now is reducing plastic. How do we do that? More reusable bottles. Well, bottle refill. You got to get people to change their habits incrementally and we want to capitalize on some of the other data around customers and loyalty and all that. That's kind of where it came from, but also it's just about trying making it easy and, you used the phrase, reducing friction. I think that's a lot of it too. The more friction we can take out of... Because people come to the product line and it's like a full product line: shampoo, conditioners, soap, lotions, shaving products. "Well darn, where do I get started?" It's like, "Here. Let's make it easy on you. Start here. Pick a bottle. We only got a couple. Pick one. All right, great. Pick a pouch." "There's lots of stuff. What do I..." You just pick one. And then boom. It's trying to make a three step process of getting people to get into to product line easily and incrementally change their habits.
Felix: That's definitely important... or a great... insight about how the more time you spend on the site customizing it, the stickier they are. Also, it's almost like a... I guess as much as you can... a store representative talking them through what are the important things to buy in order for you to full experience the brand. Are there any other parts of the website that maybe surprise you that have had a big impact on conversions or that people spend a lot of time on?
John: What's funny is I've seen this on a couple sites: just the shop all. That's often one of the highest converting pages. People just want to see and scroll. It sounds silly, right? Shop all. You know what? They can just kind of see the whole thing and scroll down. That and I think we definitely see people maybe later in their life cycle approach and start visiting sustainability pages or about the brand pages. Also having the quiz page. I don't know why I didn't think of that. We have a quiz now and it's kind of a fun quiz where we try to pair you with one of our scents. That's another great example I think... Always try to think of... At Able, too. Both at Able and Beast we did something where it was a little fun for the customer to do but also instructive. We're taking people down the path just answering a simple question and then we recommend some products and it helps them understand our different scents. I would encourage people to try a quiz with their customers.
Felix: Awesome. One interesting thing, too, that I see on your website... I'm not sure if you're testing this or if it's a permanent piece of your website, but it says, "Want a free gift from us? Getting the email and optional phone number." But it doesn't really say what is the free gift. Was that on purpose?
John: Yeah. We wanted flexibility to change it up. Sometimes it's like an inventory management thing, too, where we're like, "Darn. We're out of those."
Felix: That makes sense. You mentioned earlier that you use an app like Gorgeous for customer service. Are there any other apps that you use that you can recommend to... that you use to run the website or run the business that you recommend?
John: Yeah. We've... Going back to our app discussion earlier, there's... Product reviews is a thing and early on you may not want to invest a lot of money in product reviews but at some point you start realizing, "We need to feed these reviews into Google. We need to maybe syndicate them to other places. A good product review app... we maybe want functionality like sharing so customers can easily share their review. [Yacht Po Reviews] to us was a good one. We actually... We're kind of all in on Yacht Po a little. We got Yacht Po Loyalty, we Yacht Po Reviews, and we've tested some Yacht Po SMS. We kind of went all in around the Yacht Po ones. But then also there's one, Data Feed Watch, just a feed generator because you need... That one's more affordable. It allows you to generate a feed that you can spit into Google or Facebook or there's other marketing channels. Bing, where you might need to generate a product feed early one, that's a useful one too. And Octane is a good one too for marketing. And I could say Klaviyo for email. I think Klaviyo has emerged as one of the top email ones. But Octane's kind of like email and text but for Facebook Messenger. That's kind of the problem that Octane solves. I think that's a good one for people to look at.
Felix: Awesome. Getbeast.com is the website. And I'll leave you this last question. What do you think is the area, what is the project, that you want to focus the most time on over the next year?
John: It's going to sound silly but fulfillment. Here's an offer. If you go... If you're listening to the podcast and you go place an order on our site use code... I'm going to drop a code reference here... beastboss, because you're the boss of me, the Beast, or your own self as the Beast. I don't know. But that'll give you 20% off. But then if you then get the items and email me and tell me about your fulfillment experience, I'll send you another free thing. I'll look at what you ordered and pick something else from our product line and send it to you. Just email me at... I can't even speak now. John@getbeast.com. So by something. Use code beastboss. Save 20%. Get the products email me. Just give me feedback, simple feedback, on fulfillment, the unboxing, and I'll send you something extra, free.
Felix: It is no joke. You are very serious about your fulfillment. I appreciate the discount code for the audience and I'm sure people will take you up on that offer. I'm excited to hear what kind of findings you get out of this experiment. Again, getbeast.com is a website. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your experience, John.
John: Thank you. Thanks for having me.