#731 – I Built A 7-Figure TikTok Shop Product

Jonny Bradley didn’t “quit Amazon” and disappear. He rebuilt from scratch on TikTok Shop and took one SKU to a seven-figure run rate. After years of selling on Amazon (and using Helium 10 for keyword research, review insights, and day-to-day optimization), he intentionally sunset his Amazon brands following a life-changing personal season, then leaned into a new mission: health and longevity. The twist? He didn’t launch the traditional way with Amazon-first or Shopify-first. He went straight into TikTok Shop, where distribution is driven by content, not listings.

The core lesson for sellers: on TikTok, you’re not a product company, you’re a content company that monetizes through a product. Jonny explains how they started with founder-led content to create social proof (because creators won’t care about you at zero), then “pattern-broke” with a hook that flipped what everyone else was doing in the niche: instead of “I took NMN for 30 days and feel amazing,” he led with “I’ve been taking NMN for 18 months and I’m sick…” (sick of the shady industry). That approach drove views, comments, and a reply-to-comments content loop that turned into shoppable videos, while a handful of high-performing affiliates helped accelerate momentum.

Scaling brought real-world seller headaches: inventory, cash flow, and fulfillment. They moved from a 3PL to FBT (Fulfilled by TikTok) as soon as possible and managed growth with tight reorders and aggressive cash flow cycles. Jonny also shares an underrated edge: treating creators like partners, not disposable traffic with WhatsApp groups, direct support, and small gestures that build loyalty in a space where creators can promote your competitor tomorrow. Now he’s applying the same playbook to a US launch from zero, proving this isn’t “TikTok luck”, it’s a repeatable system Amazon sellers can learn from.

In episode 731 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Jonny discuss:

• 00:00 – Quit Amazon, Build 7-Figure TikTok SKU
• 00:24 – Jonny Bradley’s Backstory
• 02:12 – Job Lessons and Brand Mindset
• 05:22 – Early Amazon Wins and Differentiation
• 08:48 – Using Helium 10 For Amazon Growth
• 10:24 – Why He Sunset Amazon 
• 12:12 – Pivot To Longevity and Choosing NMN
• 16:17 – TikTok Launch: 1 SKU To 7-Figure Run Rate
• 24:24 – TikTok Isn’t Set-And-Forget
• 25:00 – “We’re A Content Company” Reality
• 29:12 – Creator System: Samples and 50–70 Videos/Day
• 32:09 – US Expansion Plan: Social Proof, Ads, and Affiliate

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

This seller wound down his Amazon business, but then started a new brand from scratch on TikTok Shop and built one SKU to be a seven-figure product. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that’s a completely BS-free, organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And I’m here, speaking of different places in the physical world, I’m here in London and meeting for the first time here somebody who I’ve always wanted to meet because his name is Johnny Bradley.

Bradley Sutton:

My name is Bradley John Sutton, that’s my middle name. My son’s name is Johnny, so I feel like we’re always destined to meet, so great to meet you in person here. It’s interesting because it’s definitely indicative of the times we’re living in where it’s not just about Amazon, where you can find success online, and so I think that’s important for people to know. And it’s not just in the USA where, you know, people can find success. So let’s just go, you know, since this is your first time, you know, on the podcast that we’re meeting you, let’s just get to your origins. Where were you born and raised?

Jonny:

In the UK. And thank you for having me. It’s been, I’ve been a listener for a long, long time.

Bradley Sutton:

First-time caller, long-time listener, yeah.

Jonny:

Yeah, so I grew up in Hertfordshire, and I don’t have like what I would class as like, oh, go home, that’s where I live, because I’ve lived in North London, in Hertfordshire, in Norfolk, all over the place, but I’m in Oxfordshire at the moment. So UK born and bred.

Bradley Sutton:

What’s your football team that you follow?

Jonny:

I know you were at football the other day, and I was going to ask a question, but I have zero, like, understanding of football.

Bradley Sutton:

Is that allowed for somebody from, who’s British?

Jonny:

No, I’m a nerd in other ways. I’ll just sit there on the computer, looking at pictures of e-commerce products and stuff like that. Yeah, that stuff confuses me, basically.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. All right. Did you ever go to university?

Jonny:

Yeah, I did music technology. So this is actually what I think has helped me with e-commerce over the years, is that I have a creative mind. I look for imagery. I look for marketing angles. Not so good with the numbers. I was okay with music. I was good. I just wasn’t good enough to make an income from it, because there were some people in my class in my year that were just incredible musicians, and even them, for them to make a living from music would still be incredibly difficult. So, I was like, this ain’t going to work for me. I got a job for Apple, and I was there for five years. I started just selling the products, and then became their trainer for their store. So I trained about 80 staff. And to be honest, that actually gave me the foundations for what I think a good company should be, a good brand should be. And when I started Amazon in 2017, after about a year of procrastination, at that time, if you remember, it’s a different world, right? I then was thinking, well, everything I know about products is not this. So, I was trying to then get closer to that as the years went on, and Amazon has gone that way, like it should have. So I think my history, the fact that I went through the music thing, I went for Apple for a long time, I think that shaped me as an entrepreneur of what I think greatness should look like. I’m certainly not great, but I want to try and be great. And that brought me to the last, what, seven, eight years, you know, being an entrepreneur.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. And what, like, at what point did entrepreneurship, you know, take over as like your full-time income?

Jonny:

In 2017.

Bradley Sutton:

So right away, you found the success right away.

Jonny:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It happened very, very quickly, fortunately. Previously to that, I was a struggling entrepreneur. Uh, even from the point of when I was at school, I would sell CDs, cigarettes, no, but this, I would, I would, uh, roll, this is bad. I would get, buy tobacco. I didn’t smoke. I would buy tobacco and I would roll them and I would sell them to people as packs. That’s one of the things I did. I would, I was always trying to be entrepreneurial. I just didn’t really know what it was. I set up a little recording studio at home. I would mow lawns. I was always trying to make money, um, cause it was interesting to me, you know, to pay for, you know, maybe a new guitar or a new whatever. Um, and even at university I was teaching guitar to, to, to pay to go out and, uh, my first business was a complete failure. And it was only until Amazon came along that I was like, ah, like after years and years of years of trying to figure out how, what business is. So then go, oh, this is actually how it works. And you don’t have to invent something. You don’t have to be some mastermind. And, um, it was that kind of aha moment. I was like, ah, right. This makes sense now. Okay. I get it.

Bradley Sutton:

What was the first successful product you sold? What kind of product?

Jonny:

Well, I guess the first larger success was not my first product. It did okay. The second one I did was a posture corrector. And if you, you know,

Bradley Sutton:

Those are all the rates back in the day.

Jonny:

Yeah. They were hot. I managed to get that on fairly early. Um, and it was ranked pretty, pretty well. A few bouts as bestseller. And at that time, um, it was a case of get bestseller, go out of stock, climb back up, get better, go out of stock. And so that was really successful straight, like straight away. And then at the same time I was discussing on YouTube what I was doing, I had a very small YouTube channel and I was just going, this is what I’m doing. This is how it’s working. This is me making mistakes. And it wasn’t just Amazon. I was trying to do other things to try and pay my way through, you know, being an entrepreneur. And from that, I was like, I want to launch a product and show people what I was doing because it’s, it’s hard to find back then, not as much now, back then it was hard to find case studies of here’s what it is, but there’s actually what it looks like in real life because you’re worried about people copying you and that sort of stuff. I thought, let me do a product where if people copy me, fine, they’ll copy me. That’s not the purpose of it. I’m doing it so I can show what I’m doing. And I did a water bottle, really simple, like sports water bottle. And the gap that I found in that market was, you know, the ones where it’s like 1am time to drink up. Like 1pm.

Bradley Sutton:

How much water are you drinking at 1am?

Jonny:

I’m not drinking a water at all. And I was like, that doesn’t make sense because if you need to be reminded, if you have to look at the bottle to be reminded.

Bradley Sutton:

You must have already known.

Jonny:

Then you already know because you’re looking at the damn bottles. And then I was having like breakfast and I got a notification on my phone. I looked at it straight away and I’m like, oh, that’s how we do it. So, I just made an app that reminded you, you put in your weight, your age, your activity levels and it just sent you reminders throughout the day like, hey, time to take a drink. That was it. That was the

Bradley Sutton:

So the bottle was on Amazon. Yeah. Just a normal bottle. And then it like, when they got it, they would get like a QR code or something to download the app.

Jonny:

Yeah. Nice and simple. And you could then put that on the main image and that sort of stuff. And that because the bottles, generally speaking, like low margins, it allowed us to have a healthy margin and stand out a little bit.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah.

Jonny:

And I showed that to people and I thought that was, you know, refreshing. Of course, like copycats came along, like whatever it is, what it is.

Bradley Sutton:

And they even copied the idea about the app though, too, or

Jonny:

A couple, but at a certain point in time, it’s like, well, if it’s a good idea, then obviously people are going to copy it. I did learn that making apps is a nightmare. I don’t want to do it again because like Apple changed one thing and you’re like, well, it doesn’t work anymore.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah.

Jonny:

But I think the overall cost of doing it when you spread out per bottle, it’s like under a, under a penny per bottle. So the cost isn’t actually that high.

Bradley Sutton:

But a good differentiator, you know, there’s not much differentiators you can do for an Amazon product that costs less than a penny per unit.

Jonny:

No, but in hindsight, what I would have done is I would have approached someone with an app that they have their monetization on point and I would have some sort of affiliate or partnership with them. So, I would be promoting their app for free.

Bradley Sutton:

But you wouldn’t have to worry about the maintenance of it.

Jonny:

And I don’t do any of that nonsense. Yeah. And in hindsight, after, you know, a year or two of doing it, I was like, yeah, that was stupid.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay.

Jonny:

But I’ll do it differently next time.

Bradley Sutton:

How did you use Helium 10 for your Amazon brands when you were hot and heavy on Amazon? I know you pivoted. We’re talking about that.

Jonny:

Pretty much everything. So, I think I’ve been with you guys since almost very big, the very beginning. Not quite the beginning, but almost. And that started off with the keyword research stuff and, you know, turning that into PPC and monitoring that stuff. But it was when things like the review insights, like I remember talking about that so much and then lots of people just not knowing what it was. And I was like, you’ve got to download all the reports and then do this. And I know at some point Amazon kind of shut down some of the access to that, but still you could get all the data and you can still go and use that to then find out what the pain points were, what customer issues were. And I’d always been talking about my thing was the one product strategy. Find a way to do one product, right. And really serve a customer rather than what I learned at the very beginning, which was, you know, just slap anything on something that has, you know, low reviews and high sales. And it was a combination of using all of those keywords, research tools, the reverse ACE in stuff, Cerebro, sorry, the review insights. And then later on into like the profit calc stuff and all that, all those sorts of things to have day-to-day running. Even things like having an email when basically someone’s left you a bad review. All those things are very useful and just part of the furniture, part of the business.

Bradley Sutton:

Now why the pivot to a different platform? Because if I’m not mistaken, like you’re not doing much on Amazon now.

Jonny:

No, I’ve still got a couple of things like knocking around there. But generally speaking, last year, I use the term sunset. It’s just let them die, right. And that is because of just a tragic event in my life, which was at the beginning of 2020, 2024. So, I had just done an award ceremony for my academy members at the time. And I think that represented at least 10 million sold on Amazon UK, giving out awards to people, million-pound awards and 100K awards and stuff like that. And then literally a few days later, my brother unexpectedly passed away. It’s something called hemochromatosis is where you overload iron in your body. It’s a genetic disease and it’s really, really well managed. No one dies from it. And he was massively let down by the health industry. At the same time, my daughter was three months old, not sleeping.

Jonny:

So I was sleep deprived at the time anyway. And then after all of this, my partner was my fiance, I should say. She was misdiagnosed with a brain tumor. And we lived with that for a while until we found out that they made a mistake. And if anyone’s had anything like that happen in their lives, you know that like business and things, it just takes a backseat. It really does. And it made me re-evaluate what I wanted in the future of my life. And I was spinning all of these plates, Amazon, my academy staff, home staff, all the little projects I wanted to do. And I just had that realization of I need to focus on what I want to do because I could die. And everyone around me could die. And it was really, you know, morbid, but it was true. So, I was like, right, what do I want? And it took me a few months to figure this out, by the way. I’ve always been into health optimization and longevity. And although it’s quite ironic that at the beginning of the year, my brother passed away, I would say too young.

Jonny:

And at the end of the year, launching a brand to try and help make people live longer. There’s like a poetic irony there. I prefer grief with the business plan personally. So, if I’m going to, if I’m going to be in grief, I might as well make it a business. And I thought, right, this is it. This is, I’m going to do this. And I’ve, I’ve been interested in a few supplements particularly. And because of when you’re on Amazon and you look at the images and I’ve always looked at image first, like let’s go with, if we can get the click, we are far more likely to get the sale. That’s like the majority of the work. And I looked at that and you’re always looking for patterns. What can you do to disrupt? What can you do to like catch attention? And I just turned my eye to TikTok just a little bit. I wasn’t expecting anything. And I started to see patterns with products in terms of videos, like hooks that creators were using. And I said, hey, here’s, this is an opportunity. If everyone’s doing this, then we just do that. And I thought it’d be interesting as a case study, at least even if it fails, how can we succeed on TikTok? Because Amazon, everyone knows the rules at this point. And sometimes we, you know, they get broken. Sometimes you get the, the, the slap down from Amazon. Um, but TikTok, there’s less understanding about it. And there’s certainly at that time, less tools, almost no tools that you could really actually use. So, I was like, right, I’m just going to put all my effort into that and just learn it.

Bradley Sutton:

What, what was first? Did you decide what the product was you’re going to make, or you decided, hey, I’m going to sell on TikTok because this is, I think is the opportunity. Now let me think about the product, which, which came about first.

Jonny:

It was, I really liked the product and I felt it was not being served well on any platform. Um, maybe other than people’s own websites, but on Amazon, it was being underserved because, um, essentially, it’s you can’t sell it on Amazon because of an EU rule. So, people kind of skirt the rules to, to sell it. And on TikTok you can, because they use UK rules and, uh, people, I just don’t think they were doing a good job.

Bradley Sutton:

What kind of product is it?

Jonny:

So it’s a supplement called NMN, nicotinamide mononucleotide. It’s basically like a really complex form of vitamin B3. And it’s used for like energy production and mitochondria, uh, loads of studies done into and is one that I’d been taking for about 18 months beforehand. And I tested my blood before and after and all that sort of stuff. And I think this is some solid research. It’s a solid, uh, like longevity supplement. But when you went on it, really any marketplace, it was hard to tell if something was legit. If it was, um, tested, you know, if you’re, they’re doing tests of potency, well, where’s, where’s the report? And if it’s hard to find it, why? And if it’s got lots of fillers, why? What’s the reason for that? And the more I started learning about it, the more I was going, this is actually an opportunity. And the more I started seeing content and product listings everywhere, I was like, oh, this is, this is definitely an opportunity. So, I think it was in maybe August, September time of that year. I was like, I’m, I’m going to do this.

Bradley Sutton:

We’re talking on 2024, 2025,

Jonny:

2024.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay.

Jonny:

Yeah. So I’m, I’m doing this. Um, and we just thought it was me and my co-founder Jack. So he’s, he’s like the numbers, smart person. I’m like the world. Let’s just do this, dude. I’m like the, he basically, I try and make the money and he tries and saves it.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah.

Jonny:

Okay. Okay. Um, and we’re like, yeah, this is a really good idea. It’s something I’m passionate about, which I think is, is important for the long-term growth. And there’s a gap in the market. Let’s try and find that market within. We, we launched in mid-December of that year. Everything’s manufactured in the UK. So, it was nice and easy to get it quickly. Um, within two months, we were like second top in the market for, for that product. Four months, we hit a seven-figure run rate.

Bradley Sutton:

And this was one SKU?

Jonny:

One SKU Yeah. And it was hard.

Bradley Sutton:

Talk about those first few months. Um, TikTok you know, not many brands start a brand-new product on TikTok, you know, without it being on Shopify or Amazon or something first. And, um, you know, it was a newer platform. So, was it you guys mainly making content and then going viral? Did you leverage a lot of, uh, influencer, uh, marketing? What, what, what went on there?

Jonny:

Um, initially it was our own content because no, no creators are gonna care about you. If you have no social proof, similarly to Amazon, if you’ve got no, no sales, no history, no ranking, no reviews, then no one cares. So, I know that I needed to get people to care. Uh, and that came from creating our own content, which was essentially me going, here’s what’s in the marketplace right now in terms of content. And if I’m in the algorithm of I’m seeing this stuff every day, I need to display something to them that is different to what they’re seeing. So the hook that I kept hearing again and again and again is I’ve been taking NMN for 30 days and I’m positive outcome, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Jonny:

So mine was, I’ve been taking NMN for 18 months and I’m sick. So it was just trying to turn that hook on its head a little bit for someone to go, Oh, I will watch that. And it was, it wasn’t saying I’m sick of the product is I’m sick of these things about the, the industry. And here’s what we’ve done to, to rectify that. That video had hundreds of thousands of views and that opened up hundreds of comments, which we could then reply to with content, which then can become shoppable. And that’s when it started to spread. Um, and we’ve got affiliates on board, not many though. It was, you know, a handful of affiliates that we got samples out to because we really didn’t understand how important that was at the beginning. And some of them just, they just killed it. They just did. They did really, really good jobs.

Bradley Sutton:

Um, what kind of a commission were you offering for those?

Jonny:

I think is anywhere between 20 and 25% for an organic sale and then for ads. And actually, at this time you, we didn’t run ads with affiliate content because in the UK you couldn’t have a different commission for ads. And I think we only got that like, I don’t know, halfway through the year, whatever, whenever it was, but in the US you could do that. So our like our account manager was like, Oh yeah, you should be able to do it. We’re like, no, we don’t. Can you give us access to it please? But eventually we got it. And then that’s like anywhere between five and like 10%.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, um, was this always fulfilled by TikTok? You have a 3PL who was shipping this stuff out for you or what?

Jonny:

Initially. Yep. We had a 3PL and then we got access into FBT, uh, and then we’ve transitioned everything to that as soon as possible. So the price at that time, at least it was a lot cheaper. You know, those are some real big incentives to get people to use the fulfillment centers. The prices are going up now, of course. Um, and now we solely use FBT for that. And then 3PL for like Shopify and that sort of stuff.

Bradley Sutton:

What did you end 2025 in sales and gross sales about?

Jonny:

I think we wanted to hit 1 million. We didn’t, unfortunately. Um, but we did roughly around 750,000 which was incredible growth. And as you can imagine a stock and cashflow nightmare.

Bradley Sutton:

And supplement pretty good margins on there compared to Amazon, what you were doing on Amazon.

Jonny:

Um, yes. Yeah. It was decent margin, decent net margin. Um, I’m not the numbers guy, so I’ll probably hash it up. But it was probably around 15 to 20% net, but we were able to scale and, you know, pay off like, like credit cards and all those sorts of things, uh, and pay over odds. Like we worked out that we probably overpaid on stock about 50 to 75,000 pounds in overpaying to try and get lower volumes. So we could order smaller amounts more often. Um, you know, we have new suppliers now where we do much larger orders and they were like, oh, if only we had this from day one.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah.

Jonny:

Oh, wouldn’t it be amazing? We just couldn’t order that. We just couldn’t meet the MOQs for those. Um, so all in all, it was, it was a good year. It allowed us to grow. And it was honestly, it was heavily leveraged through things like the Amex because we were manufacturing in the UK, we still are, and we were paying for the stock on the Amex. And obviously we didn’t have like 40 days to pay it off. The stock was arriving a couple of weeks later, uh, and then we were selling it, you know, before the, we had to pay off the Amex and we just kept doing rinsing and repeating that as many times as we could, trying to basically max out as much as we can. Um, in, in that, especially in those first few months, because it went from nothing, you know, up to a fairly sizable amount.

Bradley Sutton:

Would you say one of the reasons you had success on it, you know, launching a new product on TikTok, um, was because it, you know, TikTok is one of the only places you can get it. You can’t get it on Amazon. Uh, or like in, in what you know now about TikTok, uh, would you suggest other people to start products that are even sold on Amazon, but maybe, maybe that person doesn’t sell on Amazon, but can I just take a new, you know, can I take this water bottle and be successful? Even though maybe this water bottle saturated on Amazon, it’s not on TikTok much. Do I have a chance? Or should I focus on things like you did where it’s like, hey, it’s not even going to be on Amazon. This is the place where people have to go to get it.

Jonny:

The thing is, it is on Amazon. It’s just, it’s not allowed. So people, you know, change the titles and change this stuff. So people do sell it. It’s just, uh, because you have to skirt the rules to do that.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah.

Jonny:

We just go, well, we don’t want to do that. You know, we want to run a straight line. Um, so people can get it there. People can get it.

Bradley Sutton:

It’s probably, I mean, it’s, it’s, they’re probably not even using all the right keywords and stuff.

Jonny:

And they can’t be, you know?

Bradley Sutton:

And, and so like, that’s almost as if it’s not on Amazon in my, in my, in my opinion, where, where it’s not like a major player where there’s going to be saturated with all the same.

Jonny:

No, you’re right. Yeah. There’s a different barrier to entry. I haven’t thought about that, but my thoughts are that that would actually be a good idea if there’s something that, um, there’s some ambiguity around Amazon and there’s a, there’s a different rule on TikTok because Amazon’s rules are a little bit different. Then you can take advantage of that. I think that’s a good idea. I do more overthink. It’s about how like on Amazon you stand out. And if you just do the same thing as everyone else, you’re going to end up with mediocre results. It’s just trying to find that pattern of this is what people are, are getting. How do I do something that’s a little bit different? It doesn’t have to be changing the world. It’s just, how do I be a little bit different? And, you know, I’ve seen products on TikTok that have done really well and they are the same as the other products or very, very similar. At least it’s just, they’ve come up with a marketing angle. That’s really, really done well. And they’ve got a lot of people on board in terms of creators to create that content, to just blast it out there. And that’s just like, if you have omnipresence on Amazon, you’ve got your, you know, your banner at the top, you’ve got your product listing, you’ve got a video, you go on someone’s page, you’re on display advertising, you’re everywhere, you’re on TV. It’s the same idea of being everywhere. But instead of being ad placement here, ad placement here, ad placement here, it’s video, video, video, video, video, video from lots of different creators. It’s just a different medium, but the same idea.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. So talk about that a little bit because, you know, on Amazon, nothing is really set it and forget it. But I’m going to use that term loosely. It’s kind of set it and forget it as in, hey, let me set up my listing. Make sure I have the right keywords. Let me turn on my advertising and then it’ll just keep going. Now, obviously, you’ve got to, you know, update your listing with new keywords. You’ve got to, you know, make sure you’re managing your advertising and things like that. But that is kind of like a set it and forget it thing. But on TikTok, you put something out there, you’re successful one month. But if you stop everything, your sales are pretty much going to stop. Like you got to keep doing your own content. You got to keep, you know, finding new influencers or doing other promotions with influencers. What is your cadence now that you’re an over a year-old brand to keep the momentum? Like how much content are you guys still putting out? How many affiliates are you trying to get to or creators to get to create content? And, you know, kind of like what’s your advertising strategy?

Jonny:

It’s a really good question. We’ve learned a lot by doing this this year. So the one thing which is a big realization is that I realized that we are not a supplement company. We are a content creation company. That is our sales. It’s just, we monetize through a supplement. That’s once I realized that I was like, ah, we need to put our time into how to become better creators and systems around that to be successful. Not just have a really good product is how do we have a con, a business that creates content, which is a completely different business to a business that makes supplements. It’s just, we happen to also make supplements. Um, so that was a big realization that I had. And I can’t remember who I was listening. Like someone else listened to you, Alex Hormones or someone like that. And they were talking about, you know, you need to figure out what business you’re in. And at that point we were like, okay, how do we become better creators? And the problem with TikTok is the brands need to have this constant churn of new people, new people, new people.

Jonny:

And it means that they often don’t care about the creators that they bring in. And at the end of the day, that’s a relationship. And if you nurture that relationship, it can be long and fruitful. If you don’t care about it, they will move on and they’ll promote someone else. Often your competitors, cause they know the products. So what we wanted to do was if we’re going to give samples out to people and they’re going to create content for us, which is like, you know, content creation is a pain and it’s hard work and it takes a long time and you get it wrong. And the microphone doesn’t record. Sometimes you have to do the whole thing again with a happy face. I know how hard it is because I’ve done it for eight years. I was like, well, how do we be better at doing that? So we do little things like we took our top creators out for lunch. It’s not a big deal. It costs a few hundred pounds. But every single one of them were like, we’ve made hundreds of thousands for other companies and no one’s ever said thank you. No one’s ever offered to bring us to have lunch. They just don’t care. And I started hearing that again and again and again of brands don’t care.

Jonny:

So I was like, okay, we do. And if everyone’s doing this, we just do something else. What’s the cost of doing something else? It’s not that much. It’s having a WhatsApp group. It’s messaging people saying, oh, that’s really good content. Thanks. It’s saying, oh, do you want to go for Italian pizza? Do you want to jump on a call and talk about your content? Little things like that go a very, very, very long way. So that’s my big advice to people is focus on the creator. And we started doing that from day one because I guess a credo or an ethos in our business when we started, and this is obviously through making lots of mistakes in the past, is I said, if we do this, we have a rule that everyone eats. If you bring food to the table, you get to sit at the table to eat. And that includes our support staff who get a profit share. And that includes our creators. Now we, for example, when they made their first 5,000 pounds in GMV, we sent them some AirPods.

Jonny:

We said, hey, can we just send you some more samples? Because we want to make sure that you’ve got enough. And then in that handwritten letter with like AirPods all wrapped up and said, look, thank you. And every single one of them has come back and go, oh my God, this is like, no one’s ever done this. Thank you so much. And it buys a lot of goodwill. And those things I think really matter. So they were then able to create more content for us in terms of the content that we actually create at times. It’s like one video a day. I’m just two videos a day, three different videos a day. It depends on like what’s going on at the time, but we try and get content out on a daily basis on our own page, which is filmed by me. Um, you know, I know the product best and I’ve got experience with, you know, being on camera. So it’s, it’s nice and easy in terms of affiliate stuff. At the beginning it was, everything was inbound. It was people coming to us wanting to promote the product. Once we had a bit better stock, we started doing outreach and, um, we started doing, you know, maybe 50 people a month, not a huge amount, but really focusing on those 50 people in, I think December. So last year, um, we’re doing an initiative for January to get as much content out as possible because the more content you have, the better. I think we gave out about 460 samples in December so we can dominate Q1, obviously, which is big in supplements. Uh, don’t know if that’s going to work yet. So fingers crossed, help, you know, everyone keep their fingers crossed for that to make sure it’s profitable. So that means that we’re getting roughly today at the moment, because I looked at it today, we get around 50 to 70 pieces of content produced per day at the moment. And throughout January, we would expect that to go up a little bit more. So what we’re trying to do is go, well, how can we cast a wide net profitably and bring as many people in and bring them through our content system? How can we give them a document that says this is winning content? Because we’re a content business. Now we analyze the content and go, these are the things that have worked. Here’s the examples. Here’s the hooks. Here’s the color of the text on the screen. Here’s the everything that they did.

Jonny:

Here’s the ChatGPT prompt to figure out how to make it work for yourself so that they can try and go away and make good content. If we look at maybe the last three or four weeks or so, most of our creators, I think we’ve probably had 400, 500 pieces of content posted in the last couple of weeks. And a lot of those creators have only posted once or twice. So a lot of creators don’t post a huge amount, but the people that are successful, they might post 50, 60, 70 times about one product. And they’re the people at the top. So we’re looking for those people that can be the high performers. So what we try to do for January is an incentive where whoever posts the most videos gets a thousand pounds. Don’t care how you do it, as long as it’s compliant, you get a thousand pounds. Then for every 10 videos you post, you get one entry into a raffle to win another thousand pounds so that everyone doesn’t matter if you’re a mom or if you’ve got, you know, you do this full time. If you post 10 videos, you get one entry. So it’s not based upon a GMV target, which a lot of people do. So once you get to 10,000 GMV, you get this.

Jonny:

And, you know, goalie, once you get to a hundred thousand, get a Lamborghini, whatever they do. Right. We thought, well, that’s good. But if you’re a big creator already, you’re already going to, you’re already more likely going to get the high GMV because your account is primed to, to convert. Whereas a lot of the people starting out, their content maybe isn’t as finessed. It’s not quite as good, but they’ve got that drive to want to be able to do it. So what systems can we put in place and incentives so that we can give people that, that attention have a reward that’s as fair as possible, get a lot of content, which is good for us and hopefully identify winners within that, which we can nurture and bring into our like black belt community whereby we can really push and go, right. How do we really help you become the best content creator you can possibly be?

Bradley Sutton:

Nice. Are you selling in any other TikTok’s in Europe?

Jonny:

No.

Bradley Sutton:

And you’re just now, when did you start in US or you’re about to start in US?

Jonny:

Like within the last few days, we’ve had our first sale.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay.

Jonny:

So our stock arrived in the US on Christmas Eve. I was like, this is not good timing because I do not want to work right now.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah.

Jonny:

So I left until new year and we are starting from scratch again, which is daunting because it’s hard.

Bradley Sutton:

We got, I got to make sure that we reactivate if you don’t have it active right now, your Helium 10 account, because there’s some things with tools you can do in US TikTok that you can’t do in UK. Well, first of all, Helium 10 doesn’t, our TikTok is not active over there. Our software is not active over there yet, but I heard that there’s a rule that you can’t do mass like mailings, like messaging to TikTok creators, but in the US we do. So we have a full research tool where you can find, you know, the right creators and then message them in bulk and invite them in bulk and fully manage that. So you should definitely start leveraging that as well as our advertising. I’m sure you probably run some GMB max ads in the UK and you’re probably gonna be doing that there. And then we also have some research tools where you can take a look at what the competitors are doing, like find out, hey, which videos are working. It’s some pretty cool stuff that you should definitely take a look at.

Jonny:

Those things are really valuable because they, a lot of TikTok tools and coming from the Amazon background, you think there’s a tool for everything.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah.

Jonny:

There’s so many resources available. You’re like, right, if I want to do that, there’s a tool for it. With TikTok, it’s, it’s not been like that.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah.

Jonny:

Like our profit calculations at the beginning were just wrong all the time. Cause we’re like, we couldn’t figure it out. What you mentioned there about the finding the right creators and doing that research, you know, remember this is a content business. It’s not an e-commerce business. It’s your, you’re creating content. That’s your product. And you monetize through whatever you sell. So those tools are so, so important. And we’ve, we’ve even looked at the beginning of the year, like how do we create this stuff for ourself? Yeah. It was like, how do we do this? We don’t know. Like we, we can’t find the tools out there. And it’s only now within the last, you know, six months, eight months or so that these tools are starting to come out and work basically.

Bradley Sutton:

You planning to sell on Amazon in the US is, is it allowed this product?

Jonny:

Yeah. So at the end of September, it was legalized after a three-year legal battle with the FDA. The, the, the normal person one, they wanted to make it a medicine. It works so well. They was like, ah, let’s make this a medicine. They didn’t win.

So it’s a dietary supplement. And so that was the end of September. And originally the, we have a business in the U S now, and we have a business in the UK and essentially licensed our assets to the U S one. We were, we actually had that business earmarked for a different project, which was pet supplements in the U S on Amazon. And we thought this is gearing up, but this has just been made legal. Let’s just pivot and do that instead, because we’ve got a model that works. So we just started, decided to do that instead. And it took a little bit of time to get set up and learn a bit more about, you know, the FDA and all that sort of stuff.

Bradley Sutton:

I imagine like different labeling and stuff like that you had to do between the UK and the US.

Jonny:

Yeah. So different labeling, but fortunately the products can be exactly the same. We manufacture in an FDA compliant place. So we’re like, we literally can use the same manufacturer for now at least, and just label them differently and then, you know, ping them over to the States, um, which was cheaper than getting it made any, and literally anywhere else. So what would be really interesting is did what we learn in the UK on TikTok, will it track on the US because there are a lot more tools just going into the portal. I’m like, Oh my God, are we going to get these in the UK one day? And there’s a lot more things that we, that we, that are at your disposal, even the campaigns and the incentives on the US TikTok is just far more advanced. Um, so there’s a lot more to learn.

Bradley Sutton:

Did you have to get somebody like a friend or something to sign on the account?

Jonny:

It’s been a pain. It’s been a massive pain.

Bradley Sutton:

Because you have, you have to have a social security number, right?

Jonny:

Yeah, dude. We’ve had to like ship. So we have a  S one of the persons in the account is US citizen. So we have to obviously set up in the US this phone is bought in America and they had to ship it over here because we can’t even tag products and create them without this. I can’t join wifi on it. Like it’s just, it’s a massive pain. Um, and that, but that, that was actually the big holdup was getting access.

Bradley Sutton:

He tells his girlfriend. That’s what that phone is.

Jonny:

Yeah. That’s a, it’s only for work. Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

His partner, not his fiancé.

Jonny:

But that actually, that took the most amount of time. Interestingly, setting up and getting products listed again, it’s simple compared to, you know, Amazon with all of the different GL codes and all that sort of stuff. Um, and, and actually not as, as important as Amazon. It was now the hard work is we’re starting from zero, no sales, no social proof. It’s a new TikTok listing. It’s a new tick tock profile. I don’t know how we can do this. So the approach that we’re taking is one, we churn content of stuff that we know has worked really well. It might not work. I sound different to people in America. They might not like that. It might be different enough for people to watch. Don’t know yet.

Bradley Sutton:

So the TikTok account is different to the brand. The brand account is like a US version of the account.

Jonny:

It’s just like element five, you know, USA, um, because we can’t tag the products from the, from the UK account. So we’re thinking churn our own content. We can then see what works, get views, gets comments, whatever the initial signals of success. We then make sure that they are runners ads and GMV max. Or if we’re doing a creative boost to just boost a little bit more stuff into it, um, you can also use their older ads manager to do different type of advertising where it’s not GMV max. It’s like can go to your website, but you can do follower advertising. So to get followers or to get engagement and stuff like that. So we’re going to try and, and we’ve started this today is ads to get followers because there’s no followers and ads to get engagement, to get social proof. Um, I know you could like technically be by that elsewhere, but that could ruin your account. It needs to be done by the book. And I know it’s very easy to go on to Fiverr and go, Oh, someone could just don’t do it. Right. It’s not worth it. Just like on Amazon, it’s just not worth doing those things. Um, so our theory from right now today is we load up the, the videos with social proof, do loads of good deals, um, try and get in as many affiliates hands as possible using systems that have worked before for us, keep them happy, get them into WhatsApp groups, you know, know what their name is, you know, get their address so we can send them gifts and try to build that foundation from day one in the US because it’s going to be a lot harder when I’m not in the country, I can’t go and meet them for lunch.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah.

Jonny:

There needs to be something else there. So I think with all those things combined, it will be hopefully a success.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. I’m going to try this product. I’m getting old, so I need any kind of supplements I can get. But, um, if people want to follow you and your story is like LinkedIn, usually the best place to see you.

Jonny:

Yep. LinkedIn, Johnny Bradley. I’m sure you’ll be able to find it. If you want to check out element five, you search element five on TikTok or Instagram, it will come up and I share as much as I possibly can on as many social media channels as I can, uh, without overloading people with nonsense.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Well, um, let’s, uh, get some Helium 10 tools in, in your, you know, in your repertoire there for, for your US launch and, and maybe a year from now, maybe you come to the U S instead of me coming here to, to, to the UK and then let’s record another podcast follow up and hopefully you hit, uh, seven figures in U S like you have, you know, totally here in UK.

Jonny:

I think so. I think the US has a, obviously 50 times bigger for this, right? Um, I’m hoping that we can achieve that very, very quickly. And I will definitely be using all the tools and resources available. Uh, so thank you for that.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. All right. Well, wish you the best and we’ll be seeing you soon.

Jonny:

Cool. Thank you very much.

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