Live selling is no longer a gimmick, and for some brands, it’s quietly becoming one of the most profitable growth channels out there!
In this episode of Millionaire University, host Brien Gearin sits down with returning guest John Roman, CEO of BattlBox (a $20M+ e-commerce brand for outdoor survival/EDC gear), to break down what’s working right now for them: live selling. John shares the BattlBox origin story, including launching in 2015, riding the 2020 wave (and a Netflix series), selling the business, then buying it back in 2023 before diving into how platforms like Whatnot are changing the game with auction-style shopping, community-driven features (boosts, raids), and high-intent buyers. You’ll hear practical details on show formats, timing, hosting, profitability, and why John believes live shopping is still the “Wild West” with massive upside for brands willing to jump in early!
Transcript from video:
Introduction to Live Selling
0:00 Honestly, you're not really even hard selling. You're selling stuff, but you're just hanging out and going through your product. It's definitely half entertainment, not just traditional selling. We want it to be top of funnel to introduce them to the brand for
0:11 future sales direct, but we're 100% running this and focused on profitability. And we're also focused on seeing how much revenue and how much we can sell, too. Gold has been confirmed, so we're super super early, arguably in
0:22 the infancy. If it's something you can execute and get in now as a brand, I would strongly urge you to do so. your biggest channel right now is live selling of your gear and your subscriptions and that piqued my interest because honestly I don't know a
0:36 lot about it and I'm sure there's a lot of us out there listening today who have maybe heard of it don't know much about it maybe haven't heard of it at all so that's what we're going to be talking about but real quick for those who don't know could you give us a quick origin story tell us about Battlbox how you
0:47 got into it and then exactly what you all do sure so Battlbox we launched in 2015 so it was during the heyday of subscription boxes Birchbox was the golden child back then with a billion dollar valuation. So
1:00 launch in 2015. I came on board within weeks of launch as an investor and then it just kind of parlayed into being a meaningful part of the team. We've always had a focus on content and content truly is our top of funnel. Don't get me wrong, we still advertise,
1:13 but it's just a slightly different approach towards a traditional direct to consumer brand. Growth, growth, growth. In 2020, the pandemic, just like it was to a lot of direct to consumer brands, was good. You know, you had people's
1:24 undivided attention because they were stuck in their homes. So, we saw growth there. We also had a Netflix TV show in July 2020 be released, a Netflix original series about us. And at that point, we were like, okay, this is the
1:35 time to sell. We sold the business. That was should have been the end of the book. But we decided to write some additional chapters. And in 2023, about a year and a half after we sold it, we bought the business back. So, we took our baby back, running it again, focused
1:48 on growth and having fun and finding additional channels. And yeah, that's where we're at today. Nice. Yeah. And doing north of 20 million. So you guys have been doing some correct things, doing them right and doing them well and doing them often. So congratulations on that. Let's
2:01 jump into the hottest thing that's working for you guys right now in live selling. So explain to us what is live selling and how do you guys do it? Sure. So you know live selling there's a
2:12 bunch of different options, opportunities, platforms. Probably most people are might be familiar with TikTok, right? So, um, scrolling the feed and you'll see someone you'll see live
2:24 and and they'll be selling something out of the TikTok shop. There's the other platforms. You know, eBay has opened up live shopping, live selling to a couple of categories, mainly sports cards and collectibles. Supposedly, this quarter
2:37 they're opening it up to a bunch of other categories, including us in the, you know, sports and outdoor space. Amazon has actually done a couple iterations, a couple attempts at it. um
2:49 four or five and you know I don't think they found their rhythm yet. Um but you know in the last year and a half there's a strong possibility if you used the Amazon app you would have opened it up and you would have seen a little icon at
3:01 the bottom on the bottom bar with the five icons that was them testing live shopping. There was live shopping on there. Um YouTube has been playing around in it right now. Arguably the leader in the space. So I think we picked the right dog in the fight is Whatnot. So WhatNot
3:19 is a platform specifically for live selling. So as a consumer, if you have the whatnot app and you're opening it up, you're very far in the buying funnel, right? You've opened the app to make a purchase. So the intent that their users has is pretty high. Unlike,
3:35 you know, TikTok where you're doom scrolling content ingesting and then you get sold something. This is a platform designed specifically for buying and selling which is pretty cool. So you
BattlBox Origin Story
3:49 know they have blown up. So they obviously had a lot of success during the pandemic when people were in their homes and you know really baseball cards, football cards, Pokemon was kind of the original of selling and buying on the platform but super impressive. So
4:06 last year in January, they raised $265 million at a $5 billion valuation. Wow. So you're like, "Wow, okay, this is a serious platform." And then in October of last year, so 9 months later, they did their series F, they raised another
4:24 $225 million at an 11.5 billion valuation. So in the same year, they more than doubled um valuation. And we're not talking about going from a million to two, like just wild. 5 billion to 11.5 billion. So they have the funds, you know, this will air afterwards, but a lot of their
4:45 deployment, Mr. Beast is doing a live whatnot during the Super Bowl. Wow. This year, so they're being very strategic. They're getting the right eyeballs onto the platform. So yeah, so we launched
4:56 we launched on whatnot back in April of last year. No idea what we were doing. It was just, hey, you know, I think probably for the past decade, and you can probably keep me honest here, there's been rumblings of, you know, live selling is going to be a thing
5:10 because it's this huge thing in China. And for the past decade, like people have talked about it, but nothing's ever kind of come to fruition at all. It almost became noise just because, yeah,
5:21 got it. Yeah. Live shopping, it's going to it's going to come and it never came. And then last year we've just we we you know felt that this might actually be a coming for real and now we're getting validation that the live selling is a
5:35 thing in the US and Canada. Okay. Wow. So as somebody who's never taken part in live selling or I guess technically live buying, walk me through from both sides of this. So, as a consumer, I can go to whatnot.com or hop on the whatnot app and then I can like
5:53 I'm interested in buying, you know, a subscription service like yours, BattleBox, you know, outdoor equipment. Just a So, we don't sell subscriptions. It's all one time. One time. Oh, okay. We do, but I mean on the platform. The
6:05 platform doesn't support anything but like a onetime transaction. Okay. Okay. Got it. So, I'm here to buy I'm here to view your gear and buy some of it because I may or may not know that I want it, need it, like it, whatever. So, what's the experience like? Is it you or someone at Battlbox that you're
6:18 literally hopping on a live stream and is it kind of is it almost like the resurgence of the infomercial or that like the QVC channel? Yeah. So, a lot to unpack. So, as the consumer, as the buyer, if you and I
6:28 were like, "Hey, let's go buy something." You open up the app, there's categories. Um, you know, you just pick whatever it is and it's literally I don't know what she's selling. It looks like a t-shirt of some sort. You can buy right there.
6:44 You can bid and it functions just like you know TikTok or Instagram reels or YouTube shorts where it's a feed and um it's but it's a it's a feed of people just selling stuff. So to your question about QVC, yeah, I mean you know QVC was
7:04 this and and Home Shopping Network and there were a bunch of others you know back in the day. It was this big deal. It skipped our generation though. It did. Like we never really gravitated towards it like the previous generation did. And this is kind of the version of that with the reality that this new
7:25 generation also enjoys brain rot and just doom scrolling just ingesting
What is Live Selling?
7:30 content. So it's it's presented in the same way, right? It's, you know, instead of a 15minute segment on on this honey baked ham that you need to buy for the holidays, it's them selling the honeybaked ham in a 10-second auction
7:46 and after that they're selling something else. And it's very very it's playing to, you know, consumer behavior now, which is very, you know, the attention span of an app. Yeah. And the susceptibility to the urgency, right, to being like, "Oh, I
7:59 that looks pretty. It's about to go away. I might as I should buy this or I should emotional purchasing, not doing um you know the amount of due diligence a consumer typically used to do before making a purchase. They're just I got to
8:12 have it. Yeah. Yeah. So it's defin it's a lot of it's emotional purchases. Wow. Okay. So you mentioned and you showed us here and those who are listening if you catch us on YouTube you can see the quick quick scroll through that John just did for us on the video.
8:25 But for you mentioned the bidding. So you can bid on it and then it sounds almost like it's gamified where you mentioned like they might sell it for 10 seconds or it's and then they're on to the next product. Kind of walk me through how that works. Is it all
8:37 auction based? Is it buy now price? What does that look like? So the majority all all is available on the platform. The majority of sellers sell in an auction format, but you can do auction, you can do buy it now, you can do flash sales, but auctions typically get the most momentum. And you
8:54 know, you're choosing the duration. So you could do 5 seconds, you could do 10, you could do 15, you could do a couple minutes, you can, you know, manage all kinds of little variables like is it
9:06 sudden death? So with sudden death, you know, if it's a 30- secondond auction, at the end of the 30 seconds, it's over. You can do a traditional auction where every time someone bids, it adds 2 seconds or you can just say, I wanted to
9:18 add 4 seconds. So you can control all these variables to determine you know what works best for your audience. So yeah, but then you know there's some sellers that will just do buy it now and they're maybe you know spending a little
9:31 more time selling the product, educating on the product and you know when you're on the platform as a consumer your credit cards in the system already. So it's just swipe and purchase. Wow. Okay. So
9:44 when you guys sell multiple like you're there to sell as many products as you can, right? So, if you're doing an auction, is there is it one one item of that one product that's for sale and then it's like it's gone and then you just bump to the next one or how does that work if you're trying to sell as
9:58 many SKUs or as many items as you can? Yeah. No, it's a good question. So, you can do whichever you prefer. So, a lot of times, so you know, we're going to connect our back-end tech, right? Our Shopify for most to the platform. So,
10:13 inventory is being pulled in. So yeah, there's going to be sellers on there that just they just have this one pen and when they sell it, then they're going to sell the vintage Washington Redskins cup. Nice. And they're just going to keep moving
10:24 on, you know, because we have larger quantities of most SKUs. If we're selling something and it's going well, we might sell a second or third, a fifth, we might sell 10 or 15 right there back to back to back. When you're
10:35 doing a flash sale or just a traditional buy it now, you know, your full inventory is there. So, if it's a good deal or a lot of people want it, you know, as many swipes as your inventory can handle, it's the full gambit. You
10:48 can really make it your own on what you want your approach to be. Wow. Okay. So, let's shift sides to the seller side and specifically with you and Battlbox side. I've got a million questions here. I'll go in no specific order. Strategy-wise, what did you guys decide on strategy in terms of what to sell? How much? I guess you want to sell
11:06 everything or like you said, as inventory allows, how do you get viewers? How do you get featured? What does that all look like?
11:12 Sure. So, we didn't know anything. We knew that, hey, we want to try this. So,
Whatnot Platform Deep Dive
11:17 there was, you know, in April of last year when we launched, there was a lot of learnings. So, we made some assumptions off the jump. Some were right, some were wrong. If you're scrolling and whatnot, you'll see um typically two different types of shows.
11:30 You'll see what I call a hands model where, you know, their phone is in front of them and they're showcasing an item, but you're not seeing them. And then there's the, you know, full frontal, which is more entertainment. It's a
11:42 host. They're showcasing the products. It's more probably from an aesthetic, more in line with a QVC or home shopping network, which is fast. So, we tested both. Um, right now, you know, almost a
11:55 year later, we do almost exclusively full frontal. We now have six different hosts because it's, you know, a little further along the process. But back then, we tried it all. We didn't know
12:06 how the consumer was going to behave with purchasing. We didn't know if, you know, do we just list it as a buy it now full price? Do we do a starting bid, you know, somewhere in between our cost and
12:19 retail? What we found is when the audience is there, starting it at a dollar um and taking a little bit of a risk performs way better than putting it at a set amount. So, it's a strategy and
12:32 I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all either. to your question on audience. So they're, you know, them raising, you know, north of $500 million last year gave them a budget where, you know, they're focusing on bringing audience
12:46 into the platform. So organically, you know, you're getting probably a dozen people on average a minute that are just scrolling and found you via the algorithm. You can absolutely, you know, bring your audiences from other social platforms and we've held off a little
13:04 bit on that just because it was a, you know, new new new sales channel for us and we don't know what we don't know. So, we were a little bit hesitant to bring our own audience in because we didn't want to just cause cannibalization of our base. So, our audience on other channels know about
13:23 whatnot now, but we still don't really push them to it. For us, it more serves as discovery to new customers to then bring them full funnel into our entire ecosystem and hopefully ultimately buy a membership. Do people come to apps like whatnot knowing or feeling like they can get a
13:41 deal on your product or you know with the bidding process? I guess they could walk away with a you know you you give selling them that item for less than your cost. Doesn't sound like that happens. But they could also if the bidding keeps going higher and higher, like at some point they probably will Google search and see that this item
13:58 costs, you know, $48 yet the bidding is up to 58. Why don't I just buy from them directly? Which I guess is a good thing for you, right? So, no. Absolutely. No. So, it's interesting. So, we had the same
14:10 question starting off. What is this buyer? Are they looking for a deal? Are they looking for a community where they're okay with, you know, actually paying full price? We have seen that the
14:21 typical consumer is looking for a little bit of a deal or they want to at least feel like they got a deal and that's been recently validated because with whatnot's most recent um like commercials and advertising that
14:35 they're doing that is the narrative that they're kind of framing themselves in is that it's a place you know to possibly get a good deal. Um, so I would say the average buyer is looking to to to save a
14:49 dollar or two. Gotcha. So what about like show times? Are there specific times of the day and specific amounts of time in the day that you go live and do sales or you know it's almost like in my mind it's like
The Consumer Experience
15:00 well we're online always 24/7 365. You can always buy from us but this is obviously there's more to it. So what does that look like for you guys in terms of how often you do it? Yeah. So in April when we started off we
15:12 did a total the entire month of 10 hours of live selling. I think it was over about five shows. So average show is about two hours. We were trying different days times. What we quickly found out you know since validated is that you know not all days and times are equal. Weekends are going to perform
15:32 better than during the week and evenings are going to perform better than during the day and mornings actually perform better than during the day. So that's kind of the hierarchy of it, which makes sense, right? People are working like
15:44 how people at, you know, 2:30 in the afternoon are going to be like, man, I got to spend some money on whatnot. Um, you know, pause my job for the moment. Um, so it all kind of makes sense. It's it's your traditional buying patterns for a platform like that. Um, we tested what worked and you know we
16:03 had one host Brandon who's if you've seen a Battlbox video, he's the bearded gentleman that is in most if not all of our videos. And so he was the initial host. You know, fast forward uh to
16:16 today, we have six hosts in total. We do around 200 hours a month. Um, and that's spread over between 60 and 65 shows in a month. Wow. So, show duration has extended to about three hours on average, sometimes a little bit more, a little bit over three hours on average, and six hosts and 61
16:38 shows, which is, you know, over 15 16 shows a week. So, multiple times were on multiple times every day. And some days of the week we're on three times. Wow. Are these shows like interactive?
16:51 Because I didn't expect you to say that your shows are two or three hours long. In my mind, I'm thinking they're like, you know, half hour hits and you got to be there. But I guess is it interactive where the user has like a, you know,
17:02 like a DM like kind of like in in or um I guess or reels or whatever where you can send a comment in and the host can read it or like they say, "Hey, how does that thing work or is this a problem?" And the host can address it immediately and be like, "Nope, not a problem. Let me show you why." Yeah, it's very community-based. So,
17:19 there's live chat. um you're interacting with your listeners, watchers, you there's all kinds of you know best practices to do such but like it announces to you when like Brian if you just entered the battle box whatnot you
17:31 know in the chat it would say that you entered. So if the host you know caught that he might say hey welcome Brian. So it gives major community vibes um into the mix. So it's definitely more than just like honestly you're not really even hard selling. You're selling stuff, but you're just hanging out and going
17:51 through your product and putting it up and selling it. It's definitely half entertainment, not just traditional selling. So, how do you play the algorithm? You know, is it a matter of, you know, as a seller, you pop on there, you explain
18:03 exactly who you are, what you sell, what you do, and then the algorithm, if I'm a consumer, I hop on there, I probably fill out a survey of what are my interests, what am I looking for, and whatnot. And if I list, you know, sports, hobbies, da da da, and then I say, you know, outdoor survival gear,
18:19 etc., now I see a much better chance of my algorithm populating it with the things that I told it I like. And then I'm sure there's behavioral based algorithm in there as well. But for you as a seller, are you purely relying on the algorithm and people submitting their interests or is there like a paid part of this where you can pay for
18:38 placement? What does that look like? Yeah, so all of the above. when you onboard as a buyer, as a consumer on it, it's going to ask you some questions to kind of set the groundwork of what your feed's going to look like. And then 100%
BattlBox's Live Selling Strategy
18:52 behavior-wise, you know, I went down a rabbit hole during Halloween, not that I was buying, but I was just watching these people sell Halloween candy and just like Tik Tok, they're putting them in these boxes and they're dollar starting and I was like, "Okay, they're going for 30, 40 bucks, but that looks
19:09 like $100 worth of candy." Like I went down this rabbit hole, but just like if I went down that rabbit hole with content on TikTok or YouTube, my algorithm changed. All of a sudden, I'm seeing more Halloween candy. And I had
19:22 to like purposely, just like you would on another social platform, I had to like get out of that um that weird rabbit hole of content that I had somehow gone down. Yeah. So, it's both the onboarding, you know, likes, interests, then behavior. Now, as far as the audience goes, because
19:40 they're doing such a good job, you know, bringing new users on and active users, you have a constant flow of new users coming into your channel when you're live. But like any good platform,
19:53 how do you make more money? Via via ads. Now, I will say they have a unique approach. So, there's two ways that they monetize ads on the platform. One is going to be traditional. you're paying for it to show in the promoted section
20:09 in the feeds. You know, you set an hourly that you're willing to spend while you're on and you know, that equates to so many impressions. The other side, and it goes back to one of a few ways they really highlight this
20:21 community aspect of the platform, is there's something called a community boost. So, you and I are in this thing watching it. We're enjoying it. We're being entertained. We're, you know, we like the host. We can community boost it. And when I do that, let's say I do a $5 community boost, um, you do a $5
20:41 community boost, there's this little meter on there and when it hits 20 or 25 or 30 based on the channel it's been hit and then all that money is then injected into an ad and for the next 15 minutes,
20:55 just like a traditional ad, but bringing other people in via the sponsor the same way. So, it's kind of cool. and it'll tell you on there that these people are coming in from the community boost and everybody sees that including the
21:07 audience that paid for the boost. Um, so it's super super cool because it allows kind of your audience to play a part in your success which is just very unusual and and and it's a pretty cool thing to witness because as a host, you know, might be on there. Joey is was our host
21:25 last night and he got a community boost, but he's like, you know, thanks Fred. That's not who did it, but like Fred gave him the final boost. It was like, "Thanks, Fred." Wrote his name on the board and then Fred felt good. Fred
21:36 helped get more people there. So, it's this like cycle and it's just one of a bunch of cool ways they do community. So, there's a thing called a raid. So, at the end of your show, so you know, I've sold for the past three hours. I'm
21:50 done. you can just end the show and you know everyone that I guess was in your channel would be gone and you know they'd either be done for the night or they'd go somewhere else but you can do something and we do this 100% of the
22:02 time is we raid and instead of ending the show at the end let's say there's 100 people in there I click the raid button and I pick another live channel going on at the moment and I hit raid and it takes myself and my hundred
22:16 people that were watching me and injects them all immediately into the other channel, which is crazy. So, you know, you and I are having this channel talking about, you know, selling baseball hats and all.
Show Timing and Frequency
22:30 of a sudden we have 50 people in there and all of a sudden we have 150 and Battlbox has just brought 100 people in there and you know, I've tripled my audience now, so it's even more opportunity. At a quick glance, you're
22:42 like, well, that doesn't serve Battlbox. Battlbox just took all these buyers and gave them to somebody else. BattlBox was done and it's that community vibe and then you know Battlbox raided our baseball hat show.
22:54 So we got to return the favor next time, right? Next time we're ending and Battle Box on we're going to raid them. And again, just one of all these little ways that they've really they've really honed in on this community vibe
23:06 and I think that's why they're successful. I feel like the terminology throws it off because a raid makes it think like you're coming and taking, but this is like a give. This is hey, we're ending our show. We're gonna we're gonna hit the raid button and we're going to go
23:17 jump in on I guess it's a mystery or I don't know if you pick one but you pick the the the you pick you pick who you're raing. Okay. So then it's an attab boy for them and then the you know the law of reciprocity that company's like oh wow
23:28 that was super cool. It came from Battlbox maybe when we're done with our next show we're going to go raid for Battlbox and that's genius. And then they're you know in the chat they're like hey thanks Battlbox for the raid. and they'll put in the chat
23:39 and pin it, you know, everybody follow Battlbox. Yeah. Because on the platform, you have followers just like any other platform, right? Um they were trying to grow for more reach. So yeah. Wow. It's super interesting. We have, you
23:50 know, maybe half a dozen other sellers on there that we raid regularly, they raid us regularly. We have this understanding that if you rate us, we owe you one back and vice versa.
24:00 So, it's pretty cool. I could see how even outside of whatnot that could lead to more partnerships or you know affiliations or you know products that are maybe complimentary to yours. You find a company through whatnot. You do
24:13 some raids and then maybe the owners start talking and you're like oh hey now we're going to do like an email collaboration or whatever it is and we've done it and you've done it and we've done it right now one of the five sellers in the outdoor space. We're
24:25 going to manufacture a custom knife for him and put it in the actual Battlbox membership. Blade City, which is top three largest in the outdoor space. We're going down there this month and we're going to do a collab show where
24:37 we're both selling nice in person together. We did a Blade City custom edition battle box before that they sold to their people. So, there's all kinds of collaboration to your point. It's exactly that. You're like
24:49 you're meeting other other businesses. Yeah. The opportunities abound here. So I want to ask you about some numbers here you even just approximations but I'm curious first of all on an average stream how many people are there present on average I guess maybe if you have an estimation of how many people come and
25:07 go throughout the entire duration and then like how many products are you selling? What can you reasonably expect to sell in a two or three hour show? How does that all function for you? Sure. So the numbers have changed a
25:18 little bit as we've scaled this up further. Um, but I would say on average, you know, an average show of ours, we probably have between 60 and 70 people at all times watching. Now, the crazy part of that is you get the metrics on,
25:36 you know, how long the average watch is before they flip their thumb to the next one. And it's pretty low. It's a constant thing. We're working on retention. We call it retention. But um quick math, you know, you quickly
25:48 realize in a three-hour show, you probably had a total of 700 800 people that watched at some point. Now, how long they stayed is not all equal, but yeah, it's a constant flow of new people. So, typically we're, you know, you don't have to. I think it's
26:05 beneficial to offer as many different products as possible to give the variety. We're typically moving through 60 different SKUs, 60 different products in the course of three hours. Typically 20 25 different products an hour. We'll
Community Features and Engagement
26:18 highlight and go through and possibly sell per show on average with the average being, you know, three-hour shows. Now, we typically get 24 to 26 new buyers every show. Buyers that had
26:30 never purchased from us before that we hope to, you know, eventually get into the bigger Battlbox ecosystem. revenue per hour on for the past couple months it's in the 1300 to 1400 range.
26:43 Now it was higher before we scaled. So we've been cognizant we watched it but we're putting in so much more hours it's natural and the end result is still higher. Wow. Okay. So do you guys view this more as like almost a loss leader or
26:59 especially when you mentioned that it led to 23 to 26 new buyers. Do you guys see a massive bump or since you've started last April, have you guys seen bumps elsewhere in terms of traffic to the website? You know, sales in general, I know they're rising, so there's got to be something there, but also
27:15 subscriptions. So, do you guys view this as more of a maybe not a Trojan horse, but kind of the train engine that's jumping into the new market so that people find you? And you're not necessarily more concerned about this of
27:26 being a revenue driver, but more so of a finding new people and bringing them into your world so that over time they become your buyer or they do subscribe to your flagship stuff. You know, not very often will I ever
27:39 paint us in the picture of saying we're greedy because we're typically not. But to your question, I'm going to give you the greedy answer. We want all of the above. Nice. Um, so we wanted to be top of funnel to introduce them to the brand
27:52 for future sales direct, but we're 100% running this and focused on profitability. And we're also focused on seeing how much revenue and how much we can sell, too. So, it's everything. It's a self-sufficient channel with
28:05 certainty. We're just a a little bit fortunate that we're a much larger brand than just that channel. So, there's a lot of brands and sellers on there that that's all they do. they are a whatnot seller and that's okay and that's great
28:18 and that's do noble and works for a lot. We're just fortunate that you know this is just a small part of our business and it can serve as top of funnel for all the other stuff we offer. Um
28:30 but with certainty the end result is you know I'm not sure how familiar the audience listening is with like TikTok
28:37 shop but TikTok shop selling products it's pretty hard from a profitability standpoint. You've got to discount the product. You've got to wave shipping. You've got to pay TikTok their platform fee. You've got to pay a creator their affiliate commission. And now, as of a
28:55 couple weeks ago, you really honestly have to advertise on there, too, to get the reach needed. So, at the end of the day, you know, we went through an example, a product we had a 76% margin on. So, pretty good. Most brands don't
29:07 have that type of margin on a product, on a physical product. So great margin on it. But on the 76 um percent margin product after doing all those things after discounting after waving shipping after paying the platform fee after paying the creator and after advertising we had to get at least a 3x return on ad spend
29:31 to break even. That's just not cool. We had to have a 7x return on ad spend to hit an acceptable margin in that margin of 20%. And that was on TikTok. Yeah. Who's gonna get sevenx? Yeah. No. I mean, some people do. It's possible,
29:47 but like sustainable, that's not an easy task, right? And you know, most products, you know, better than I do. That's not really that sustainable of a thing. There's going to be situations and the right brand and the right product where you can, but
Profitability and Business Model
30:00 that's not a 7x return investment is not something you could ever just expect or take for granted or maintain. Like you might hit it here and there, but that's going to be really hard to maintain, right? And that's literally what we have
30:13 to maintain on TikTok shop if we're going to advertise on there and make it a legitimate channel. So that's just not the case over here at all. we're able to run um you know less than 55% cogs on
30:26 this channel and you know the platform fees are reasonable. There's not other people with their hands out. So it's a much more profitable channel and then that's what's exciting is that it's profitable and it can serve as top of
30:39 funnel. Well, so tell me a little bit more about the fees for this. How does it work? You said obviously it's profitable and reasonable from the seller side. What do those fees look like? And what other things like if someone's if they've got
30:50 their ecom business right now and they're getting all jazzed up about possibly opening a whatnot shop, what are they looking at when it comes to fees and investments needed to get started on whatnot? Sure. So whatnot takes 8%
31:03 as their platform fee. You know, that's relatively compared, you know, I think eBay on average takes 14%. Amazon is at minimum 15% possibly 30 if you're you know having them fulfill plus you know a
31:17 couple of points for returns and storage and all that good stuff and then there's a 3% 30 cent credit card transaction which you know they're probably making a little bit of money there too but all in call it 11 11 points you're losing
31:31 with what Okay. Yeah. And that's pretty much it. Yeah. Well, for the exposure you get, the added revenue, as long as that fits within your margin, that's pretty good. Yeah. No, absolutely. As long as it fits
31:43 in your margin, it's definitely a it's better than a lot of options. Absolutely. So, what do you see right now with this market with sellers? I know you said like live selling has been around for a bit, but it's just not super popular. Are we on the cusp of
31:56 live selling blowing up? Has it already blown up? And I'm just a dinosaur and haven't noticed, you know, stuck at home with my three kids. I love being at home with my with my four kids actually, but I don't have a ton of time to shop around or to check these things out. So,
32:08 where are we with it? Are we in the golden age? What does it look like right now? Yeah, I mean, I think we're still in the Wild Wild West, but I mean there's gold. Gold has been confirmed. So, we're super super early, arguably in the infancy. If it's something you can execute and get in now as a brand, I would strongly urge
32:28 you to do so because it's early enough that you can get established and really this wild wild west and gold analogy can really, you know, put a stake in your land and you can get a nice little plot right now um before everyone else comes in. I don't think we'll ever be like China um where it's I mean the numbers out of China for live selling is just
32:47 obnoxious. Like it is a gigantic part of their economy. I don't know if we'll ever get there, but we're definitely getting to a point now where in the next 12 18 months, what certainly is going to
33:00 be pretty just standardly acceptable, like, oh, I bought that through life selling, live shopping. So, before I let you go, do you have a couple quick tips for someone who's like, I'm going to hop into this, this could be awesome. Do you have two or three dos and don'ts of getting into selling on whatnot that you can share
33:17 with us? Sure. you know, obviously, you know, a year in it's changed a little bit, but going back to April, it's fairly easy. You just grab your phone and you can open the app and turn on and sell and you can build the product. So, you don't it it's doesn't have a lot of needed infrastructure to get started. Um, and
33:38 it's one of those things, and you know, I don't think this is unique to my advice for this channel. I think it's my advice for a lot of things, is just go. Just go. Just do it. Don't overthink it. understand you're going to make
33:49 mistakes, but you know, take learnings from them and get better and stronger. And I would say just go. I would say honestly some advice would be look at the platform and just watch for a little bit. See how some of these shows are
Getting Started with Live Selling
34:01 ran, get ideas, understand the different types and then go and then understand it's um I think having the entertainment angle, you know, you do want to be entertaining. You don't want to just be someone just trying to sell sell sell a product, right? Um, yeah, it's pretty simple advice, but
34:22 just go ahead and do it. Just try it. You can host it yourself. You don't even I imagine you don't have to be a crazy on camera wiz to get going. Did you hire your hosts or were they part of the business already and had the requisite
34:33 skills, I guess. What did that look like? I didn't even ask you that yet. Yeah. So, off the jump, um, we used Brandon, who was already existing full-time creator with us as the host. So we have six hosts right now. Three of
34:46 which are full-time employees that are also touching other aspects of the business. So two of them are full-time creators and our head of sales actually gets on whatnot in sales too. And then
34:57 when you look at the other three, they're actually creators, influencers that we work with on other channels that we have the relationship with and said, "Hey, you know, do you want to make a few extra bucks, you know, going live a
35:09 few hours a week selling battle box stuff?" And that relationship has worked out as well, which just goes to show you can take all kinds of angles and none of them operate out of our warehouse and
35:22 fulfillment center. They're all remote. Um, which you know is is a benefit that you can do everything I described remotely. So, it's nothing unique there. I do um if you I don't know if the Can
35:37 you link to like my blog or anything? Yeah, absolutely. On this. So on online queso my blog which it'll be in the show notes I've been documenting all this kind of I think there's seven or eight parts now
35:49 of starting back in April of like the learnings we've done and I actually have a like a 15page PDF just kind of like a new guide to live selling where I kind of try to vomit as much knowledge as
36:04 possible. I'm not getting anything out of it just to try to help others. Oh awesome. Yeah, that'd be a huge resource for those listening today. Yeah, that's online queso.com. Okay, guys, you heard it here first.
36:15 Online queso.com. Go get your crash course in live selling. John, this was a crash course in and of itself in just the 40ome minutes we've had together here, but you're a busy dude. I got to let you get going. Man, thank you so much for this. This was awesome. I'm
36:28 super jazzed about this just cuz I personally didn't know much about this at all and now this is all new for me and I thought it was really cool to hear this. So, thank you, sir. I appreciate it. I want to make sure everybody out there listening, as we just said, onlinequeso.com, check that out. But if they want to check out Battlbox, if they want to contact you directly, what are
36:44 all the best ways to get more John Roman in their life? Yeah. No, Brian, thanks again for having me again. This is just as much, this might have been funner than the first one. Um, yeah, battlebox.com b-tb.
36:56 Just type battlbox into Google or your usual browser and it'll pop up even if you spell it wrong. LinkedIn is probably the best place to communicate with me. I'm most active on there and then yeah, online queso for the blog.
37:09 Awesome. Well, John, this was an absolute pleasure again having you on the show here. So, thank you so much and we wish you all nothing but the best this year and beyond. Thanks. You too.