TikTok Shop is Changing Everything for eCommerce Demand Generation | Jordan West

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Matt Edmundson: Welcome to the eCommerce Podcast. My name is Matt Edmundson, and we are chatting today about all things eCommerce, as you would probably expect, but specifically. We are talking to, uh, a, an absolute legend, uh, Jordan West about TikTok shop. We're gonna get into all of that and if you're new to the show very well and welcome to you, make sure you like and subscribe and do all of that sort of good stuff 'cause it's great to see you here. Um, and of course to stay right off the bat, you, if you haven't done so already, come connect with me on LinkedIn, connect with Jordan on LinkedIn. Jordan, you are perhaps one of the busiest men on LinkedIn. It seems you, you have been killing it recently.

Jordan West: You know it's funny, I tried to hire somebody to help me. Um, and so I was like, okay, I'm gonna train you. I'm gonna give you the ideas and I'm gonna train you to write like me. And it was three months and I didn't publish a single one. And it took me so long. And I was [00:01:00] like, and I realized, I'm like, now there's some things that you can, that you can outsource.

People would argue, yeah. Yeah, go ahead. You can outsource your writing if you, if you want. I think that there's some things that really depends and so my reach actually interestingly, went down during that time as I was trying to go back and forth with him on this sort of stuff immensely. And I was like, oh yeah, that's right.

There's some things you can outsource, some things that you cannot and that you should not. Right. And for me, I think that writing is one of the things that I love to do. Um, I was gonna call it a superpower. I don't know if it's a superpower. I wouldn't say I'm like. A, a great writer. I think I just, I love communicating and I love sharing things that come up throughout the day because I have so many different conversations, whether it's with like consulting clients or at our agency

or, you know, uh, anything or with like really smart people like you where I'm like, Ooh, I need to share this.

I need to share this now. That's, that's the only reason that I prolifically post on LinkedIn.

Matt Edmundson: it's that, but it's, I, I mean, [00:02:00] I, I love it and I, I, you know, it's great to follow it and, and, and connect with it. And I think it's, um, the, the way you write, I'm, I'm always, I'm always drawn by how well you'd, I dunno if you do it intentionally, but the whole sales side of things. Like, Do you know what I mean?

It's, you, you do the whole fear of missing out thing really. Well, you do the whole, I'm drawn in by the information and if I don't get involved in this or if I don't stay connected with you, then I'm like, I'm gonna be the biggest loser on the planet kind of thing. And, and it's like,

Jordan West: I, don't mean to do that, Matt.

Matt Edmundson: no, I don't. And I, but I, I don't think it's intentional, but I think you do.

It just comes across super well, you know, and I can, so I can see why your reach is growing. 'cause I think that draws people in the way you do it.

Jordan West: Hmm. Well that's super nice. It's, it's also interesting, and I know, you know, this is the, the e-comm podcast, the eCommerce Podcast. Okay. So don't worry, we're gonna talk about eCommerce here, but, but I think that there's something very interesting about you and me being non-Americans, right? [00:03:00] And that, that we can.

Like, I've often thought, why are Canadians specifically, and I think that, I think that British are similar to this, really good marketers to Americans. Like I, I find I can actually talk to Americans like we have, well basically all American clients at Social Commerce Club. All of my consulting that I do, it's all American brands

and for some reason I think it's this outside the Jar approach, right.

That you can see because I will see I've, I've had. American copywriters try and work for Canadian brands before, and I'm like, no, no, we don't. We don't go for that. We don't like go for those. No, we don't go for those little tricks. Right. Versus like, you know, you and I grew up watching faulty towers. Right?

Like we

Matt Edmundson: yes. That's so true. Yeah. Yeah,

Jordan West: Right. And like, like think about like the greatest comedies of all time. Canadian and British. Right. And the comedians of our day. Right? Like, like look at Schitt's Creek, right? For so long, right? This was like a Canadian show on [00:04:00] CBC, our little funny channel that we have, right? And like we all watch Schitt's Creek 'cause we're like, oh, this is hilarious.

And then the rest of the world sees it and it's like, oh, this is brilliant. I don't exactly know what it is. This is something I actually wanna do a documentary on you. You asked, oh, what are you up to these days? That's another thing. I wanna raise money for a documentary. On why there's so many outsized, there should be 10 x the amount of funny Americans as there are Canadians, but there's not, the amount of famous Canadians that are comedians is just crazy.

Um, and I think it's very similar for, for the British. So anyway, big rant to say I'm pumped to talk about e-commerce today.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, that's absolutely. And comedy. We should just do the comedy podcast. Yeah. Do you know a chap called Peter Murphy? Lewis?

Jordan West: Oh man, sounds so familiar. And I, I'm, I'm, I'm blanking.

Matt Edmundson: Not to put you on the spot, but,

um, Peter is brilliant at the whole documentary type stuff and he, um, he, he helps, [00:05:00] he, he makes documentaries specifically about nursing homes and

puts 'em on LinkedIn and, um, puts a story on LinkedIn and he, he just, Peter just fascinates me with the way that he thinks and, and stuff.

So he, you don't want him to do a documentary connect with Peter because he would be an interesting chap to talk

Jordan West: Well, you heard it here first, folks.

Matt Edmundson: yeah, yeah.

Jordan West: when you see this happening and coming together, it's gonna be like, oh.

Matt Edmundson: It just happened here. So let's talk about e-commerce Jordan, 'cause that's what we do first and foremost. Um, social Commerce club. Let's talk about that. That's what you do. You've got your agency. Let's give people a little bit background about you. 'cause this is the second time you've been on the show from memory or the

third.

Jordan West: It. is. And it was a long time ago, Matt, like you and I met a long and we met through your podcast.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. We did.

Jordan West: Um. So there was a time actually where I was growing a previous agency. It was called Mindful Marketing. And I, I was growing that agency and here were the two ways that I grew it. I went on [00:06:00] podcasts and I had people on my podcasts and I would have like multiple people and I would just have brands come on, right?

And that's how I grew. And then I would go, because I owned brands and I would go on other people's podcasts. And so I'm sure I just reached out to you. I think I went on something like a hundred podcasts in one year and it was crazy. The amount. Of conversations that I had and the amount of just like, just incredible, um, insight that I was able to gather from, from both sides.

And so that's really where we met. And, and you know, from there, there was a couple iterations of the agency. I'm gonna be honest with you guys. I hate running an agency. I hate having

Matt Edmundson: and me both, bro. You and me both.

Jordan West: I like, I, you know, Friday I had to have this emergency meeting with my team because somebody on our team was stealing.

Like, I'm like, how? Like you are and, and of course it was an American, of course. You know, it's like only times I've ever been sued Americans.

We would never do that. You know?

Matt Edmundson: [00:07:00] yeah. No, we'll just have a conversation and just like normal people would. Yeah.

Jordan West: Exactly. You'd just be like, oh, hey, should we just talk about it? Like, so, so I, I don't love, so what I love is growing something and, and. Envisioning something and then handing it off to people. What I don't like is the one to 10, right. I love zero to one. So my team hates me because I'm always coming up with new things.

Right. And new, new ways to go. And so this social commerce club was an iteration of that, right. And what I saw was a new way that people shop and, and I'll tell you how I saw it. I watched my wife on her phone and I watched her scrolling. And I watched the steps that she would take while scrolling reels to then go over and straight to go buy things.

And I was like, this is really interesting. And then I saw her on TikTok and I saw the same thing happening and I was like, oh, this is that on steroids. Then I started to [00:08:00] watch other people on TikTok and the way that they were interacting, and I always thought to myself, why is TikTok so ridiculously bad at converting customers?

Right? Because we, we all know from post, sorry, not from post purchase survey, from attribution, right? It's, it's virtually a zero. Like you can get, maybe get a one return on ad spend on TikTok maybe, right? Like with, with e-comm, it's very, very difficult. When TikTok shop came around, I thought, okay, this is kind of interesting.

And at first when people told me about it, I was like, well, this is just, this is just like meta shops like big deal, right? Like one other place for people to check out. This does not change the game until I realized what they were doing. And when I realized that influencers on the platform, which I'm now going to from now on call creators, right?

We're gonna call them creators, not influencers. I think they're like salespeople on the platform when they're incentivized to get, [00:09:00] uh, they're incentivized to make a sale on the platform. I realized, oh my gosh. Affiliate marketing is finally here in e-comm, right? Because previously affiliate marketing just didn't really work in e-comm in the same sort of way, right?

Like the, the attribution was so bad that it just didn't follow in the same sort of way. And I realized, oh my gosh, this, this changes everything.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, it's um. It is interesting listening to you talk about, number one, I'm not a big fan of running agencies myself, right? So I just don't do it. Uh, just let, let other people do that. I used to be the zero to one guy. Um, but I don't do that anymore. Um, I'm much better at helping companies. Who are already well established. Do you know what I mean? And,

and I'd, so we've started doing this whole acquisition thing. Um, so we'd, there's some big announcements come in. Some companies we've, we've, uh, one company in particular we, we've sort of acquired recently and, and, and, and, and invested in, which is great. So it's, it's interesting listening to the evolution of [00:10:00] this, and I'm, I'm smiling because I just couldn't. You are watching your wife shop on TikTok. I don't even know if my wife knows what TikTok is. Right. So I think that just might be an age thing. I think you're a younger family than we are. Um, but I, I, I get what you're saying about affiliate marketing because apart from the, the outliers, you know, there's always a story of one person that did really well,

you know, and every affiliate software company tells you that story and you think, well, I'm gonna kill it.

And it's, it can be quite tricky. I'm curious. Um, then what you have, because this is going back to what you said about LinkedIn, a lot of what you post on LinkedIn is about killing it with, um, TikTok shop, um, social commerce is, you know, your social commerce club connected to that, changing it from, uh, to, to creators rather than influencers. are you seeing?

Jordan West: So, here's the crazy thing that I'm seeing, right? Number one, so we work with a lot of big brands, right? So a lot of [00:11:00] household names, uh, out there who are trying to get onto social commerce. Now, one of the main reasons that we are doing that is, is we're at Social Commerce Club. We just happen to be the adults in the room, right?

There's a lot of agencies out there that sprung up from people who understood TikTok but didn't understand business. And so that was really difficult, right? For a lot of, a lot of brands got burned by some small agencies and, uh, and not saying that, that these, some of these young guys couldn't do it, but it just wasn't the same as them coming to us.

I think that the other thing too that we saw is everyone on Amazon wanted to hop onto TikTok shop because they're like, oh, this is the next big thing. The problem was the Amazon people actually didn't do very well because Amazon is a demand capture channel. TikTok shop is a demand gen channel, right?

And so us that were in direct to consumer and started in direct to consumer. And remember, my brands that I've owned over the years are all basically in apparel and accessories.

Right. Apparel and accessories in D two C is playing on hard [00:12:00] mode. I, I never really realized until, until I, I went and played in some other industries and I was like, oh man, it'd be so nice to be able to do problem solution.

Like, I would love that apparel and accessories do not do problem solution. That is not how it works. And so what, what I, what I realized is that TikTok shop. Was this whole new demand generation channel, and it was finally the way that we could create some virality around products and test products in the market.

Now, I, I wanna talk about one, one brand specifically here, and this is a shoe brand. They came to us like about, you know, what was a little, little less than a year ago, they came to us, zero searches on the platform, right? This is a very well known shoe brand. Just so you guys know, like billion dollar brand.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah.

Jordan West: They had zero searches on the platform whatsoever. They came to us and they said, Hey, look. We know you guys have this crawl, walk, run sort of approach. We just wanna run. We're like, okay, we can do that. Here's the [00:13:00] budget. Right? And so we, you know, it was like a seven figure budget. We're like, this is what we're gonna have to do.

And so we did, and we absolutely ran, and they went from zero searches. I think we started with them in August. It ended up being, and they went from zero searches to, in a two week period in December, 800,000 searches on TikTok.

Matt Edmundson: Wow.

Jordan West: So think about that, right? They unlocked this entire new generation, right? This, these were boomer shoes, just so you guys know before, right?

And they locked this entirely new generation. And on top of that, we were just testing a bunch of different shoe styles, right? So we would, we would sample out these different shoe styles to creators and just see what they did with them, right? Basically eliminating, this is the crazy thing, Matt, right?

Completely eliminating the need for them to do any research because you, you seed the product out there and then see what people do with it. And so there, there was one shoe in particular that they, that they thought was [00:14:00] just a dog. And they're like, yeah, sure. Go ahead and sample it out. What ended up selling?

It ended up completely selling out because it went viral on TikTok shop. Lo and behold, they ended up doing a collab with Sydnee Sweeney after on that shoe. And Sydnee Sweeney is, you know, having her her day. Right.

And it, it was just incredible. So like, it went from like nothing. To Sydney Sweeney level, which I think would kind of be at the peak of, of pop culture right now, right?

That's how insane TikTok shop is and how, how much power there is in TikTok shop. Now, the reason why I think that shop in particular is very interesting is because people, the, the kinds of posts that people make are about the product, right? There's no like. This is not like general brand influencer marketing.

I have always hated working with influencers. I'm gonna be honest with you. Like the majority of influencers I just hate working with because it's very like, you know, mean and a bikini, like having this thing here, right? Like, oh, here's the product, right? But really what you're selling is your [00:15:00] bikini, you know, like, or your body.

And that to me just isn't, isn't great marketing versus TikTok shop. I will tell you. These people are trying to sell the product, right? I call it the MLM, the multi-level marketing of our generation, right? Because these people, all that they are incentivized to do is sell the product. And so what they have to do is get really, really creative and start to think like, okay, what is gonna work?

And sometimes, sometimes it has to be non-salesy and sometimes they just kind of slip it in, or sometimes they tell a long story meandering and then be like, Hey, by the way, if you like this, click the link in my, in my. Here on this TikTok. Um, that's why it's so cool that like, that's why I'm obsessed with it.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. And it's, it's, it is crazy, isn't it? That this is what's happening. But I'm curious, Jordan, I, I mean, I love hearing your stories and I, I, I love the stories that you tell on TikTok. Um, how do I, how do I think about TikTok, [00:16:00] Ben, if I'm not a billion dollar shoe brand? That knows Sydney and has got seven figures to spend.

Um, is this something that is purely reserved for the billion dollar brands or is this something actually with very little money you can actually do some really interesting things?

Jordan West: So it's both, right? So the reason I bring up big brands is because big brands are actually the ones that are scared to go on the platform, right? They're really scared that they're going to get that. There's.

Yeah, that, that there's gonna be content out there, right? The big brands are really scared that there's gonna be content out there that they don't approve of, and they wanna approve everything.

The problem is they can't, right? Like if there's any marketing execs listening to this, it's like. In the world of social commerce, you cannot approve everything, right? You need to be okay with people going out there and holding your product and saying some things about it, right? It's just, it's just the way, it's Matt.

Let's talk about smaller brands, because I think that's where things get really, really interesting. So let's talk about what it was like before to seed product. [00:17:00] Okay, so this is what seeding looked like before. I'm going to randomly reach out to a bunch of influencers, right, using whatever tools are out there.

Um, you know, Shopify collabs is one. Uh, social snowball is another one. Um, ral. Um, these are good, these are great tools that are out there, right? Uh, the problem is I'm going to randomly reach out to these people.

Matt Edmundson: Mm-hmm.

Jordan West: Right that I don't have any sort of connection with and are not incentivized whatsoever to post for me and say, Hey, can I send you a gift?

Matt Edmundson: Mm-hmm.

Jordan West: And then you send them a gift and you're like one of a hundred people that are sending them a gift. They have no reason to post for you. Right. Nor do they even have like, if anything, here's what you're gonna get. You're gonna get like, oh my gosh, thanks so much. Blank blank, whatever your, your brand is, thanks so much for sending this over to me.

Um, and it's gonna be in their Instagram story and like 50 people are gonna see it,

right? That's about as much as you're going to get from, from an [00:18:00] influencer. And then what you can do after that is start following up and trying to nurture them and, and all of that, right? So that's, that's what seeding was like before and, and still is, right?

Like there's still a lot of

Matt Edmundson: Still can be that way. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Jordan West: A absolutely. And I'm not saying that that's terrible. I think that there's some really, there's some ways that work a lot better, right? Uh, I'm, I am all about building relationships, like actual relationships with people in that and white listing and all of that kind of stuff.

But that's this side. Now let's talk about what that looks like on TikTok shop. Well, on TikTok shop each. Uh, each creator has to, they're incentivized to post for you, not just because they're making money, but because if they don't post for you, it goes against their score. Right. As a creator. Right. And so when we go to reach out to creators, we're only reaching out to creators who have an 80% plus fulfillment rate.

So that means eight out of 10 packages that they get, they make content for. We're always aiming for [00:19:00] every, every sample that we send out to get five pieces of content out of them as well.

Matt Edmundson: Right?

Jordan West: So think about that, right? These are real. Life videos, TikTok videos that are going out there that have the chance of virality, right.

That are going out that we know that eight out of 10 of them for sure we're going to get right. Whereas like usually it's nine outta 10, right? That we're, that we're actually getting that many videos. But we could, for those 10 samples, potentially get between 40 and 50 videos. That's the wild thing, right?

We're getting that many, that many potential pieces of content that is like, that is life altering for a brand. When they can get that many pieces of content, then we use other tools out there, right? So there's some great social listening tools. I love Funnel, um, for this. So funnel then comes and takes all of that content.

It does the social listening and it finds, and it's one of the only ones that can actually capture TikTok shop content for some reason. Don't ask me why. I have no idea. I'm not a technical guy, nor [00:20:00] do I want to be. Um, every time I think about like I'm gonna start a software company and I'm like, no I'm not.

No, no, no, I'm not.

Matt Edmundson: done that. You don't want to do that? Yeah, yeah. Just move on.

Jordan West: Yeah. Um.

Matt Edmundson: For,

Jordan West: But, uh, uh, all of that aside, um, what FU does is it actually listens for that content and then you can actually download that content now. Well, what we do at Social Commerce Club is very, very sneaky. When somebody becomes a, an influencer in Social Commerce club, or sorry, a creator, I dunno why I said the I word

Matt Edmundson: yeah,

Jordan West: Um, when they.

Matt Edmundson: to go.

Jordan West: When they become, uh, a creator, uh, WIS with Social Commerce Club, we actually ask them if we have permission to use any of their content across other channels. The majority of them say Yes, so we can then download that piece of content and use it wherever we want, as long as they've given us permission to do that.

So that's why we win at Social Commerce Club because we can then take that content and we try to work with all the brands that we work with. And the way that we've set our pricing up at Social Commerce Club [00:21:00] is that we, we. We incentivize them to work with us on all channels, right? Not just TikTok shop, because we really believe that TikTok shop is a, is an integrated platform with all of it.

It's an incredible awareness channel, the best awareness channel that you can possibly have right now for a small brand.

Right? So that's what I'm obsessed with right now when it comes to social commerce.

Matt Edmundson: It is really interesting, isn't it? And I. There is something about TikTok. I mean it being constantly in the press because of our American friends and, and you know, the Chinese connection and all that sort of thing. Um, there is something about TikTok, wait, you don't have to have any real major followers and you can post a video and 2000 people will see it. Whereas if I post a reel on my personal Instagram account. A hundred people might, 200 people do. I mean, it seems

that tiktoks has, at this moment in time, they have [00:22:00] totally captured, um, help. I, I don't, I dunno how they do it and how and why Instagram don't, Do you know what I mean? I don't understand why you don't get the same sort of impact on Instagram that you get on TikTok.

There's something about that algorithm, there's something about that audience who is, who are watching those videos.

Jordan West: Well, it's the point. It's the point of the platform, right? Like, like Instagram is still a follower driven. Algorithm. Right? And so it still is using your followers as part of that algorithm. Now you can get virality on Instagram, right? Like it used to be where you, you would never even be able to show up in somebody else's feed.

Somebody had to follow you to be able to see you. Um, whereas now things are, it's more of like a half and half versus. TikTok is a fully content driven algorithm. Let, let me tell you just like a quick story here. One of our creators, uh, at Social Commerce Club, she has less than 10,000 followers and she generated $250,000 for a brand last month.

Less than 10,000 followers. Like [00:23:00] that is wild. She's probably making 15 to 20% commission on that. Just do the math. It's wild what these creators are making comparatively, right? And people are like, well do their, do their followers wanna see sales content all the time? It's like, doesn't matter. She doesn't care, she doesn't have followers.

She's just selling stuff online and doing a really, really good job of it.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting. So in effect, there's two i there's two route we could go down almost, isn't it? I could, I can hear my teenage daughter saying, Matt, uh, dad, dad, ask Jordan how I become a creator, right? And there's the, there's all the other people listening to the show going, well, this is great.

So how do I, how do I get started with this? If I, I mean, I know people have been talking about it, it's probably the question I get asked. More than any other question about marketing at the moment is how do I do TikTok shop? And to be honest with you, Jordan, I just go, listen, this is, this is a guy he needs to talk to.

Here's Jordan's number. Just, you know, just [00:24:00] uh, follow him on LinkedIn and, and connect and see what goes on. I was talking to a pharmaceutical company. Uh, two weekends ago, they're like, I think we're gonna try and do TikTok shop. I'm like, have you got a budget? And they're like, yeah. I'm like, go give Jordan a ring because I don't think you know what you're doing. Just listening to them talk. I mean, bless them. But it's, it's one of those where it's in everybody's minds. But I think if, I still think a lot of people are confused by it, if that makes sense. Like where, where do people actually start with TikTok shop?

Jordan West: It's a, it's a new muscle, right? It's a new muscle that they're exercising. It is nothing like. Facebook ads, right? So first of all, uh, but before I tell you sort of like where to start, what I wanna tell you is the massive amount of mistakes. That we have made right when it comes to TikTok shop, and this is why I think that we succeed when it comes to this, right?

And, and actually understanding what this channel is exactly. So I've been [00:25:00] using this analogy a lot lately, uh, of a Roomba, um, in business. And the reason why is because we are working with iRobot, uh, and with Roomba, uh, which is really fun. And so when they came to us, I was like, oh, yeah. And I, I was thinking about this analogy, so I got a Roomba, um, because I was like.

I dunno. I just wanted one. After they, they, we had a meeting with them and I was watching the Roomba in the, uh, the way that it maps, uh, uh, a, a place, right? The way that it maps a house and all of it does is it just like keeps hitting into things,

right? It's like, oh, not there. Oh, not there. Oh, not there.

Not there. Oh, perfect. We're gonna go here. In business, the best founders are Roombas. Right.

They are the ones that are, that are like, oh, that didn't work. That didn't work, that didn't work. That didn't work. You cannot have ego if you are a Roomba,

you can't, you have to like get rid of your ego. And so if you're gonna onto to TikTok shop, you have to get rid of your ego because 99% of the things that you do are not going to work.

Even if you work with some [00:26:00] of the biggest creators that are out there that are producing all this money, it might not work. Right? And then most people give up and so. What it is, is it's the reps that you're putting in. And so let, let me, let me start and I'm gonna give you like a really simple framework to use here.

So number one, right? You need to get samples out there into the hands of creators, right? And I'm

Matt Edmundson: you charging creators for the samples or are you sending them free?

Jordan West: no, you are sending them free at first. You have zero leverage at first. I don't care if you're Nike, you have zero leverage.

Like the creators until you have GMV on your store. So until you have sales on your store and specifically on the SKUs that you're sending out, creators don't care because their only thing that they want, they don't wanna look cool.

They're not influencers. They just wanna make money on your product. They wanna know, is this a product that I can sell a ton of if I can, awesome. Right? Like the amount of supplement brands that go on there that people are like, well, I can't sell the supplement. Right. If they see [00:27:00] that other people have Right, have purchased the supplement, then they're more likely to take that sample and be like, okay, well I'm gonna make at least one video out of this.

Right. Again, our goal is five at SEC, so like we're trying to get as much out there as as much content out there as we can. So my recommendation is to sample 200 samples in the first

Matt Edmundson: Mm-hmm.

Jordan West: So the reason being it is the 80 20. Of the 80 20. And so let me explain exactly how the math works, right? So we're gonna send out.

200 samples. Actually, let's go with a hundred just so I can do the 80 20 really simply here. So, so we're gonna send a hundred samples, right? So for every a hundred samples, 20 of them, 80 of the videos are going to be garbage.

Matt Edmundson: Yep.

Jordan West: 80 of those people, you're just like, they're not gonna talk to again. 20 of them are gonna do something right?

They're gonna drive a meaningful amount of traffic, they're gonna drive a meaningful amount of something. I'm not saying revenue yet. Out of those 20, we're gonna take the 80 20 of [00:28:00] those. Now that's down to four, right? If I, if I did my math

Matt Edmundson: you did. Yeah, we're good.

Jordan West: and four of those are going to potentially go viral and produce a ton of sales.

Of those four, you're probably gonna have one that is going to be the absolute winner.

Matt Edmundson: Okay.

Jordan West: but maybe not. And so maybe you have to actually go to the next a hundred, right? This is why I recommend 200 a month for the first while. And so that's a lot of samples out there, right? And the way that I mitigate against the idea of like, oh, man, that's a ton of samples, is you're going to get a ton of content.

And so making sure that you ask for rights to that content right away is really, really important so that you can use it across channels. Um, I like to think of TikTok. As a Rubicon, right? So a Rubicon is a door that you can go through one way, but you can't go back through,

right? And so tiktoks content can go anywhere.

It can go to Snapchat, it can go to YouTube shorts, it can go to Instagram, right? It can go to Pinterest, but their content [00:29:00] can't go onto TikTok. If you've ever tried launching Instagram content on TikTok, you'll realize it doesn't work.

Right. Whereas tiktoks content can kind of go anywhere, which is why, again, I'm obsessed with TikTok content.

I would say the only content that I'm, that I'm as equally obsessed with right now is Creator ad reads on YouTube. Right? These are like the opposite end of it, right? So this is like the the high end social commerce, right? Where it's like, Hey, we want to pay for Mr. Beast, right? To, to do an ad read an in platform ad read versus.

These smaller creators over here, and this is why I love the entire spectrum of all of it. Um, it's just very interesting to me. So, uh, yeah. So that's where you get started, right? Um. The, the problem is, at first your listing is probably not gonna convert

because you need to understand the pricing. You need to understand where exactly you are, where are your competitors?

How are you going to differentiate? What's your image stack [00:30:00] look like right? At first, just use your Amazon image stack, but that's probably not gonna cut it at the end of the day, right? Um, there's a lot that goes into it, Matt.

Matt Edmundson: No, it sounds like a, a, a real big site. Do you use software to help you or are you doing this all in a Google sheet?

Jordan West: Yeah, so we use, we use multiple different software. So I'll, I'll shout out a few of them. So Cdata is a really good one. Cdata or Fast Moss? I don't have an allegiance to either one of those. Um, CDATA is, uh, going to help you find all of your competitors, right? And understand sort of like what people are doing out in the space.

Um. Reacher, uh, is my bot of choice. Um, so they're a CRM, an AI powered CRM for TikTok shop. Uh, so there is a lot of manual work. Um, we use Reacher on every single account. Reacher has some really cool AI integrations as well. I just happen to be an advisor of them as well, um, and love them. So everything that I tell them to build, they build.

Matt Edmundson: Mm-hmm.

Jordan West: And, uh, and really, really enjoy what they're doing over there. Um, so those [00:31:00] are definitely like the two big ones that, that we are using. And then I have to say a ton of what we're doing is we, we don't use sheets, but we use Airtable. Um, the reason why we love Airtable, uh, specifically is that Airtable, you can build so much AI off of Airtable.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, I can.

Jordan West: It like if you guys are not like, if there's agency people in here, just stop everything you're doing and go build on Airtable because this is the future. Like everything plugs into Airtable as well. Like it's this beautiful central hub of all of your info and um, yeah, def definitely recommend Airtable.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, I, I've been playing around. This is not related to anything. Jordan, I, you may or may not found this interesting at all. Uh, I've been playing around with Airtable and N eight N Have you come across,

is it N eight? Is it eight N eight? No. N

eight 10, isn't it? Dot io? Yeah. Yeah. That thing is insane.

Jordan West: Yes, yes. So there's a lot like that out there too. Like there's a ton of these different apps that are, that are helping build agents, right? Like these agentic [00:32:00] apps.

Um. But you have to have a source of truth somewhere, right? You have to have a source of all of your data somewhere. That's why Airtable is so good, because you're like, where?

Exactly. Like, like you can get it to build all this stuff, but unless you've got the data, it's kind of hard.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. Yeah. Super true. Super true. No, I very much a fan. Very much a fan. And even for a Luddite like me, I can get my head around it, which is quite helpful.

Jordan West: I am becoming more of a Luddite these days. Matt, like I use this app called Opal on my phone that blocks basically every app that I love to use. Um, and then I also put my phone to, uh, grayscale throughout the day.

So like even on business days, I don't have Slack. I can't get into Slack, I can't get into like anything on my phone.

LinkedIn, nothing. And so I have to come to my computer if I wanna do something because

it was just, it was just becoming too much. I was like,

Matt Edmundson: It just sucks your life out the yeah. Yeah.

Jordan West: yeah. Like who wants to do that? Like, like Matt, you and I are old enough to [00:33:00] remember the days when like you just picked up the phone and called someone and you had to go out, you know, you had to go and see people and liking their posts on Instagram was not equivalent to you actually, you know, being their friend.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, heaven forbid. It's, um, no, it is totally just, totally true, isn't it? I, Sharon and I, we went camping this weekend. My wife and I went, glam the first time I'd ever done glamping.

Jordan West: Oh, okay. Nice.

Matt Edmundson: loved it. Absolutely loved it. Big shout out to the guys, James and Sarah at Lonning, who, who, who set us up. They're amazing company.

If you're in the UK and you need a bell tent that connects to your van, go check out Lonning. Just quick shout out to them. They're awesome.

Um, but yeah, we, we, we went over to this festival and I felt very old. I felt like I, I bought the average age up and it was, do you know what was lovely? Um. Jordan was they? They had this stage called forest school and [00:34:00] all the young families, all the kids were in there like with axes and learning how to build campfires.

Not a single one of them had a mobile phone, not a single one of them was trying to Snapchat their friends or capture content for Instagram. I mean, these are 8-year-old kids, maybe 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, kind of eight. But it was lovely to see. They just weren't on the phones. They were actually outside just doing fun stuff.

Jordan West: I, uh, I was out with my kids, um, 'cause I let my, my kids roam free a lot and they were up a tree and they were up like, I don't know, 20 or 30 feet up a tree. And there was this, this old couple that walked by. And he's like, I am so happy to see your kids up so high in the tree. He's like, you know what? We don't see enough of these days broken arms.

Matt Edmundson: so true. Yeah.

Jordan West: He's like, we just don't, there's not enough broken arms, which tells me kids aren't trying. Right. And if anyone's read the anxious generation, just every parent must read the anxious generation. And I think you'll parent differently. Like I, I saw a kid at my daughter's school the other day.

She's in grade [00:35:00] four. Grade four or five, something like that. She had a phone and I was like, in five years, that is going to be the equivalent of her having a cigarette in her mouth. It is that harmful. Like I was like, get off your phone. Get off like, mom, do you not realize the damage that you're doing with this girl?

And lo and behold, she's the one who has like the biggest attitude, right? And I'm like, well, chicken or egg, because poor girl has to defend herself against all of this stuff

Matt Edmundson: Oh

Jordan West: at her online,

Matt Edmundson: Mm-hmm.

Jordan West: right? Like I, I will refuse for my kids to have screens before they're 16. I just refuse it. I'm like, I don't care.

I don't care if all the kids make fun of you in school. It doesn't matter. It's not gonna be nearly as. Detrimental as you being on social media. I, I have like zero doubt that we're gonna look back on this time of, of this, all this experiment that we're doing and be like, oh, this is why no one's having kids.

Right? This is why our like, like no one's happy and we've never seen such like SSRI use and all of this [00:36:00] stuff, right? Like, of course.

Matt Edmundson: No, I'm, I'm with you, bro. I think recently the Australian government banned mobile phones and they for, um, kids under 16. Um, oh, no, no. They didn't ban mobile phones. They, they, social media I think is

Jordan West: Fan social media. Okay. Yeah,

Matt Edmundson: Until you're 16. And I think Well, good on you because

Jordan West: I think it's coming everywhere.

Matt Edmundson: yeah, I, think it has

Jordan West: it has to.

Matt Edmundson: It does. We sound like the two grumpy old men from the Muppets.

Jordan West: And we, as we, as we should, as we should, maybe they had, maybe they knew more than we

Matt Edmundson: Maybe they had a point. Yeah,

Jordan West: starting to like them actually.

Matt Edmundson: Yay. More and more. We should go back, bring back the, the wisdom of the grumpy old men. Uh, and I love that. Um. Jordan, listen, if people wanna find out more about the social commerce club, maybe connect with that. Um, figure out if it's a good fit for them. What, what's the, what's the, what's the plan there?

Jordan West: So they can go to [00:37:00] socialcommerceclub.com or, uh, even better, they can reach out to me on LinkedIn. Now I try to be good in my inbox on LinkedIn. I do try to check every message, but sometimes I look and they look spammy, so then I, then I don't actually open them. The problem is. Sometimes they're actually great messages and I go back later because they're like, Hey, just following up.

And I'm like, oh yeah, another sales follow up. And I look and I was like, oh, you're a great brand that wants to work with us.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. Yeah.

Jordan West: Awesome. Um, so, uh, try me on LinkedIn too, but, uh, or you, or you can even just reach out at [email protected]. Um, that is my email address as well. So,

um, yeah, see if, see if we're we're a fit, we're, you know, obsessed with all things.

Again, we come at this from a D two C perspective, right? D two C first because D two C is all about demand gen, right? Demand generation is so much harder than demand capture.

Um. But we've all seen what happens with Amazon brands when that's all that they have, right? Is this capture of not a huge market and um, [00:38:00] yeah,

Matt Edmundson: I think it's a painful road, but that's just me. Uh, it's the reason why I don't acquire or invest in, uh, Amazon, pure Amazon businesses. Uh,

there's better people out there that do it than me.

Jordan West: I never did either when I was doing acquisitions yet.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, just not a fan. Not a fan. Um, and tell us a little for those that maybe are new to the show and didn't hear the very first episode that we did. Um, I don't even think TikTok was, I don't even know if mobile phones were a thing when we did our first recording. Jordan.

Jordan West: I don't even know if we did. I think we did that one in person. I think I flew to the UK for that

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, I think we did with a, with Agram phone in the middle and someone was, didn't have to record in it. Um, tell us a bit about your podcast.

People might wanna come Listen,

Jordan West: yes.

Matt Edmundson: I.

listen to it. I'm, I'm one of your regulars.

Jordan West: Oh, you are. Oh, thank you, Matt. Thank you. You know, I'm always surprised when I look and see our download numbers and because I have done this podcast for so many years that, uh, it's, I think we're close to episode 650 right now. [00:39:00] And, um, it's funny, you'll, for anyone who's listened to it for a while, it's called Secrecy Scaling, or e-Commerce brand.

Um, we just hit a million downloads, which is fun. Um, I know after 650 episodes you're probably doing the math and being like, wow, it's not that good,

Matt Edmundson: It's for each episode, but well done. Yeah.

Jordan West: Um, but I have, I have now been, uh, putting them out on YouTube finally, which is hilarious 'cause I always had video content. I just didn't ever put it out on YouTube. And we're getting like thousands of views in episode, which is really fun. And, um, and it's, it's just great to see. I'm, what I'm trying to do, I'm actually doing a new thing right now.

Uh, and they're called, it's part of Secrecy Scaling Your eCommmerce brand, but I'm releasing my first one this week. It's called eCommerce os Fast Track Sessions. I am, uh, the first time I'm serving smaller eCommerce brands right at our agency. It's really difficult to do. We just, we can't resource it properly, the costing and all of that.

And so, uh, I am launching a new program called eCommerce Os. You can go check it out at eCommerce os.co. [00:40:00] Um, and I'm launching this new program and so alongside of it, I'm doing these shorter episodes where I bring an E-commerce founder on and I consult with them for 20 minutes and we solve one big problem, and it has been so much fun.

Every single time. So the first one, a guy came on who's running a brand for Selena Gomez. Um, and he is just having a huge issue besides when SEL posts going from zero to one.

Right? And, and so we talked through the strategy because it's, it, it's an, uh, an ice cream brand and so they can't ship. So it can't be direct to consumer.

They can't do TikTok shop. So we just talk through what to do and, uh, and so it's very consultative and I'm having a blast doing it. And, uh, it is definitely my, my, I've, it's renewed my passion in podcasting and my, my episodes for the last three months, you know, I've really been trying to get my content guy to help me out.

And I just gotta say it's my superpower. I can't let anyone else do it. It's the thing I'm good at, not

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, [00:41:00] yeah. No, absolutely. We should do a whole episode one down. Why every eCommerce branch should probably have their own podcast.

Uh, it's just, it's a personal pet thing of mine. But I did let save that maybe for another day, uh,

Jordan West: yes. We don't have the time today, Matt.

Matt Edmundson: yeah. Well, you've got four minutes before you need to bugger off, so,

Jordan West: I do.

Matt Edmundson: so I figure is this it will be, it needs to be,

Jordan West: And, and can I say why I have to leave in four minutes?

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. Go for it.

Jordan West: Okay. So the reason why, and, and Matt was like, why, how long can we talk for? And the reason why I have to leave in four minutes is because I have an hour where I'm gonna talk to my best friend on the phone. And it's nothing to do with business. And I recently read the, the book, the Five Types of Wealth And By Sahil Bloom, highly recommend if, if anyone hasn't listened to it and realized, I'm like, I only ever cared about the one kind of wealth, which is money.

And I didn't even really understand what that was like. You know, I really actually thought that was just piling up cash

and, and that actually wasn't it because it didn't help me sleep at [00:42:00] night no matter how much money I had or how little, it just didn't even matter. Right. Until I realized the five types of wealth.

And one of them is relational wealth. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I have, I have not. Um, I've not prioritized that. So even like today, you know, I had a meeting at 12 o'clock, uh, and I realized that my wife was free for lunch and I was like, well, I'm canceling that meeting 'cause.

Lunch is way more important with my wife than, than some rando meeting.

I'm sorry. Like, it just is, and I'm not going to like be on my deathbed and be like, I'm so glad I took that meeting with James. Right. I'll be like, oh, I'm so glad I made time for you

and, and for lunch and for slow things. Right. Um, anyway, that's what I wanted to tell you.

Matt Edmundson: Well, we should do an episode on that as well. Geez. So many more episodes to come. Jordan, listen. Thank you so much, brother. Always fun doing these, uh, podcasts and uh, and just chatting the breeze with you, man. And it's a shame I won't see you at Subs Summit this year. Uh, but are you going subs, summit?

Jordan West: I am not, we're having a fourth child and moving, uh, in the next little while. [00:43:00] So

Matt Edmundson: What kind of random excuse is that?

Jordan West: she would kill me if I went to Dallas right now. So,

Matt Edmundson: enough. Fair enough. Well, we'll hook up at some point in the future, no doubt.

But, um, if I don't speak to you before, I hope it goes well with your fourth child, no doubt it will. Um, but Jordan, you're a legend. Thank you so much for coming on, man. And thank you everybody for tuning in and listening to the show. Make sure you like, subscribe, do all of that good stuff, but from me and from Jordan, that's it. Liked it. Uh, and bye for now.

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