649: This Firefighter’s Side Hustle Grew to $1M in Sales

0:00:04 – From side hustle to a million dollars in sales.
0:00:06 What’s up, what’s up, Nick Loper here.
0:00:07 Welcome to The Side Hustle Show
0:00:09 because your nine to five may make you a living,
0:00:11 but your five to nine makes you alive.
0:00:13 How does somebody with no business experience
0:00:15 launch a successful side hustle?
0:00:17 We’ll stick around in this episode to find out.
0:00:20 Today’s guest was working as a firefighter,
0:00:22 but it’s tough work and the,
0:00:24 and his sunglasses kept breaking and getting scratched up.
0:00:26 And he said, like, hey, like a lot of entrepreneurs,
0:00:27 there’s gotta be a better way, right?
0:00:30 And that’s what started him down this path,
0:00:32 starting as a side hustle a few years ago
0:00:35 to recently eclipsing a million dollars in lifetime sales
0:00:40 and still growing like crazy from frontline-optics.com
0:00:41 like Ettenberg.
0:00:42 Welcome to The Side Hustle Show.
0:00:43 – Hey, hey, how’s it going?
0:00:44 Thanks for having me.
0:00:46 – You bet, I’m excited for this one.
0:00:49 I want to kind of get the origin story here
0:00:51 of like why this product needed to exist in the world.
0:00:53 There was nothing else.
0:00:56 I’m picturing like, you know, scientist lab safety glasses.
0:00:57 Like maybe that was the alternative,
0:00:59 but like, hey, there’s gotta be a better way
0:01:01 than trashing these $200 Oakleys.
0:01:02 – Exactly.
0:01:04 So yeah, I was a big sunglasses guy.
0:01:06 Anybody who’s worked in an industry
0:01:09 in which your uniform is picked out for you knows
0:01:12 that like style and uniform don’t really go hand-in-hand
0:01:13 together.
0:01:14 So one of the few things that we do have
0:01:16 is like a wristwatch and our sunglasses.
0:01:18 So for me, I took the sunglasses,
0:01:21 started collecting them, but they’re expensive, right?
0:01:23 And then going to work,
0:01:25 generally on your day-to-day adventures,
0:01:28 you can take good care of your stuff.
0:01:32 But when a 911 call comes in, you know, things happen fast.
0:01:35 There’s no time to like securely put your sunglasses away
0:01:36 so that they don’t get scratched.
0:01:38 You just, you just go to work.
0:01:40 And when the job is done, you come back,
0:01:43 you pick up the pieces and I was consistently finding
0:01:45 my sunglasses had been scratched or broken
0:01:48 or engineers bag fell on them one time.
0:01:50 And so I was just going through them 200 bucks,
0:01:52 200 bucks, 200 bucks every single time,
0:01:54 figured there had to be a better way to make them.
0:01:57 I knew they couldn’t be too terribly difficult
0:01:58 to manufacture.
0:02:00 So started looking and making them myself.
0:02:03 And, you know, that was about a little over three years ago
0:02:05 now, and now this is what I do.
0:02:09 – Okay, so I love this method of coming up with ideas
0:02:11 from saying that like kind of the personal pain point,
0:02:13 you know, scratch your own itch kind of thing.
0:02:16 Like, look at your own, Tim Ferriss would say,
0:02:17 look at your own credit card statements.
0:02:18 Where are you spending a bunch of money?
0:02:20 And like, ah, there’s gotta be a better way, right?
0:02:22 But then it gets a little fuzzy.
0:02:25 It’s like, well, do I find manufacturers?
0:02:27 It’s kind of hard to imagine that a durable,
0:02:30 scratch resistant product doesn’t already exist.
0:02:31 But is that what you found?
0:02:34 – So it’s not that they didn’t necessarily exist,
0:02:36 but there wasn’t anything that was really marketed
0:02:38 directly towards first responders.
0:02:40 There was a lot of military stuff.
0:02:42 There was a lot, you know, in those other areas,
0:02:44 but a lot of them were still very expensive.
0:02:47 And ultimately, you know, there wasn’t anything
0:02:50 that was really focused on like a first responder.
0:02:52 And so that was what I found as I kind of went through
0:02:55 is there was no one speaking directly to my market.
0:02:57 No one that was building glasses
0:02:59 focused directly on my market.
0:03:02 And so I figured I was gonna, you know, fill that void
0:03:03 and I was gonna make sunglasses
0:03:06 that were directly marketed towards first responders.
0:03:08 Now, for all of you who are not first responders,
0:03:10 it’s not like you are not allowed to wear them.
0:03:11 But if you go on our website
0:03:13 or see any of our marketing materials,
0:03:15 you’ll see that it’s always law enforcement,
0:03:16 firefighters, paramedics, you know,
0:03:18 that’s what you’re gonna see wearing them.
0:03:19 ‘Cause that’s where I came from
0:03:21 and, you know, that’s the market that we focus on.
0:03:23 – Yeah, it’s a niche within a niche.
0:03:26 Like we’re gonna do durable scratch resistant product
0:03:31 and we’re gonna hone in on this specific use case
0:03:33 or the specific user base.
0:03:34 – Exactly, exactly.
0:03:36 And we know what the day in the life
0:03:37 of a first responder is.
0:03:39 So we can kind of tailor to that.
0:03:41 We also back all of our sunglasses
0:03:43 with this no questions asked replacement program.
0:03:46 So if you lose them, you break them, anything happens.
0:03:48 We’ll replace it one time, no questions asked.
0:03:51 Again, with the idea that no matter what you do,
0:03:53 eventually these things are gonna break
0:03:54 ’cause the job’s gonna catch up to them.
0:03:55 So we’re gonna, you know,
0:03:57 kind of help cover that cost when it happens.
0:03:59 – Okay, so we come up with the idea.
0:04:00 What happens next?
0:04:02 Is it trying to find a manufacturer
0:04:05 that is making similar sunglasses?
0:04:07 Just, hey, can we make these a little tougher?
0:04:09 Like, where do you even go?
0:04:11 – Pretty much, I went to Google, right?
0:04:13 And I started Googling and finding things
0:04:16 and what you’ll find, especially when you’re starting out,
0:04:18 is a lot of these big manufacturers,
0:04:20 they don’t wanna work with you, you know,
0:04:22 ’cause your volumes are just too small.
0:04:24 I started this thing with $5,000.
0:04:26 Again, this was a side hustle.
0:04:28 At the time that I started it, too,
0:04:30 I was actually listening to this show,
0:04:33 which is kind of fun, full circle to be here now with you.
0:04:34 – Love it.
0:04:36 – But yeah, I just started looking into everything,
0:04:38 contacting manufacturers, and I just had to go
0:04:42 kind of further and further and further down the Google list,
0:04:44 you could say, until I finally found a smaller factory
0:04:47 that understood what I was trying to do,
0:04:50 wanted to kind of grow with me and then, you know,
0:04:52 helped educate me and hold my hand through, you know,
0:04:55 the education of what is, you know, the optical industry.
0:04:57 – Is this through, not through Alibaba,
0:04:59 this is just like, I’m going through pages,
0:05:02 finding somebody who will accept a smaller minimum order.
0:05:04 – Correct, yeah, I stayed away from Alibaba.
0:05:08 Alibaba’s, you know, you can find gems on there,
0:05:09 but for the most part, like a lot of those
0:05:11 are third-party sourcing.
0:05:14 At the beginning, I did pick a few samples from there
0:05:16 and the stuff that came back was just so bad
0:05:18 that I, you know, I kind of threw my hands up
0:05:19 and said, I got to go a different route
0:05:22 and kind of Google just the traditional search
0:05:24 is how I found my manufacturer.
0:05:27 – Okay, that’s a great tip to like go to page 234,
0:05:30 like see if you can find somebody who is, you know,
0:05:32 smaller, hungrier for business, willing to work with you.
0:05:35 So $5,000, this is initial inventory.
0:05:36 How many glasses does that get you?
0:05:38 I don’t even know a concept.
0:05:41 – So I bought 300 pairs of sunglasses to start
0:05:43 and then with that, I also, you know,
0:05:46 got my Shopify store filed for a trademark
0:05:49 and had a very small budget leftover for marketing.
0:05:50 But yeah, that was my initial investment.
0:05:53 It was $5,000, 300 pairs of sunglasses,
0:05:55 and then the foundation that everyone needs
0:05:56 to kind of get the ball rolling.
0:05:57 – Got it.
0:05:59 Have you ever messed around with Shopify before?
0:06:01 He said, I don’t have any business experience.
0:06:02 It’s like, what’s the learning curve,
0:06:03 like trying to set this stuff up?
0:06:05 – It’s pretty plug and play,
0:06:09 but there’s obviously aspects of it that are challenging.
0:06:12 I relied a lot on Fiverr to get started,
0:06:13 just inexpensive tasks,
0:06:16 but you have to know what you’re trying to do.
0:06:18 Thankfully, I did, I had kind of a vision
0:06:19 of what I wanted things to look like,
0:06:20 and I had examples.
0:06:23 So by going on there, I was able to kind of say,
0:06:25 hey, I want this to look like this
0:06:28 and really map out exactly what I was trying to accomplish.
0:06:30 It wasn’t that difficult overall,
0:06:32 as you really dive into it.
0:06:35 That’s when, you know, the details start to focus.
0:06:36 – And clearly there’s some validation
0:06:41 from what Warby Parker has done in prescription glasses,
0:06:42 what obviously Gooder has done
0:06:45 in kind of direct-to-consumer sunglasses.
0:06:46 So there’s some validation.
0:06:48 People are willing to order this stuff online.
0:06:50 It’s just a matter of getting in front of them.
0:06:50 – Absolutely.
0:06:53 – So build it and they will come, maybe not.
0:06:56 So build it and then try and spread the word.
0:06:57 What happens on the marketing side?
0:07:00 – Build it and they will not come, right?
0:07:02 My first year took us a really long time
0:07:04 to kind of get any traction.
0:07:07 Obviously, family, they’ll buy the first batch
0:07:09 just to support you and friends will support you.
0:07:11 But it doesn’t really feel all that great, you know,
0:07:13 ’cause you kind of expect it.
0:07:16 – You recognize every name on the order report?
0:07:17 – Yeah, exactly.
0:07:19 But that first order that comes in from a name
0:07:21 that you have no idea who this is, you know,
0:07:23 like you truly acquired your first customer
0:07:26 is a pretty special moment that I’m sure everybody
0:07:29 who’s gone into business is familiar with.
0:07:29 – Yeah, it’s really exciting.
0:07:31 It’s really vulnerable too.
0:07:33 I remember like even in the example of the podcast,
0:07:35 like the first like 50 download day
0:07:38 and it was, I think I have exuded my own circle
0:07:39 of influence at this point.
0:07:41 And that’s like, that means strangers are listening in.
0:07:42 Well, you know, what if they hate it?
0:07:43 What if they think it sucks?
0:07:44 What if they leave a bad review?
0:07:47 Like all of a sudden it’s like, yeah, I wanted this to happen,
0:07:50 but it’s also super kind of nerve-wracking too.
0:07:53 – Yeah, you get vulnerable at that moment.
0:07:54 – Do you know how they found you?
0:07:56 Was this, you know, word of mouth referral?
0:07:58 Was this a Facebook ad?
0:08:00 – It was all organic at that point.
0:08:02 We were just doing a lot of like organic posting.
0:08:04 So that would have been how they found us.
0:08:07 I hadn’t even been running ads yet.
0:08:10 So it was still very, you know, like I’m gonna take a picture.
0:08:11 I’m gonna put it up.
0:08:12 I’m gonna use hashtags, you know,
0:08:16 the old school method that maybe still works to an extent,
0:08:19 but not quite how it did back in the early days.
0:08:23 But I was able to kind of ride the coattails of that path,
0:08:25 you could say, towards my first customer.
0:08:28 – Okay, and targeting hashtags specific to this niche.
0:08:30 I don’t know what those would be, you know,
0:08:33 #firstresponder, #firefighter, stuff like that.
0:08:34 – Exactly.
0:08:35 So yeah, that was pretty much what I did.
0:08:38 I didn’t have any kind of like post-purchase surveys set up
0:08:41 at that point to figure out how people, you know,
0:08:43 found me, which I learned later, the value of.
0:08:45 But yeah, you know, you get one,
0:08:48 you keep, you know, rinse and repeat, do the same thing,
0:08:50 figure out what’s working, what doesn’t, change it.
0:08:52 And the next thing you know, there’s two,
0:08:55 and then there’s three, and then there’s, you know, 10,
0:08:56 and it just keeps going.
0:08:59 – Are you handling fulfillment out of your garage,
0:09:01 out of your spare bedroom, in this kind of like,
0:09:03 one advantage of sunglasses is that they’re super small,
0:09:05 lightweight, easy to ship, stuff like that.
0:09:07 – I am not thankfully handling
0:09:08 any of the fulfillment anymore.
0:09:10 – But for those first orders?
0:09:12 – The first orders, absolutely, absolutely.
0:09:15 Yeah, I had a corner, we have a pretty funny video.
0:09:17 My wife, my son, and myself are all in here,
0:09:18 packaging orders.
0:09:20 I worked initially as a firefighter,
0:09:23 and at that time I was still working as a firefighter.
0:09:25 So especially as the business started to pick up,
0:09:27 you know, orders would pile up, and so I would come home,
0:09:29 and then it was like, cool, we’ve got, you know,
0:09:31 these 10 or 15 orders that we need to ship out,
0:09:34 because it’s been three days since they’ve ordered it.
0:09:35 All right, so it’s got to happen now,
0:09:37 and we turned it in this family thing,
0:09:39 where we’d all set up a little assembly line,
0:09:40 and build out these orders,
0:09:43 and my son would take them to the post office with me,
0:09:45 you know, he loved going and handing the person
0:09:47 at the counter all of the glasses to get scanned,
0:09:49 and it was fun time.
0:09:51 – Yeah, that’s exciting, that’s really cool.
0:09:53 How did you figure out pricing, or is this like,
0:09:56 based on what other sunglasses are charging,
0:09:58 you know, how to figure out how much to charge for these?
0:10:01 – You know, you look at your competitors in this space,
0:10:03 and kind of mimic those price points,
0:10:05 and then you figure it out from there.
0:10:07 When we first started, we were, you know,
0:10:10 very inexpensive, but the quality of the components
0:10:12 at that time also were not as high quality,
0:10:15 just due to the fact that we didn’t have the capital
0:10:18 to be able to put like a premium quality product together
0:10:20 when we were testing, to see if this was validated,
0:10:23 and then as we continued to grow, you know,
0:10:25 we put money into upgrading components,
0:10:27 and making them more durable, and stronger,
0:10:29 and better lenses, and all those things,
0:10:30 and with it, you know, it’s now, you know,
0:10:32 obviously a much more premium product
0:10:34 than it was when we first started.
0:10:35 – Looks like you’re around 80 bucks a pair now.
0:10:36 – Yeah, exactly.
0:10:37 – What did it start at?
0:10:40 – They started at 42, so when I first started,
0:10:41 they were never like $20 throwaways,
0:10:44 and I didn’t want to be playing in that space.
0:10:47 I was trying to build something that, you know,
0:10:49 people would understand was a little bit better
0:10:51 than what you’re gonna get at the gas station, or 7-Eleven,
0:10:54 but we weren’t quite at that premium level at that time,
0:10:56 and now we’ve definitely grown
0:10:58 in the quality of the components to be at that level.
0:11:02 – Okay, yeah, so still not as much as like a designer pair,
0:11:04 or, you know, those $200 Oakleys,
0:11:06 but it’s no longer just like a straight commodity,
0:11:07 like you said, gas station pair.
0:11:09 – Exactly, they’re nice enough
0:11:10 that you’ll try and take care of them,
0:11:13 but not so excessively priced that you’re gonna be scared
0:11:16 to let something happen to them if, you know,
0:11:18 if the job asks that of you.
0:11:19 – More with Mike in just a moment,
0:11:22 including his micro-influencer strategy
0:11:25 that generated a lot of sales and a lot of goodwill
0:11:27 right after this.
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0:12:38 Creating really great retail experiences is tough,
0:12:41 especially if you’ve got multiple stores, teams of staff,
0:12:43 fulfillment centers, separate workflows.
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0:13:38 All right, so you start to ship out a few pairs.
0:13:40 I love getting the family involved.
0:13:42 And this is all still through kind of organic, social,
0:13:45 trying to build up a presence and a following.
0:13:46 But at a certain point, you’re like,
0:13:49 “Well, how do we find more buyers?
0:13:51 “Find what we call lead fountains?
0:13:52 “How do I get in front of lots of customers?
0:13:54 “What’s that evergreen source?
0:13:56 “Is it gonna be social?
0:13:57 “Is it gonna be through partnerships?
0:13:58 “What was it?
0:13:59 “Where did you find worked early on?”
0:14:02 So early on, when we didn’t have a lot of budget,
0:14:04 it was a lot of micro influencer marketing.
0:14:06 We would reach out to them.
0:14:08 There was no monetary component at all.
0:14:12 It was just simply, “Hey, I’m Mike, this is my company.
0:14:16 “I’m a first responder and I would love to get you
0:14:17 “this product in your hands.
0:14:19 “If you like it, share it with your audience.
0:14:20 “If you don’t like it,
0:14:21 “you got yourself a free pair of sunglasses.
0:14:22 “Do we have a deal?”
0:14:26 And a lot of people took it ’cause why not, right?
0:14:27 It’s a free pair of sunglasses.
0:14:29 And once they got them, they liked them,
0:14:31 they saw the quality, they saw the uniqueness of it.
0:14:33 They liked the story.
0:14:35 Additionally, we have a charitable component.
0:14:37 So a portion of every sale goes back
0:14:39 to our first responders children’s foundation.
0:14:41 And that’s an organization that supports
0:14:42 kind of the families left behind
0:14:44 by someone who’s critically injured
0:14:45 or killed in line of duty.
0:14:48 So we’re taking care of our own
0:14:49 and all of that kind of resonated.
0:14:52 And so that message started to be shared
0:14:54 amongst their networks.
0:14:55 And that would get a few more people in the door
0:14:57 and a few more people in the door.
0:14:59 And then the word-of-mouth advertising started
0:15:01 to kind of grow from there
0:15:04 and gave us enough budget to go into traditional marketing.
0:15:06 – Is there a sweet spot of like follower count
0:15:08 or accounts after I think like,
0:15:10 what qualifies as a micro influencer here?
0:15:14 – We try and stay at somebody below like the 20,000 mark.
0:15:16 And we find a lot of success
0:15:18 in like the three to 5,000 follower range.
0:15:20 – ‘Cause at that point, they’re like excited
0:15:22 that a brand is reaching out to them.
0:15:22 – Exactly.
0:15:24 So they’re just getting to that point
0:15:27 where a brand would want them to have this stuff.
0:15:28 So they’re excited.
0:15:29 Whereas the further on they go,
0:15:31 they start to get more comfortable
0:15:34 with the fact that they get people reaching out to them.
0:15:36 You’ll get a lot of people who will get your glasses
0:15:38 and then just not reply.
0:15:40 And or they’ll come back to you with a,
0:15:43 I charge this amount of money for a shout out.
0:15:45 And we’re not really in the name of doing that
0:15:48 unless you’re, you know, got millions of followers.
0:15:49 – Got it, yeah.
0:15:53 And did you find there were 50 of these people,
0:15:56 a hundred of these people, like, I’m not in that space.
0:15:59 That’s like, are there firefighter influencers on TikTok?
0:16:00 – Yeah, there’s thousands.
0:16:01 – Really?
0:16:02 – And then as you find one,
0:16:05 the algorithm will, you know, recommend you to another.
0:16:06 And so you just kind of keep on,
0:16:09 keep on going, follow hashtags, you’ll find them.
0:16:12 But there’s a lot and a lot of our content
0:16:14 that we’ve gotten if you go, you know, on our social media
0:16:16 and look like a lot of the stuff in the early days
0:16:19 is just, those are all influencers who we traded
0:16:21 a pair of sunglasses for a shout out and a photo.
0:16:24 And then we got multiple people’s faces on our site
0:16:27 which showed it in different, you know, law enforcement,
0:16:31 EMS, fire environments and just kind of continue
0:16:34 to grow the user base, I guess you could say.
0:16:35 – And do you have an estimate of how many free pairs
0:16:38 you sent out to kind of build a good will
0:16:40 amongst this crowd of micro influencers?
0:16:43 – At this point, I would say over a thousand that we’ve sent.
0:16:44 – Wow.
0:16:45 – And then there’s some that, you know,
0:16:48 they provided with a professional photographer,
0:16:51 quality photo and we’ll circle back with them again
0:16:54 to work with them again, since they’re putting out
0:16:56 like quality content that we can repurpose
0:16:58 and use on our site and in, you know,
0:17:01 in marketing, if they give permission, there’s a lot.
0:17:04 We generally try and find about 10 to 20 a month
0:17:06 to send a pair to, to kind of keep that dream moving.
0:17:07 – Yeah, I guess that’s true.
0:17:09 It’s not a static thing.
0:17:11 Like, you know, there’s always new accounts being created,
0:17:13 new people getting into the space.
0:17:13 – Exactly.
0:17:15 – Love this, over a thousand free pairs,
0:17:18 like really showing some dedication to this strategy.
0:17:20 And then is there any way to track, you know,
0:17:22 oh, this guy performed, but this one didn’t?
0:17:24 Like, you know, we’re just going to cast
0:17:26 as wide a net as possible.
0:17:28 – You always got to track the data, right?
0:17:31 Generally, our approach with people is we start out
0:17:34 reaching out to them as an influencer for, you know,
0:17:37 a photo and a shout out to their audience.
0:17:39 And then after about a week or two,
0:17:40 we generally follow up a second time
0:17:42 and we ask them how they like the glasses.
0:17:43 And if they really like them,
0:17:45 we introduce them to an ambassador program
0:17:48 where they can earn a commission based off of their sales.
0:17:50 And that gets them a discount code.
0:17:55 And with that, we usually see one to two months of sales,
0:17:57 like a high volume of sales generated.
0:18:00 And by a high volume, I mean like five to 10 per,
0:18:01 again, they’re smaller influencers,
0:18:04 but five to 10 a month from that person.
0:18:05 And they have, you know, they have a discount code
0:18:07 so we can track all of that as well.
0:18:09 But yeah, we will put them on a spreadsheet
0:18:11 after they get sent to it, we’ll follow up
0:18:14 and then we’ll notate, did they give us a story?
0:18:15 Did they give us a post?
0:18:16 Did they send us something?
0:18:17 Did they want to become an ambassador
0:18:19 so we can kind of see the progression?
0:18:20 – Got it, okay.
0:18:22 And that goes directly to your Shopify store.
0:18:24 Is an ambassador program something you got to manage
0:18:27 in-house or is there like a Shopify app
0:18:30 that helps and figures out like the commission payout
0:18:31 and all this stuff?
0:18:33 – Yeah, we have an app called Up Promote
0:18:34 and Up Promote is free.
0:18:36 I always like free, right?
0:18:38 So I don’t want to have to pay if I don’t have to.
0:18:41 The downside is you have to manually pay out
0:18:42 your ambassadors every month,
0:18:44 but it’ll collect it all for you.
0:18:46 It’ll tell you how much and then you basically
0:18:50 just go into PayPal and we send them their payment
0:18:51 and then we click it off
0:18:53 that the payment’s been paid outside the platform.
0:18:55 They have a paid portion
0:18:56 where they do that automatically for you
0:18:58 and take your hands off entirely.
0:19:00 But for us, you know, it’s something
0:19:03 that we have a virtual assistant that’s handling.
0:19:05 It just makes sense to kind of keep it in her workload.
0:19:08 – All right, so the ambassador program is cranking now.
0:19:11 What else is going on on the marketing front?
0:19:12 I love this.
0:19:13 Just we’re going to get in front of all these people
0:19:15 who talk to our target audience already.
0:19:17 I think it’s a really smart way to do it.
0:19:19 But anything else that has been firing
0:19:20 on the marketing side?
0:19:23 – Now Metta is really where we’re at,
0:19:25 but I’ll take it a few steps back
0:19:27 since we’re kind of going through that normal progression.
0:19:30 So I started to advertise on Metta.
0:19:32 I had no idea how to run it.
0:19:34 I didn’t know what a hook was.
0:19:36 You know, I was just like putting pictures out there
0:19:37 and I was running traffic ads.
0:19:40 And for anyone who’s been doing this,
0:19:42 we all know that traffic ads get you exactly
0:19:44 that they get you traffic to your site.
0:19:46 They do not get you any sales.
0:19:48 In addition, I was not yet smart enough
0:19:50 to be capturing people’s emails.
0:19:52 I was firefighter by trade,
0:19:54 but I didn’t know all of these little tricks
0:19:56 to make sure that I can remarket and grow a list.
0:19:59 You know, these were all foreign concepts to me.
0:20:00 – So, you know, this is helpful.
0:20:03 So Facebook or Metta has lots of different
0:20:06 targeting options or like goal option,
0:20:07 how are we gonna optimize your campaign?
0:20:10 And if you’re saying, if you optimize for traffic,
0:20:12 they kind of inherently know
0:20:15 who are the click hacky people on our platform.
0:20:16 It’s like we get you traffic,
0:20:17 but we don’t know what happens after that.
0:20:19 They may not click on anything on your site.
0:20:21 They may not buy anything,
0:20:23 but we can get you affordable clicks.
0:20:25 – Exactly, exactly.
0:20:26 So they know, right?
0:20:28 Like they’ve got so much data on their users
0:20:30 that they know exactly what they’re sending.
0:20:33 So if you’re trying to get traffic, you’ll get traffic.
0:20:34 If you’re trying to get sales, you’ll get sales.
0:20:36 But they cost, you know, a different amount.
0:20:39 To be put in front of the person who’s ready to purchase
0:20:42 is significantly more expensive to be put in front
0:20:44 of the person who will click the link
0:20:46 and never do anything from there.
0:20:48 But it was still fun to see the traffic numbers going up
0:20:50 and Shopify gives you these little metrics
0:20:54 that tell you like, oh, you’re in the 10% of all stores
0:20:56 that start at the same time as you, you know,
0:20:58 and it gives you this little pat on the back,
0:20:59 feeling if you’re doing something right.
0:21:01 – Yeah, that’s kind of fun.
0:21:04 It’s like, come on, Shopify, I appreciate you giving me
0:21:06 a pat on the back about the traffic stats,
0:21:08 but how about the sales?
0:21:10 – Right, so yeah, again, I didn’t necessarily know
0:21:13 what I was doing, was running those traffic ads,
0:21:16 started to run some purchase ads, but, you know,
0:21:18 I didn’t have great quality stuff.
0:21:21 I was taking photos, I was throwing them on Canva
0:21:23 and creating a quick template
0:21:25 and trying to put an ad together.
0:21:26 I was still learning.
0:21:29 And then, you know, I found TikTok.
0:21:32 So it was kind of funny, I was going
0:21:35 for one of my morning runs at work.
0:21:38 And as I was running, we were in Coronado,
0:21:40 and there was this house that was overlooking
0:21:42 like a boat dock area.
0:21:45 And there were these young kids, I’ll call them,
0:21:47 that were constantly there on their laptops
0:21:49 on the back patio, and I would run by them
0:21:50 and I always wondered, you know, what,
0:21:52 what do these guys do, right?
0:21:54 And so finally, one day I had to ask.
0:21:56 – Yeah, to afford this waterfront house, yeah.
0:21:58 – Yeah, I had to ask, and so I stopped
0:22:00 and I was like, what, you know, what are you guys into?
0:22:01 And they’re like, oh, like, we have a marketing agency,
0:22:03 like we do online ads.
0:22:06 So of course, I started telling them what I was doing,
0:22:09 and they told me like, you got to go all in on TikTok.
0:22:11 And I’m like, I’m still not on that platform yet.
0:22:13 I don’t know, you know, how I feel about it,
0:22:16 but okay, and then the next time I went on a run
0:22:18 and I saw them out there like, are you on TikTok yet?
0:22:20 All right, you need to double down on TikTok.
0:22:22 I’m like, yeah, yeah, and I go and run,
0:22:24 come back another day, and they’re like, you know,
0:22:26 triple down on TikTok.
0:22:27 So I’m finally like, all right, like,
0:22:30 I’m gonna go back, I’m gonna make a TikTok ad.
0:22:32 And I did, it wasn’t great, but again,
0:22:34 I hadn’t figured out this concept of a hook.
0:22:37 I just like, all of a sudden there was just sunglasses
0:22:38 and music in the background.
0:22:40 It wasn’t, you know, there’s nothing to capture
0:22:40 and it was attention.
0:22:43 And so I decided to make a video
0:22:45 and the start of the video is a picture
0:22:47 of the sunglasses falling out of the fire engine
0:22:50 in slow motion, and I voiced over it,
0:22:52 stop beating up your expensive sunglasses on the job.
0:22:55 And then it went to the different sunglasses stuff
0:22:58 and that thing just took off.
0:23:01 And like that was in May of 2022
0:23:03 and the company basically exploded
0:23:04 from that point forward.
0:23:05 – Wow, that’s great.
0:23:07 You know, that’s the power of one viral video
0:23:10 or one thing, and that’s really funny
0:23:12 that these kids were like convincing you to do it.
0:23:14 – I understood the power of a hook at that point.
0:23:17 And then I started to, you know, I took that same ad
0:23:19 and I moved it over to the Meta platform
0:23:21 and it performed just as well, if not better,
0:23:24 more consistently, I guess you could say, on Meta
0:23:27 and gave me the budget to test other things
0:23:29 and to develop, you know, professional looking ads.
0:23:32 And that was the beginning of this business
0:23:34 turning into, you know, a real thing
0:23:37 and not just this side project I was doing on my off time.
0:23:39 – Yeah, I’m looking at the TikTok account now,
0:23:44 over 3,000 followers, not huge by TikTok standards,
0:23:45 but, you know, a healthy following
0:23:48 and some of these videos do have hundreds of thousands of views.
0:23:49 – We’ve done pretty well on there.
0:23:50 It was interesting.
0:23:52 So in 2022, what you could do
0:23:55 is you could run an ad and it was like,
0:23:57 it was almost like a shotgun effect that TikTok would do
0:24:00 where they would blast it out to this huge group of people
0:24:03 at a very small cost per click.
0:24:05 So conversion rate was low,
0:24:08 but the amount you were spending was like nothing.
0:24:10 So you were able to make a lot of money off of this thing.
0:24:12 And then as time would go on,
0:24:15 its algorithm would try and niche down
0:24:17 as to who your audience was
0:24:19 and the ad would stop performing once it did that.
0:24:22 But you could literally turn the ad off and duplicate it
0:24:25 and it would just start again at that shotgun approach
0:24:26 and it would like narrow itself down.
0:24:28 So it was like once every one to two weeks,
0:24:29 you would turn the ad off
0:24:32 and just refire the exact same ad again
0:24:34 and you’d get another, you know, one to two weeks
0:24:36 of use out of this same thing.
0:24:39 And so I gained that system for a pretty long time
0:24:43 until they kind of caught on and changed their algorithm.
0:24:45 And then that approach didn’t work anymore.
0:24:46 And once that happened,
0:24:49 we pretty much left the TikTok platform
0:24:50 ’cause we found success on Meta
0:24:51 that was more consistent
0:24:54 and kind of been all in on medicines.
0:24:56 – Okay, yeah, well the getting’s good
0:24:58 and figure out how it all works.
0:25:00 You played around with TikTok shop
0:25:02 or is it still like we’re driving all the traffic
0:25:03 back to our own Shopify store?
0:25:05 – We’re driving back to our own Shopify store.
0:25:07 We’ve dabbled and tried.
0:25:10 I haven’t been able to find much success on TikTok shop
0:25:13 but I do have friends that are making hundreds of thousands
0:25:16 of dollars a year through a TikTok shop only.
0:25:18 So there’s definitely opportunity there
0:25:19 for the right products.
0:25:21 And I think the right price point,
0:25:24 I think if you’re in like the 30 or so dollar range
0:25:26 and you get those impulsive buyers.
0:25:29 – Yeah, more impulse buy price point, that makes sense.
0:25:31 – Exactly, but once we kind of got into that,
0:25:32 you know, that $80 range,
0:25:34 people have to think a little harder
0:25:35 about making that purchase.
0:25:37 And so the impulse is kind of removed,
0:25:39 which I think is what TikTok shop’s all about.
0:25:42 – All right, well, if you know anybody, send them my way
0:25:44 ’cause that’s something we haven’t covered yet on the show.
0:25:45 It might be interesting
0:25:47 to always these up and coming up and came platforms.
0:25:50 I’ve got some people for you, I’ll send your way.
0:25:51 – Okay, beautiful.
0:25:54 So now the focus is on meta.
0:25:56 This is gonna be more consistent.
0:25:58 This is Facebook and Instagram.
0:26:01 Just a huge, huge audience and all the data points in the world
0:26:03 on how to best target these people
0:26:05 and running the same kind of ad
0:26:07 and appreciate you painting the visual of like the fight,
0:26:10 you know, the slow mo, no, they’re falling.
0:26:13 So that makes sense.
0:26:15 – So yeah, we moved everything over to meta.
0:26:17 We started to use that ad.
0:26:19 We kind of created some new versions of it.
0:26:23 And then we started to test just still image ads.
0:26:28 And the still image ads have had much more stability
0:26:29 than the videos.
0:26:33 Videos are kind of fun, but they seem to fade out quicker.
0:26:34 You know, if you see the video once
0:26:35 and then you see it a second time,
0:26:37 you’re much more likely to just click past it
0:26:39 ’cause you already know what’s gonna happen.
0:26:41 Whereas an image kind of burns a picture
0:26:43 in someone’s mind, I guess you could say.
0:26:46 And if they see it again, it’s again top of mind,
0:26:48 all the information that you wanted presented to them
0:26:51 is instantly back at the front of their mind.
0:26:53 And that’s another one of those touch points
0:26:57 that you statistically need about seven to get your sale.
0:27:01 So still ads have been our new bread and butter
0:27:04 and what we’ve done to take us up to that seven figure point.
0:27:06 – Yeah, you have the initial awareness
0:27:10 and then onto interest, attraction, desire.
0:27:11 I don’t know what the acronym was,
0:27:13 but it’s something like that where,
0:27:14 okay, at first I gotta know you exist.
0:27:17 And then I gotta be, why should I care?
0:27:18 Why do I need this in my life?
0:27:20 Like, okay, and now I’m ready to trust you enough
0:27:22 to do business with you and go buy the thing.
0:27:26 Is there a metric for like a cost per sale
0:27:27 or like cost of acquisition?
0:27:28 How do you think about that
0:27:31 in terms of return on ad spend through Meta?
0:27:34 – Yeah, so it varies for us depending on the time of year.
0:27:37 And again, we’re only a little over three years in,
0:27:40 so we’re still learning some of these curves.
0:27:41 For the most part, you’re looking at,
0:27:44 during the good season, it costs about $15
0:27:45 to acquire a customer.
0:27:48 – Is the good season, like Q4, like holiday season,
0:27:49 or is that like–
0:27:52 – No way, Q4 is terrible for us, which is interesting.
0:27:53 – Well, it’s winter time.
0:27:55 Who’s buying sunglasses in the middle of winter?
0:27:57 – Exactly, but so for us,
0:27:59 we really see the uptick starts to happen around April
0:28:01 and it goes through around September.
0:28:03 So from like April to September
0:28:05 and spring and summer months,
0:28:07 everyone’s getting ready for their,
0:28:08 starting to get sunny out,
0:28:10 they wanna get their sun outfits together,
0:28:12 start thinking about sunglasses,
0:28:13 getting ready to go on vacation,
0:28:15 you gotta get a new set of sunglasses
0:28:16 for your new vacation, right?
0:28:19 So we see like a huge spike in demand
0:28:21 when it’s like nice, sunny weather outside,
0:28:23 whereas when it’s like gloomy,
0:28:25 sales obviously still come in,
0:28:27 but it costs almost double to acquire those customers.
0:28:28 – Okay, that makes sense.
0:28:32 Yeah, there’s some seasonality to the business, for sure.
0:28:34 More on Mike’s meta strategy in just a moment,
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0:30:58 On the targeting side,
0:31:01 just kind of letting Meta’s algorithm do its thing.
0:31:04 You mentioned maybe retargeting or maybe email marketing,
0:31:06 but what else is happening there?
0:31:07 Our current approach right now
0:31:10 is we have top-of-the-funnel ads,
0:31:11 and our top-of-the-funnel ads,
0:31:15 it’s still a conversion campaign when you go into Meta,
0:31:16 but the conversion event we’re looking for
0:31:18 is website visitors.
0:31:19 So it’s not traffic.
0:31:22 They’re trying to send you better quality traffic
0:31:22 through this point.
0:31:25 And what we see is we track through Google,
0:31:27 and we can see if somebody’s actually spending
0:31:30 a good amount of time and clicking around on our website
0:31:32 versus like arriving and bouncing.
0:31:34 And so we do that with interest targeting.
0:31:36 The three that are working for us right now
0:31:39 are a stack of law enforcement interests,
0:31:40 a stack of firefighter interests,
0:31:43 and then a 2% lookalike audience.
0:31:46 And we have different style top-of-the-funnel ads
0:31:46 for each of those.
0:31:49 But the point of them is to get them to the site,
0:31:50 and then they get hit with a pop-up
0:31:53 for 15% off their first order,
0:31:55 and to sign up for our email newsletter.
0:31:57 – Okay, is there a pretty good take rate
0:31:58 on that 15% offer?
0:32:00 – We got about 4% conversion rate
0:32:03 on those that are signing up for our email.
0:32:04 So still playing with it,
0:32:07 trying to get a little bit better, but they do convert.
0:32:10 – Yeah, can you explain what a 2% lookalike is?
0:32:13 – So a 2% lookalike, so we stack everything together.
0:32:17 So we run a lookalike audience on Instagram Engagers.
0:32:21 We run a lookalike audience on Facebook Engagers.
0:32:23 We run a lookalike audience on Purchases.
0:32:27 And then we’ve also taken our email list
0:32:30 and loaded that in to Meta and used that as well.
0:32:34 So we basically stack 2% lookalike on all of those things.
0:32:38 And the type of creative that works with–
0:32:39 – What’s the 2% refer to?
0:32:42 – It’s basically like how broad you can do anywhere
0:32:46 from like a 1% to a 10% audience lookalike.
0:32:50 And the smaller it is, the more like niche it is,
0:32:52 but the audience level is smaller.
0:32:55 So you can kind of play in a range there.
0:32:57 And we’ve just found that the 2%
0:33:00 seems to be the sweet spot for our brand.
0:33:04 This would be like more targeted rather than less.
0:33:07 – It’s looking at the things that are similar
0:33:09 about all the people in that profile
0:33:10 and finding a cold audience
0:33:13 that has those same key variables.
0:33:15 – Which is a incredible capability.
0:33:17 Like I love the ability to do this.
0:33:19 – Yeah, this is full blown Meta.
0:33:21 The magic of Meta is there.
0:33:24 They just know so much about our customers.
0:33:25 Probably know more about me than I know about me.
0:33:27 – Yeah, upload your customer list
0:33:30 and say find me more people like these people.
0:33:31 And they can do it.
0:33:34 – Exactly, and the ad copy or the style
0:33:36 that seems to work well with them is like founder,
0:33:38 founder videos, founder images.
0:33:41 So through that resonates with that group.
0:33:45 Whereas the firefighter interest has firefighter style
0:33:48 images, videos and law enforcement, same thing.
0:33:50 – Okay, is this you on camera modeling?
0:33:52 – On the founder stuff, yeah.
0:33:54 There’s, I’ve been on some different interviews
0:33:55 and things like that.
0:33:58 So yeah, it’s me. (laughs)
0:34:01 Which I was not comfortable with for a very long time.
0:34:03 But when you put your face to a brand,
0:34:07 it really does help to kind of build that trust
0:34:08 that people are looking for.
0:34:09 So it works.
0:34:10 – Okay, yeah, for sure.
0:34:12 And yeah, people connect with that
0:34:14 and say, yeah, I wanna support this guy.
0:34:15 – So we have that running.
0:34:18 Then we have a retargeting purchase one.
0:34:20 So anybody over the last 90 days
0:34:22 who’s been to our website gets targeted again.
0:34:25 But that one is a purchase campaign.
0:34:27 So it’s more expensive to get them to the site,
0:34:28 but they’ve already been vetted.
0:34:29 ‘Cause anybody in that list
0:34:32 has already shown an interest in our products.
0:34:34 And then we retarget via Google.
0:34:35 – And are you still running these yourself?
0:34:38 Or did you hire the kids from the patio in Coronado?
0:34:41 – No, no, I do everything on Meta myself.
0:34:43 And then I hired someone for Google
0:34:45 ’cause Google’s an interesting animal
0:34:48 that someday I would love to really learn.
0:34:52 But it’s a lot more complex on the surface.
0:34:55 And so it was worth it to get a specialist.
0:34:57 – For Google ads or for SEO?
0:34:58 – For ads, yeah.
0:35:00 – Did you expect to become a,
0:35:02 have to become a Meta ads expert
0:35:03 when you’re in the fire service?
0:35:06 And just like, oh, now I know all about this retargeting
0:35:09 and different types of layered campaigns.
0:35:11 Like, oh, we’re gonna start off with the traffic campaign
0:35:12 and then we’re gonna retarget those people
0:35:13 who were most engaged.
0:35:15 So now it’s a conversion campaign
0:35:17 and that brings down our cost of acquisition.
0:35:20 It’s like, you’re speaking a completely different language
0:35:21 than I imagined you were three years ago.
0:35:23 – It’s pretty funny, but what I’ve realized
0:35:24 is that I love it.
0:35:27 So if I had found myself in this career
0:35:30 to start with, I think marketing would have been something
0:35:32 that really would have fired me up.
0:35:36 I just, I never knew, I didn’t try, right?
0:35:38 But I miss the fire service for sure,
0:35:41 but this is definitely, I could talk about marketing
0:35:45 and for hours, it just puts a smile on my face.
0:35:47 And to be around other people who are doing it
0:35:49 and hearing what’s working for them
0:35:51 and trying it out in your own ad account.
0:35:53 And it’s just, it’s so fun.
0:35:55 – Well, you must be doing something right.
0:35:58 So I Googled, I imagine what would be a valuable keyword
0:36:00 for you sunglasses for firefighters.
0:36:02 I see frontline optics in the sponsored listings
0:36:05 and then it looks like we’re ranked third organically.
0:36:07 So something is working.
0:36:09 Lots of happy five star reviews on here.
0:36:10 – Yeah, we’re doing well.
0:36:12 It’s been a process, it’s been a fun road.
0:36:14 You know, we’re just getting started really
0:36:17 if you think about how big the sunglasses industry is
0:36:20 altogether, but we’re definitely carving out our space
0:36:24 as you know, the go-to brand for first responders.
0:36:25 – Yeah, outranking Oakley at this point.
0:36:27 So let’s keep it up.
0:36:27 – Keep it going.
0:36:31 – Anything specific that you did on the SEO side?
0:36:35 – Yeah, I mean, I’ve got the basics of SEO down,
0:36:37 but it’s an area that I lack in.
0:36:39 You know, I don’t speak the SEO language
0:36:42 and that’s, you know, it’s an area that in 2025,
0:36:45 I’m gonna be looking to learn more about
0:36:48 so I can better implement and better position the company
0:36:50 for some more organic growth.
0:36:51 – Are you selling on Amazon at all?
0:36:55 – I think that we may look into it now in 2025
0:36:57 with a couple of our model lines,
0:36:59 but I enjoy the fact that I have complete control
0:37:02 over like my customer experience, customer journey.
0:37:04 You know, when you reach out to us,
0:37:06 you get a human that is gonna contact you.
0:37:08 We put a lot of value in making sure,
0:37:10 you know, the people come first.
0:37:12 I really like what Zappos did
0:37:16 in being such a like customer service focused company.
0:37:17 That that’s kind of the foundation
0:37:20 for what I wanted to have happen here.
0:37:22 It’s my fellow brothers and sisters
0:37:24 and that are first responders.
0:37:25 I wanna make sure that I take care of them.
0:37:29 And so having like above and beyond customer service
0:37:29 was important.
0:37:32 And if I go to these marketplaces,
0:37:33 I don’t have as much control of that.
0:37:36 – Yeah, one advantage that you have
0:37:39 is that you have the traction in the email list
0:37:42 and the audience where if you want it to launch on Amazon,
0:37:45 you could absolutely provide that algorithm
0:37:48 with its own little boost and drive your own sales
0:37:50 and traffic and get rewarded for that.
0:37:52 Versus so many people, historically,
0:37:54 the play is I’m gonna start on Amazon
0:37:55 and I’m gonna take advantage of Amazon’s traffic
0:37:57 and customer base.
0:37:58 And then I’m gonna try to wean myself off it.
0:38:00 I think it’s so much harder to go that direction.
0:38:02 Amazon customers are Amazon customers
0:38:03 and they’re happy to stay in there.
0:38:05 – Yeah, I haven’t yet looked.
0:38:07 I know there’s tools that you can get to see
0:38:09 if people are like looking up your keywords.
0:38:11 So I’d probably get one of those tools and see
0:38:13 but I’m pretty sure just based off of how much
0:38:16 like direct traffic and Google traffic we get
0:38:19 that people see our ads and they go to other places
0:38:20 to come to our website.
0:38:21 So I wouldn’t be surprised at all
0:38:23 if people are jumping on Amazon
0:38:25 and typing in front line optics.
0:38:26 And if they don’t see it,
0:38:28 it’s, you know, that’s where the question mark comes in.
0:38:30 Do they then go find us somewhere else
0:38:33 or do they then click on somebody else’s product
0:38:34 and I’ve, you know, I’ve lost them.
0:38:36 So I think having some exposure
0:38:38 with maybe a limited product line on Amazon
0:38:40 is probably smart for us.
0:38:43 But the idea would be obviously to keep the majority
0:38:44 of the traffic coming to the website.
0:38:45 – Yeah, that’s funny.
0:38:46 I’ve done the same thing.
0:38:49 It’s like, you know, some probably saw some ad
0:38:51 or, you know, been targeted for something.
0:38:53 Let me go see if it’s available on Amazon.
0:38:55 And if it’s not, of course, they’re gonna serve you up
0:38:58 your competitors, they’re gonna serve up alternatives
0:38:59 ’cause they wanna make the conversion.
0:39:02 But if the branding is strong enough,
0:39:04 it’s like, I know, no, no, I guess I’ll go order
0:39:05 directly through their site
0:39:07 because that was the thing that I wanted.
0:39:10 So I imagine if the marketing and branding
0:39:11 and positioning has been strong enough, like, no, no, no,
0:39:13 I’m gonna go do business directly with front line.
0:39:17 That’s our hope, you know, it’s hard to see it, right?
0:39:20 That’s one of those things you can’t necessarily track.
0:39:22 You know, based off of how much growth we’ve had
0:39:24 and our conversion rates and all of that,
0:39:25 I feel like we’re doing a pretty good job
0:39:27 of speaking to our audience and keeping them.
0:39:29 – All right, so sales are cranking now.
0:39:32 You’ve got the 3PL, the third party logistics,
0:39:34 handling the fulfillment, the shippings.
0:39:37 You’re not running to the poster or running back home
0:39:39 and having the family, ’cause I imagine the order volume
0:39:42 is a little bit higher today than it was the early days.
0:39:45 At what point do you feel comfortable
0:39:47 leaving the fire service and all that entails?
0:39:49 ‘Cause it’s like, well, if I stick it out
0:39:51 for a few more years, I got this pension,
0:39:53 it can be a hard gig to walk away from.
0:39:55 – It kind of happened out of necessity.
0:39:58 So, you know, we had found that success on TikTok.
0:40:00 The company started to grow and it went from being
0:40:03 kind of like a nothing to a six figure company overnight.
0:40:07 And with that, you know, we started to go to trade shows
0:40:10 and, you know, opportunities for presenting themselves.
0:40:12 And I had taken vacation because this,
0:40:15 it’s called Vision Expo West, it’s in Las Vegas.
0:40:17 It came and my goal was to go there
0:40:21 and I wanted to find a, like a high end lens provider
0:40:24 and I wanted to find somebody who could do prescriptions.
0:40:27 – This is a trade show for the glasses industry.
0:40:28 – Correct. – Okay, love it.
0:40:30 – In addition, it was like, cool,
0:40:32 like I’m gonna take my wife to Las Vegas, right?
0:40:34 We haven’t had time together.
0:40:35 We’ve been with our kids.
0:40:38 We’re gonna get people to watch our kids for us.
0:40:39 And the two of us are gonna have this time.
0:40:43 It’ll be a work slash play like event for the two of us.
0:40:47 And so we went there, all work on that first two days.
0:40:49 And then the last day that we were there,
0:40:51 we went to go see the show, oh,
0:40:53 and we were hanging out together
0:40:55 and I feel my phone start buzzing in my pocket.
0:40:58 And I look and it’s fire department that’s calling
0:40:59 and they’re calling to notify me
0:41:01 that I’m being forced to work the next day.
0:41:03 And then I need to basically get there.
0:41:05 And it’s like 10 o’clock at night right now.
0:41:08 I’m in Las Vegas, we flew there, right?
0:41:10 There’s no way I’m gonna make it back in time.
0:41:12 And I kind of notified them,
0:41:15 but it was that moment where I just kind of looked
0:41:17 at my wife and I was like, we have this thing
0:41:20 that is growing and it’s not gonna be able to grow
0:41:22 to the point where I see it going.
0:41:25 If I keep having to answer this phone call
0:41:27 and go back to work, especially for one
0:41:29 that’s not providing us with any kind of balance.
0:41:32 So at that point, we kind of hit that moment
0:41:35 where it was like, maybe the fire service
0:41:37 isn’t for us anymore.
0:41:40 And we start to go down this new venture
0:41:42 and we did, we jumped off the cliff.
0:41:43 – Well, really good that you had,
0:41:45 you had lowered the height of the cliff,
0:41:47 which I think is maybe the most important thing
0:41:49 is a lot of people would get that call or that text.
0:41:51 Hey, I need you, I need you in the office.
0:41:53 I need you here by eight o’clock tomorrow.
0:41:54 And you have no control over your schedule,
0:41:55 no control over your calendar.
0:41:59 And it feels diminishing or almost maybe humiliating
0:42:00 is too strong, but it’s like, it’s just frustrating.
0:42:02 Like, ah, you know, that’s not what I was planning to do.
0:42:05 And now I am not in control of my own time.
0:42:06 – And a lot of people, well,
0:42:08 I don’t have anything to fall back on,
0:42:10 but you built this thing up to the point where you’re like,
0:42:12 hey, I think there’s an opportunity.
0:42:15 Here’s the writing on the wall that we can go
0:42:16 and we can go and do this.
0:42:17 We can pay ourselves.
0:42:19 We can cut our own paycheck with sunglasses sales.
0:42:21 – Yeah, that was the start of it.
0:42:22 We started to kind of think about it.
0:42:25 And within about 30 days, we had decided
0:42:27 that was what we were gonna do and put in my notice.
0:42:29 Yeah, left the fire department
0:42:31 and became a full-time sunglasses mogul,
0:42:32 I guess you could say.
0:42:35 – There you go, full-time sunglasses salesman.
0:42:36 Where’s your time going today
0:42:38 if there is such thing as a day in the life?
0:42:40 – I still split my time a little bit.
0:42:43 So the fire service and particularly being a paramedic
0:42:45 is something that’s very, very important to me.
0:42:48 So I still teach and I teach at the local community college.
0:42:50 I teach EMT and paramedic down there.
0:42:52 That’s my new side hustle, I guess you could say.
0:42:54 – Nice, nice, by choice, yes.
0:42:56 – Yeah, sunglasses are the main one.
0:42:59 So generally I dedicate one day a week to teaching
0:43:02 and on the rest of them, I start off my day.
0:43:04 I send a video message to all my customers.
0:43:07 So I use this app called Bonjuro
0:43:09 and you can literally record yourself.
0:43:11 And so I personally thank everybody
0:43:13 who buys a pair of sunglasses from us
0:43:15 with a video from me.
0:43:17 – Oh my gosh, how many of these are you doing a day?
0:43:18 There’s gotta be dozens.
0:43:21 – It’s like about 50 to 60 a day.
0:43:22 – Oh my gosh, okay.
0:43:25 – You know, but they’re 15 seconds or so.
0:43:27 It’s a lot, but at the same time,
0:43:30 I’m trying very hard to take an impersonal transaction
0:43:31 and make it personal.
0:43:34 – Yeah, this is the old example of do things
0:43:35 that don’t scale, right?
0:43:38 – And some would argue that they do scale
0:43:41 because it’ll increase your LTV on a customer, right?
0:43:43 – Yeah, how do we turn a one-time order
0:43:44 into hopefully a customer for life?
0:43:47 – Exactly, and what’s to say it doesn’t scale
0:43:49 ’cause I can always hire somebody
0:43:52 once it gets to the point where it’s taking up hours
0:43:54 of the day or it’s right now, it’s not, you know,
0:43:56 they’re quick.
0:43:57 – Do people write you back?
0:43:59 Like what’s the reaction that you get on those?
0:44:00 – People are pretty ecstatic.
0:44:01 So the ones who write back
0:44:04 or they’re all kind of blown away by the customer service.
0:44:06 – Yeah, like wait, with the founder of the company
0:44:08 to send me a personal video message?
0:44:09 Like that’s really cool.
0:44:11 – Exactly, that doesn’t happen, right?
0:44:12 And that’s what we do, right?
0:44:14 We’re trying to shake things up
0:44:15 and do things a little differently
0:44:17 and make people feel important ’cause they are, right?
0:44:19 Like my business wouldn’t survive
0:44:21 if there weren’t people who were purchasing it.
0:44:23 So I’m thankful for each and every one of those people
0:44:26 who decides to, you know, take that gamble
0:44:27 and buy from a company that they’ve never heard of before.
0:44:29 You know, that’s how I kind of start my day.
0:44:31 I have a content day, so like on Fridays,
0:44:34 I generally try and do all of my content,
0:44:36 whether I’m taking pictures of the glasses,
0:44:38 doing little videos of the glasses,
0:44:40 preparing things for our graphics people
0:44:41 to put sales together.
0:44:43 That’s kind of one of the days.
0:44:45 And I guess what I should say
0:44:48 is I try and chunk my days out with a particular task.
0:44:50 So I’m not jumping from one thing to the next,
0:44:51 to the next over that day.
0:44:55 I kind of put my mindset to a particular task
0:44:57 and I just bang that out for the duration of the day.
0:44:59 But it always starts with my thank yous.
0:45:02 – How do you keep coming up with new content ideas
0:45:03 after three years of doing this?
0:45:06 How many different pictures of sunglasses can you take?
0:45:08 That’s what I worry about,
0:45:11 but you’ve managed to be a pretty prolific content creator.
0:45:13 – You just get different pictures of different people
0:45:14 and different environments.
0:45:16 You start looking into different markets,
0:45:19 like what does a first responder do on their day off
0:45:21 and start kind of looking into those spaces.
0:45:23 You know, a lot of it is a rinse and repeat,
0:45:25 but just a refresh, right?
0:45:28 So this worked, this angle worked, this headline worked,
0:45:30 but we just need to freshen up the image or freshen up.
0:45:32 It’s a different time of year.
0:45:34 Like right now, the gifting angle works really well.
0:45:37 So a lot of those same graphics that worked in earlier,
0:45:38 you change up the headline
0:45:40 and it’s like a gifting style headline
0:45:42 and it’ll start to deliver.
0:45:43 Yeah, just playing around with it.
0:45:45 You gotta be testing always.
0:45:47 You never know what’s gonna work
0:45:48 or what the algorithm’s gonna like.
0:45:51 – Yeah, tweaking different headlines and images and angles
0:45:54 and playing around with different split testing
0:45:57 of the ads and ad copy and everything that goes into it.
0:45:58 Trying to keep growing this thing
0:46:00 and it sounds like it’s growing really well.
0:46:01 – Yeah, it’s scary.
0:46:06 – You mentioned the initial traffic campaign
0:46:09 was kind of just a donation to the Zuckerberg fund
0:46:12 of like, well, great, thanks for getting me some visitors
0:46:13 but no customers.
0:46:16 Anything else that stands out to you as a mistake
0:46:18 or even a surprise good or bad along the way?
0:46:21 – Yeah, you know, the most recent one would be like
0:46:23 this recent Black Friday, right?
0:46:26 So everyone gets caught up in this concept that, you know,
0:46:30 Black Friday, Cyber Monday is the super bowl season
0:46:32 of sales and you hear these stories
0:46:35 that there’s companies that do, you know, 90% of their sales
0:46:38 in those four days, you know, or just a month in November.
0:46:42 Even though looking at our sales history,
0:46:45 we always have this dip in like October, November.
0:46:48 I decided that this year I was gonna go all in on ads
0:46:50 for Black Friday, Cyber Monday
0:46:53 and it was a big skinning the knees moment
0:46:55 ’cause it did not work.
0:46:56 Now we brought in a lot of new customers.
0:46:58 We brought in a lot of people into the brand
0:47:01 but it was not profitable and we spent a lot of money
0:47:02 to kind of get there.
0:47:06 So that was just essentially acting off of emotion
0:47:09 instead of acting off of the math and the data
0:47:11 and the data and the math all told me not to do it
0:47:13 but I had to try it anyway.
0:47:15 You know, that’s a big one but they’re always gonna happen
0:47:18 and it’s okay ’cause think about a little kid, right?
0:47:21 A little kid touches a hot stove or falls and skins
0:47:25 their knee from doing something and they learn a lesson
0:47:27 and they don’t do that particular thing again.
0:47:28 We’re doing the same thing, right?
0:47:30 I’m a toddler when it comes to business.
0:47:34 So the only way I’m gonna learn what to do or not to do
0:47:37 is to experience it, feel the pain
0:47:39 and know that that wasn’t something to do again
0:47:41 and learn from it and that’s how we grow
0:47:42 and we get better.
0:47:44 – Yeah, you never know until you try
0:47:46 but it can be painful and hopefully, you know,
0:47:49 the company is young, hopefully people like the glasses,
0:47:50 they tell five friends, right?
0:47:54 Like there’s ways where maybe over the lifetime value
0:47:56 that customer may hopefully break even
0:47:58 and become profitable on those ad costs
0:48:00 even if it wasn’t in month one.
0:48:02 – Exactly, it’s all about that lifetime value, right?
0:48:03 – Yeah, what’s next?
0:48:05 What’s next for you in front line?
0:48:06 What are you excited about these days?
0:48:07 – Just continuing to grow.
0:48:09 You know, I wanna grow, I wanna expand the team.
0:48:11 One of the things we’re trying to do
0:48:15 is get these things what’s called ANZZ 87 plus certified
0:48:18 and so once they are certified from that level,
0:48:22 they become true eye protection and not just sunglasses
0:48:25 and with that comes the ability to bid on like contracts.
0:48:27 So you can bid on contracts with the military,
0:48:30 you can bid on contracts for, you know,
0:48:35 having these sunglasses issued as a piece of PPE, essentially.
0:48:37 So new firefighter comes on board,
0:48:39 they get their set of turnouts, they get their helmet
0:48:41 and they get an issued pair of protective eyewear
0:48:44 that is from a, you know, first responder brand,
0:48:45 supports first responder brands
0:48:48 and it just would make for a good fit.
0:48:49 – How hard is it to get this certification?
0:48:51 That sounds like a great path forward.
0:48:53 – I’m not gonna say that it’s simple
0:48:56 but it’s not incredibly difficult.
0:48:59 The hardest part about it is you make a mold
0:49:01 that you think is gonna work on paper, right?
0:49:03 And then you put it through the test
0:49:06 and it has a fail point and then you have to go back
0:49:08 to the drawing boards and do another mold
0:49:10 and each one of those molds can cost you anywhere
0:49:12 from like three to $5,000.
0:49:15 So the process to get there can be expensive
0:49:17 but the upside is dramatic, so.
0:49:18 – Okay, well, we’ve got an episode
0:49:20 on landing government contracts.
0:49:22 I’ll have to send that one to you after the fact
0:49:24 ’cause it’s like, hey, this is the largest customer
0:49:27 in the world, you know, they print the money.
0:49:28 Let’s go after this guys.
0:49:30 – Absolutely, please send it.
0:49:32 – Well, very cool, frontline-optics.com.
0:49:33 That’s where you can find Mike
0:49:35 and grab a pair of those glasses yourself
0:49:38 if you are a first responder
0:49:40 or just you don’t want a pair of durable sunglasses.
0:49:41 Go check them out over there.
0:49:42 Let’s wrap this thing up
0:49:44 with your number one tip for side hustle nation.
0:49:47 – Mindset is key to everything.
0:49:49 You always hear people talk about, you know,
0:49:51 a glass being half empty, you know, or half full.
0:49:53 If you look at the downside of things
0:49:55 and kind of have this poor me mentality,
0:49:57 you’re never gonna see like the silver lining
0:49:59 of a learning opportunity.
0:50:02 So having that mindset, knowing that you need to try,
0:50:04 that you’re going to fail,
0:50:07 but with each failure comes a teachable lesson
0:50:09 that will make you successful in the future
0:50:11 is what’s most important.
0:50:14 So have that mindset, be ready for these things to happen,
0:50:17 learn from them as they happen, take the wins as wins,
0:50:20 but then also don’t get so excited about the wins.
0:50:21 Look at them the same way and figure out
0:50:24 why did you win so that you can continue to win.
0:50:26 So it’s, you know, it’s all in your mind.
0:50:28 That would be the biggest thing you could do
0:50:31 is make sure you have a good, solid mindset.
0:50:33 – Yeah, this is something that comes up
0:50:35 more often than you’d like to think.
0:50:37 You know, it’s something we work on with the kids
0:50:38 all the time.
0:50:40 My son had a, they were riding high
0:50:41 after their first basketball game.
0:50:42 He’s in third grade.
0:50:44 So it’s like pretty sloppy looking basketball
0:50:46 to begin with, but they crushed in their first game.
0:50:47 Quadrupled the other team’s points.
0:50:49 Game two, different story.
0:50:51 They’re on the receiving end of this shellacking.
0:50:54 And it was this wake up call, like, well, yeah, you know,
0:50:55 you can’t dribble the ball to your shoulder.
0:50:56 It’s going to get stolen, you know.
0:50:58 So this mindset, you don’t lose, you learn,
0:50:59 and hopefully you learn.
0:51:02 And otherwise you did, you did lose some,
0:51:05 but with every, with every setback comes this opportunity
0:51:08 and mindset really is the key to appreciating that
0:51:09 and not being down in the dumps.
0:51:10 Whoa, is me.
0:51:11 I’m an abject failure.
0:51:12 It’s never going to get better.
0:51:13 Mike, this has been awesome.
0:51:15 Really appreciate you joining me.
0:51:16 Couple takeaways before we wrap.
0:51:21 I really like this kind of example of product plus niche.
0:51:23 Like, I think it’d be really tough to start
0:51:26 just a broad sunglasses brand to use your example.
0:51:29 But if we sell sunglasses, durable sunglasses
0:51:30 for first responders, like, okay, now we got a niche.
0:51:32 Now we can speak to this audience.
0:51:34 I like the idea of targeting uniform jobs.
0:51:38 Like, look, this is the one area of personalization of style
0:51:38 that I can get.
0:51:40 Like, what other jobs are out there wearing uniforms
0:51:42 that you might be able to pivot and target to?
0:51:43 I like that.
0:51:45 I love the influencer outreach strategy,
0:51:46 the micro influencers.
0:51:48 We’re going to send out a thousand free pairs
0:51:50 and try and build up some goodwill within this community.
0:51:53 We’re going to recruit ambassadors for the brand.
0:51:54 That was really cool.
0:51:57 And then as with e-commerce and really probably any brand,
0:51:59 it’s this game of lifetime value
0:52:02 minus cost of acquisition equals profitability, right?
0:52:04 And so what’s our customer going to be worth?
0:52:06 We don’t know, starting out,
0:52:07 hopefully it’s more than a one-time order.
0:52:08 And then how much does it cost
0:52:11 to acquire that customer through either our own
0:52:13 Blood, Sweat and Tears organically
0:52:14 or through paid acquisition channels.
0:52:18 And it’s a game that you found has been really exciting
0:52:19 to learn and play.
0:52:21 Your listener bonus for this episode
0:52:24 is my list of 25 e-commerce niche ideas
0:52:25 to get your creative juices flowing.
0:52:28 Download that for free at the show notes for this episode.
0:52:31 Just follow the show notes link in the episode description.
0:52:32 It’ll get you right over there.
0:52:33 And if you like this one,
0:52:35 you’re wondering what to listen to next.
0:52:37 I’ve got a recommendation for you,
0:52:39 couple e-commerce recommendations for you.
0:52:43 I think we’ll get a kick out of number 589 with Lou Rice.
0:52:48 This is the story of a really novel idea,
0:52:49 like a little silicone strap
0:52:51 that goes on the back of your Kindle device.
0:52:54 And when we spoke, Lou was selling the crap
0:52:56 out of these things and a similar strategy,
0:52:59 targeting book influencers on TikTok.
0:53:00 It was kind of how the initial traction game,
0:53:02 and then she went on Amazon after the fact,
0:53:04 but really simple product,
0:53:06 great marketing behind it and some great results.
0:53:07 And then we’ve got another one,
0:53:08 I’ll dig up the episode for you,
0:53:10 so it was on a skincare brand.
0:53:12 And it was similar, like paid acquisition.
0:53:14 And then what was cool about that was like,
0:53:15 it was a recurring subscription survey.
0:53:18 Every month, you’re gonna need to renew your skincare tube
0:53:19 or bottle or whatever it was.
0:53:22 And so that was like a pretty boy was the brand.
0:53:23 So it was all like, hey, pretty boy kind of stuff.
0:53:26 So really a couple other e-com examples
0:53:28 to get those juices flowing for you.
0:53:30 But big thanks to Mike for sharing his insight.
0:53:31 Big thanks to our sponsors
0:53:33 for helping make this content free for everyone.
0:53:36 As always, you can hit up sidehustlenation.com/deals
0:53:39 for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place.
0:53:41 Thank you for supporting the advertisers
0:53:42 and support the show.
0:53:43 That is it for me.
0:53:44 Thank you so much for tuning in.
0:53:45 If you’re finding value in the show,
0:53:47 the greatest compliment is to share with a friend,
0:53:49 to fire off that text message.
0:53:50 Hey, maybe we should start our own sunglasses brand.
0:53:52 Hey, check this out until next time.
0:53:54 Let’s go out there and make something happen,
0:53:55 and I’ll catch you in the next edition
0:53:57 of the Side Hustle Show.