TikTok's #1 Freeze-Dried Candy Shop: Full Interview with Dayne Hepner of Candeeze

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today you're going to meet the company that is ranked as the number one Tik Tock shop for freeze-dried candy the
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company is candies it's grown to be one of the fastest growing freeze-dried candy businesses in the entire country
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due to the skills and expertise of social media ran by Dane Hepner and his
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wife who founded this several years ago now they've grown exponentially the past couple years and have really fine-tuned
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the different types of candies that they offer their customers on Tik Tok shop as well as their website if you're someone
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who loves entrepreneurship is looking into freeze drying or starting a freeze drying business man this interview is
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for you because we covered a lot of different topics in this interview that get asked a lot amongst people looking
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at freeze drying and starting a freeze drying business from packaging to what type of machines to buy things about
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social media how can you get started what are the best tips and tricks especially coming from someone who is
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experienced in growing and brand on social media man this interview is going to be great for you to get inspired to
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start a freeze drying business I encourage you to watch and listen this entire video but I know your time is valuable so I've included time stance
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Below in the video description with different topics that I covered throughout the interview and if you're interested in freeze drying or starting
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a free drying business this is what this channel is all about this interview is part of my freeze drying entrepreneur
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podcast where I'm featuring entrepreneurs all over the country hit the Subscribe Bell if you want to be following this type of Channel and this
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content let's get to the interview and talk to Dane the owner of candies who's ranked as the number one Tik Tok shop
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for freeze stried candy so Dane can you introduce yourself what like what's your company who are you who do you run it
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with where are you located yeah so my name is Dane Hepner located in Greenville South Carolina I own and run
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freeze stried candy company called candies we're the number one freeze dried candy company on Tik Tock shop
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right now uh just trying to figure out how to continue to to grow that continue to expand and we've had a huge focus on
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Tik Tok since launching it's been a crazy wild but also fun one um it was
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about 3 years ago my wife and I were like all right we want to start our business we want to do something for oursel we ended up settling on three
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ideas um it was slime it was free strike candy and it was importing like foreign
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snacks cuz I like grew up overseas um I'm used to eating a lot of snacks that aren't in America I'm like overseas is a
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lot of good snacks but I had some issues with like importing laws slime I wasn't super passionate about it and I'm like a
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huge candy guy so I'm like you know what let's try this hor dry candy thing um I ended up selling a YouTube Channel that
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I had been working to build since I was like 12 and I used all that money to start up candies I basically bought one
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free ster and um was operating on their Cottage food for a little bit and quickly outgrew that within the first
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like three weeks and had to get a space and like we can dive into that but it was crazy just like the demand that
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people had for for this candy also I wanted to talk a little bit about your growth cuz it's really been phenomenal
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uh you and I talked on the phone back in early 20 like 23 um and then all of a sudden I've just
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seen you just boom uh because of your expertise and knowledge on Tik Tok and
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we'll get into that but you know give us an idea of where you started you know
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maybe just paint a picture for us of like I was starting kind of similar to other people starting a freeze-dried
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candy business and where you are today in terms of the operation the scale of employees uh facilities number of freeze
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dryers you know what is all that looked like today so start with the first of the or of the beginning and then go up
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to the paint a picture for us for right now yeah okay so started with one uh the
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biggest the biggest uh biggest thing I had to do was was start I heard a quote
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the other day that basically said the place where you find billion dollar ideas is in the grave in the in the
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graveyard just because like so many people have all these crazy ideas and great ideas and they never do them and
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that was my problem it took me about a year and a half to like launch candies like I wanted everything to be right I
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wanted our bags to be right I wanted our logo to be right I wanted to have good candy that was like the best like
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everything had to be perfect I'm a perfectionist with in the first week of launching everything was a mess the bags
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were bad the logo had issues like everything was going wrong but the biggest thing I learned through that was
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like all right Dane what you got to do is you got to start it you got to start and then you can figure out how to fix it from there and so once I once I
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started I just uh from there I we haven't stopped it's like all right all right if this doesn't work let's try something new and let's just keep fixing
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it to where we can grow it into a really cool company versus like trying to make sure everything is perfect about every
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little detail so that we can grow it into a really good company tell me kind of your like your first freeze dryer
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purchase and kind of how many you had till you had to actually have your own place yeah back then Harvest Right is
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what who we used and it was a little more expensive to buy the free cuz they were more newer there's a little over 5,000 for a large and um we got had
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ourselves a large we had um we got all the permits to operate under Cottage food for in in state and uh basically we
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sold uh Cottage food for the first uh two weeks and and just out sold
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everything literally the first day um of like getting orders we had to go get another free dryer so we had two but um
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it only lasted about two weeks in our space because like we realized how big the potential was just outside of state
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lines and like across the world so we uh we got a small little commercial kitchen
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like FDA space and um was literally like a small room and we had to renovated and
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put all of our money we had made into like making this thing food grade and so from there we put our two free Fri in
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there and then got a few more and it's just been scaling and we outgrew that space like six months later now we have
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a bigger one but the grace of God and so you have a lot of freeze dryers you know so you started with Harvest right yeah
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you know I've noticed in some of your Tik Tok videos where you show kind of you know hey we started this candy
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business and you kind of show this is like our operation you actually have some different machines that are not
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even freeze dryers that help you make the candy can you talk a little bit about what type of equipment you have
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sure so Harvest s's great the problem is if feel that don't know how to freeze drying Works basically essentially
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you're melting down the candy a good bit you're heating the trays and the cand is getting softer and then you're pulling
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all the all the air all the O it's basically like a vacuum chamber so the problem is the Harvest tray don't go
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above 150° so when you have a candy like lemon heads in the Shell is like super hard it's hard to get those to Puff
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without putting your trays in the oven first the problem is if you put your trays in the oven first then put it in
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the freeze dryer not only you going to avoid the warranty but you'll ruin the freeze dryer so and it takes a lot more
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time we're like all right we got to find uh some sort of system to where we can
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use our freeze dryers but also have a higher heat that are applied to
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them so we basically Daisy chained some vacuum ovens and we used the freeze dry
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as a cold trap and essentially we melt down the candy way hotter than 150° for
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things like red hots for like uh lemon heads for those harder candies that most people can't get to freeze dry and then
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the freeze dryer kicks in and pulls all the moisture like the same vacuum pump pulls all the all the oxygen and
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moisture whatever vacuum Chambers the the candy so it gets all C Y and crunchy
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and puffy okay so for those hard candies like a lot of people you know I I know the evolution cuz I've been in business
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since 2020 so I know what you're talking about but for people who are just starting out you know the there's
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certain candies that do well in freeze dryers that's why it's called freeze-dried candy but uh if you're
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looking at actual like popped candy textured candy yeah the Skittles but for
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but people are now trying to figure out like how do I do more candies like the lemon heads and so you're saying that
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you take a vacuum oven and then you use the the vacuum pump is it attached to
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your vacuum oven or you're transferring the the melted candies kind of or
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softened up candies from the oven back to the freeze Dryer no it's attached but
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we also have to have a cold trap so we attach it from both Sid it's super complicated but the pump is attached to
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a line that's attached to the freeze dryer and both of those are attached to the vacuum oven okay so you've basically
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made your own candy popping machine in combination
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between a freeze dryer that has the vacuum the cold trap but also an vacuum oven exactly exactly brilliant so you're
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an engineer now not just a freeze candy my dad my dad's the engineer I'm like Dad how do we do this and he he sat down
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and help me figure it out I can't take the credit for that one now you got to make a machine man and
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you'll be making tons of money right tell us a little bit about the operation
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now too so you've got these you've got this figured out now through your father who engineered both of these things so
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how big of this facility do you have how many employees what is candies what are you proud of like how big is it yeah
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we're at 28 employees right now which is crazy um I hired on my my parents uh
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full time so my dad's I'm the CEO my dad's our coo he's our chief operating officer he essentially makes sure all
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the candy is getting produced and essentially what we did very early on is we divided into two divisions we divided
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into the production Division and we divided into the social media Division and that's me I'm the guy that's the
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social media guy I'm the guy that makes sure all the candy gets solded and I have a team that I've hired that works for me to make the content to do the
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live streams to all these things and then my dad he has a team that works under him where he makes sure reproduce
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so if I'm making his life miserable by lots of orders and he's making my life miserable by lots of demand then we're
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doing good the goal is to both uh be doing good on our our parts talking a
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little bit about the production I know your father's not on the call but you know you obviously are very intertwined
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with with with the company as the CEO um so you've been in business for several years you've seen a lot of growth you've
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also tried a lot of different candies how did you determine what candies you were going to go for at
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Full Throttle you know that you could scale these versus the ones that you maybe started with and it wasn't
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something that you could really scale very quickly sourcing is a big aspect um
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sourcing is hard it's hard to Source candy at a huge volume um that was a
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huge huge huge huge huge pain point we encountered but uh we've been able to to partner up with some cool companies that
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are able to Source us pretty much anything we need now so the problem is uh like making sure the customers like
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what we are producing so we basically take polls and we ask the consumers hey what do you want do you want Red Hots
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this week and they're like yeah or do you want Etc like that's I just say Red Hots because that's what we're launching
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this week and uh people are excited about that so um just trying to figure
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out what people want and what they'll buy and we've noticed the biggest uh
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selling point for direct to Consumer like Direct a consumer via Online mail order is been bundles people love a
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bundle people love to get like a box with a bunch of different types of candy
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in there and like it helps minimize cost with shipping and everything versus like on the retail side of things people are
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fine with just picking up a bad of the ones they think are most interesting so Dane speaking on the production side you
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know you have all this product that you're producing all these candies that you're focusing on and when you have
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thousands of people people saying I want Red Hots how are you packaging those
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efficiently are you using any type of automation or are you packaging things by hand what what does an actual like
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very large C freeze-dried candy company like yourself doing when you're trying to make thousands of bags yeah I mean we
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have Hoppers and all these crazy gizmos and gadgets I can take you a step back
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so um first first time when you order a free shy you get this little thing and
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it's like a little clamp and you like uh you close it to steal your bags and uh I think we went through like eight of
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those in the first like three weeks they just broken broken broken bro fix broken
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fix broken we're like okay we need something better so one of our big Investments was uh we got a a commercial
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sealers so basically we we line the bages up on this conveyor belt we just go boom boom boom boom boom and then it
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just SE it goes through and seals them all and dumps them in in a into a um a bucket and like that's how we can get uh
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clean sealed bags that are fresh till uh 2029 on there and so that's like well
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2029 is like it's it's it's hard to say because like free show KY doesn't go bad but you're supposed to put an expiration
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date and that's as long as we've been able to test it yeah it stays fresh basically forever essentially you kind
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of know how it is but um on the on on the other side of things like getting it into the bags is like okay so how do we
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make sure we can get the same amount of candy in every bag at a fast pace because it's not it's not ideal to try
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to open up the bag and like dump it and weigh it every time it just takes time it's more cost and labor so essentially
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what we did was we got a hopper and we have a scale attached to the hopper so it basically um drops candy down to the
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scale weighs it and then vibrates it into the bag so essentially you hook the bag on the bottom and it fills move
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fills move fills move so we have someone that is just um filling the bag and another person that's uh sealing and uh
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and uh sealing the bag so there's there's a of different things we've like worked to implement and and like making
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sure our our packing and production speeds faster but I mean in the grand
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scheme of things producing lots of free sh candy is a pain is a pain in the butt to be honest and also back to kind of
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the candies that you are producing are most of these like non wrapper related
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candies yeah drop candies are easy um my dad's like all right Dan let's get some
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drop candies and I'm like no let's get some Jolly ranches let's get some um bit of Honeys let's get all this other candy
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that requires a lot more work some AirHeads um it it's just it it comes
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down to like what the people want if they really want unwrapped candies it's fine but when we have to go out and
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unwrap tons and tons of Starburst it's like it hases take way more time so we can produce way fewer than if we were to
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do tons and tons of of wild berry crunches you know what I mean so it's
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like a it's like a it's a trade-off it's like is it going to be worth the extra time that we put in let's talk about
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packaging when we first talked you were using what I use today in my business
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which is a craft Food Bag uh keeps more dry goods very much similar to what you
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have today but it's it's uh it's much more craft oriented um but people are
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using uh Deli containers people are having bags that don't have any Windows
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why have you stuck with your particular bag right now and do you plan to
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continue with that we had issues with craft bags and a lot of our candy not lasting I'm going to show you something
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cool I'm going to show you something cool this is our F this right here is our first ever bag of candies we ever
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produced um this is it and uh it it it melted but uh first ever bag of candy we
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ever produced um we were doing our own labels we were cutting them we were sticking them you can see the lines aren't even super straight but uh first
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bag of candy ever ever off the production line that me and my wife ever produced and uh that's the problem we
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were encountering right there is like when anything this was like a week and a half later when anything heat oriented
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popped up when anything like evolving a longer shelf life popped up candy would
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be it'd be it' just be gone he was like all right I'm out I'm going to rehydrate and even with oxygen absorbers we had
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some trouble and and also cost like this in a bunch of oxygen absorbers is way more expensive than than something like
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this and uh we uh we designed our own bags these are these are our our custom bags that we we made and uh they stay
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fresh at least a bare minimum 2029 so it's like we can make something and if
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we do sell it like we just introduce wholesale so like let's say we have a huge wholesale order if for some reason
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a box gets lost in the back I I know they'd sell so that's not the problem is if it gets lost in the back I'm just
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kidding but if it gets lost in the back it's like okay 5 years later you'll still be good to eat this um so it was a
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big big big huge turning point for us with like having bags that have a good shelf life when we send it to Texas the
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heat isn't going to absolutely disintegrate it so it was it was a move that we made and we have we love we love
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these bags they've been nothing but but good to us yeah and candy is such a consumable product too I mean people are
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going to eat it but people who are going to buy hes if you're going to do wholesale just like you're introducing
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um and a lot of other candy producers you know those clients those vendors those Distributors are going to want to
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know that hey if we happen to have these for a year because we're going to buy at scale and at volume with you uh you know
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can we pull out something that's six months old and still be fresh and still be the the great product I mean for the
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most part if anyone's making straight to order it's not a big deal but like even
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for Farmers Market people if you're going to a farmer market with or a trade show and you plan to have leftover
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inventory like how long is inventory going to last you and if it's not going to last you months then in my opinion
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don't worry about it but uh if you want long shelf life I think you have to figure out like how to how to best
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preserve the candy that's kind of the step we took now free stri candy has been going on for quite a while and people have said that hey it originated
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back in 2016 2018 but I feel like really catapulted itself uh right around the
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pandemic 2021 22 even today right but so as we evolve into a lot of people
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getting into the freeze-dried candy space Have You Been experimenting with your own candy design to kind of freeze
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dry uh and if you're not willing to reveal what that is just talk about uh maybe your process and what you're
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trying to H have candies as your company become we've been looking into creating
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our own specific candies candy um that's something we'd love to do and if anyone
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watching wants to point us in the right direction how to do that let us know um but I mean it's been on the back burner
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we'd love to do that but it's not our main focus right now what we've been focused on right now is optimizing a
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system so where we can make the most competitive priced products for wholesale even maintaining pretty good
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margins I mean we can sell this for about $2 wholesale and so
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um our goal is to like have a bunch of uh bunch of options for wholesale that's
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what we've been focused on this quarter and like how we can best offer that for the best possible price and uh it's been
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fun it's been a challenge like optimizing production to where you can make thousands and thousands and thousands like we're at I think we're at
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like 19,000 units a week right now and like being able to like create that many units and also still maintain the
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margins of keeping wholesale as cheap as we can has been hard but I mean if we
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sell this at $2 people have no problem turning around and selling it at five so it's like 6070 60% margins for people
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that are buying so it's been really cool to see where that's gone now it's just the matter of like all right how many
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clients can we find and how big do we need to sell you know what seems to be the biggest challenge in freeze drying
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candy and having a freeze dried candy business um and how have you found ways
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to overcome them um at the start oh my goodness the start was so hard to figure
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out the food regulations and laws and FDA like no one will help you like I
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don't no one will help helps me figure out how to like make sure I'm doing it legally you would think like people
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would be like yeah this is he legally run a candy company no one would help me so it was so hard to try to go above
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reproach and make sure I had the proper Licensing in the registration and the permits and FDA and
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dun's numbers and yada y y yada but we figured it out and uh that was a huge
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huge huge huge huge like uh like stepping stone and once we figured that out we could sell via mail order
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anywhere in the country and that basically like unlocked A Whole New World of opportunity yeah and so you see
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that it was a big challenge but you overcame it um now that you you're in
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that state looking back at it are you are you saying that's a real big barrier
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to entry for anybody coming into this space or it do you feel like as more and
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more people get into it uh in the FDA and go through those things uh is the
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FDA actually going to be easier to work with are you going to find more solutions and more people to help help
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you out uh to try to get there if I understood your question correctly looking back it was definitely a huge
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hurdle and it's a huge entry point for a lot of people I mean if I wasn't forced to move in that
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direction like if candies wasn't the way it is and I just wanted to start going big via like huge uh scale like all over
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the country and that's just my dream or my goal it would have I don't know if I would have done it I don't know if I
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would have made it happen but the fact that I was forced to like if I want to keep growing this company I have to do
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that that was more like my ham was for I had to figure it out and I feel like when when you have to figure something
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out you figure it out but I do wish there were more resources on on how to go about that that's one of the reasons
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I was following you is like I was watching all your videos I literally every I had notifications on every time you watch the video I'd watch it and I'd
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ask like five questions in the comments I'm like I got to learn everything I can from someone that knows what they're talking about and and that has changed a
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lot with Facebook groups and other aspects like that but even still getting into like the nitty-gritty of like the
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law and the aspects involved and like that it's it's it's kind of a nightmare another challenge that I think people
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find is coming up with a name for their company but also something that is unique that they can build a brand to
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your type of level so walk us through a little bit of your process for coming up
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with candes and how are you protecting it how are you building the brand so
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that it's different from other people I'm going to show you guys this was this was all the all the different trials we
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went through we started with like um we started with like some logos like I'll
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just take you through some of the logos we we we went through like all the different candies this was one of our
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first ones that we really liked my wife made um candies this was one we almost
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settled on more like a Frozen and we just kept going and going and going
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until eventually we we settled in on one this was one that we almost almost did and we're like ah that guy's not cute
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enough he's not quite cute enough I never like this one and they like ah that guy's also not quite there and then
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we went this one and we're like okay there's no personality there we needed to have have have some personality and
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then we went uh we ended up settling in on um our current logo now which of
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course candies freeze red candy the way we came up with that name um is a
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combination of two things the first being we want I really love combining
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combining names so candy freeze boom candies I took the F off free FR off
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freeze and put the begin of candy on it and then I was like candies and I was like yo buddies do you like candies and
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um all of them were like candies not doesn't matter it was some gen Z joke
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that they like to make that's pretty inappropriate but uh it was a trend with with cand d
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Dez or D whatever um but I was like okay so if that's if that's what everyone
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thinks of when I when I go ahead and tell them my candy brand that means I'm not going to forget it so and also it's
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going to bait tons and tons of comments when I post a video of course I post the first video there's thousands of
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comments that are like candies not and I was like Yay it worked because that boosted our engagement but um the
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combination of of both of those things is the reason we ended up settling on candies we're thinking about dropping
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the freeze dried candy aspect and kind of expanding more into like still free sh candy but like not niching our as
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much so it's something we're thinking about the freeze dried candy I think it's always G to be it's going to be
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kind of Kleenex and tissue I think the freeze dried candy is just that's how
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people have described it but when now that we're entering probably different
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ways to just have a vacuum in a cold you know cold spot but also having something
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to warm it it's not necessarily freeze-dried it's just like a this is this isn't freeze dried right it's a a
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popped candy so Dane I okay elephant in the room you've got this silly little mic on your on your hat and uh
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I told you to put this on for the interview because this is this is his trademark look because if
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you go to his Tik Tok account candi's Co I mean he's got that on all the time his
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his workers who are on his Tik Tok live shop things like that they're always having this like mic uh which is a
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wireless mic on there so I love it so let's talk about Tik Tok now you and your wife very talented in Tik Tok
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platform you you don't you don't only kind of do sales for your company but you've done things where you make money
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as influencers do you feel that this has been your competitive advantage and allowed you to grow past your
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competition but also stay ahead of them yeah I mean all respect to competition there's some people out there doing
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great things but um on the in the grand scheme of things like my wife and I like
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we've been running an agency creating ads for like two and a half three years we worked with like 2,000 Brands um not
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like in in a flexing way but like big Brands like Walmart like Adobe um just
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literally it felt like anyone we wanted to work with at one point we could and so like we were working making all these
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videos and like all these ads and like creating and it was fun it was fun an
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agency basically and um Tik Tok when you were backed by Tik Tok they just send clients your way but the problem with
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that was we were just tired of like making videos for other companies it's exhausting when you're making like four
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five six videos a day for other companies we're like all right we got to do this for ourselves and we did we uh
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we launched our our own company candies and we used all the knowledge we had from making all these videos and all
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these ads and all these things for other companies to launch our own organically which was which was crazy my goal was
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organically and organically our first video um it's at it's at 33 million
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views by the grace of God so it it is definitely an advantage that's like
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a gift that the lord gave both of us is just like being able to create good content for social media but I mean even
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without that ability I think anyone can find ways to succeed in the business because like there's so many aspects
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that we are not capitalizing on that other people are Dane I want to ask you
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if you could tell the audience here exactly what you told me about a good Tik Tock strategy for an organic post I
28:22
don't know if you remember that you told me that video that has 33 million you said it had this particular structure
28:30
for for hitting kind of the social media algorithms of what people like because
28:37
they stay actually on the video if you have these components can you tell us what that structure is I mean people
28:43
love like just stories about like the small business Journey that was what that was um if you can pull on someone's
28:51
heartstrings not in a manipulative way but by genuinely telling a story that's a video that that can pop off and that's
28:58
what happened is we were just straight up honest we're like told the story the end and outs the ups and downs the bad
29:04
parts and the good parts of what it was like having run our company thus far and
29:09
um it kind of started with my wife and I started a small business kind of showed them what the small business was give
29:16
him even I even gave him an example of me munching on the candy
29:22
showing them why they should buy into our small business kind of gave them more info on like how we do everything
29:29
and then ended it off with like hey if you want to support us we had it like we had 10 orders so far if you want to
29:34
support us and would' love your support you can go ahead and grab some in that that structure of like just appealing to
29:40
the the mass demographic and like telling the small business story is like
29:46
so powerful because I mean to be honest if I see a small business story I'm going to buy and I want to hear their story I want to support them and it's
29:52
not like you're manipulating anyone it's just simply like it's something cool about running a small business is like
29:58
you do have a story and people love hearing that so so don't shy away from it and especially when when crap hits
30:04
the fan don't shy away from sharing that because people really love to hear the struggles not just the good and
30:11
highlights yeah so if someone's starting out on Tik talk what's the difference in
30:16
the strategy of posting something that's going to be organic and then something that's going to be more salesy because
30:23
you you do a lot of sales posts but you also do organic posts so what's the
30:28
difference in those two strategies uh it just depends if you're going to be running ads that's like all grow as um
30:36
but like specifically focus on like making post is your think about think about your goal is your goal to get a
30:43
ton of orders to get a ton of followers to get a ton of views think about your goal because if you don't have a good
30:49
sales pitch in there then it's going to be hard to get a bunch of orders like one of my videos got I think
30:54
40 let's see this this air crunch video is an inter entertainment Style video it got like 41.9 million views and like I
31:03
didn't have a hard sales pitch in there and it didn't give me any sales at all like I've had videos with a million
31:08
views that I got more sales than that 41.9 million view video it's simply because the focus wasn't to Hard Sell
31:14
someone it was literally to entertain them and when you do focus on that you can reach a much larer demographic because not Everyone likes to be kind of
31:21
sold to but um it just kind of depends on your focus so if you figure out what your focus is then you can grow BR but
31:28
in the grand scheme of things that 41.9 million view video might not have got a
31:33
lot of uh a lot of sales but it got a lot of eyes a lot of attention a lot of followers which then result in in a lot
31:39
of sales so it's just kind of it's all strategy it's it's social Med you're really successful on Tik Tok shop you
31:46
sell a lot of product but for someone just starting out who wants to sell in the middle of Indiana and I just want to
31:54
start selling on Tik Tok because this is a way for me to start just making some sales maybe my first $100 what's your
32:01
what's three different pieces of advice you'd have for starting on Tik Tok yeah as long as you have an LLC and you have
32:08
a registered commercial space with an FDA number you can sell on Tik Tock shop and uh that's two big barriers of Entry
32:16
but if you do have that already then there's so many ways you can generate income on Tik Tac shop uh whether it be
32:22
through short form like here's the deal if you can make good videos and you put posted video a day every day for 3
32:30
months your life and your free dring candy company is going to be drastically
32:35
different than it was before it's all about consistency if you go live two hours a day every day for a month it's
32:42
going to pick up it's going to pick sales so like there's so many like nitty-gritty things you can dive into
32:47
like okay for example if you're live streaming you want to Target a certain show GPM and like all this that the
32:53
other we can get into the technical aspects but I mean just for a new stay consistent and think about how you
33:00
can best elevate your live streams best elevate your content and like don't be stressed about it not being perfect like
33:07
you're dealing with a lot of competition and if your isn't the best that's fine just figure out how you can continue to
33:13
grow continue to make better content and better live streams can someone who has who has a homebased freeze dried
33:20
business can they sell on Tik Tok shop in any fashion no not no sadly just uh
33:26
restriction product um you need some sort of uh verified an FDA similar to
33:32
Amazon like you can't sell on Amazon unless you have the same thing they're kind of strict about that and if you do
33:37
you get violations if you don't have the proper permits and violations will basically tank your traffic like it like
33:44
it literally they will debost you and Deb boost your traffic a lot of people say the word blacklisted but the actual
33:50
term that Tik Tok uses is called deboosting yeah that actually happened I think earlier this year is they changed
33:56
their they updated their policies and I don't know if you were impacted by that but it kind of shortly like shut
34:02
down a lot of businesses because I think people were selling a product that is
34:08
processed um that you know Tik Tok didn't want liability on so were you impacted by that for a short period of
34:14
time last year when they they basically took all free candy away all candy
34:19
everything away because a lot of people were using Cottage food and then they slowly added it back and anyone that had
34:25
the proper permits and proper um numbers like FDA registration numbers and all
34:31
that they let them all back in and if you do have everything set up correctly and you are actually a commercial
34:37
kitchen then they want mess with you for the most part I get violations every now and then but I mean it's part of the
34:45
process is freeze-dried candy is the industry too competitive now is it a fad
34:50
you know how do how do you feel about people getting into the industry and where it's headed it is competitive a
34:57
lot more than before it's a lot of copycats out there that'll just whatever you do they'll just copy it that's part
35:04
of it I guess it's a a show tell that you're doing a good job at what you're doing if you have a a a plan of attack
35:11
yes go for it but if you're just like let me uh let me just like make candy and see where it goes I would say plan
35:19
out a strategy on what you plan to focus on because just like in the industry there's always space for a new new
35:25
competitor it's just a matter of if you can find a good way to to attack it because I mean it's not like it was 3
35:32
years ago three years ago no one had tried free Dr cany everyone wanted to try it nowadays if you bring up free
35:37
Canan the topic people have pretty much tried it so you're kind of targeting repeat buyers and people that have
35:43
already tried it once so it's not like a new thing as much as it was before and so as long as you have a plan of attack and like who what audience you plan to
35:50
tackle and how you plan to do it there's always space what what does the brand represent 5 years from now yeah of
35:57
course so my main goal right now is to continue to grow the company and hire
36:03
the right people to where it can ruin itself if I can be the overseer and make
36:09
sure everything's running correctly without having to work 12 15 hour days every single day that would be ideal so
36:16
basically right now my main focus on the business side of things is making sure I have the right people that can take
36:21
initiative and do the right things to help grow the company without me having to carry all the pressure on my
36:27
shoulders and I feel like once I can get to a company that can run itself essentially
36:32
um of course with with oversight then I have something that's actually valuable and actually worth something but at the
36:38
moment it's kind of like me with something on my back and just kind of dragging it I think you're in a very
36:45
like steep growth curve right now and so uh you you're you're starting to put all the puzzle pieces together to have it
36:52
run for you and it sounds like you've got family helping you you've also got
36:57
some staff though that are that are really picking up the social media side too we have like a full-time content
37:03
creator four full-time live streamers it's cool to see like that like selling the candy on direct to Consumer is like
37:10
it's not on me anymore so that's good now it's just like the wholesale side of things and making sure the production
37:15
side can be generating Revenue versus just the just the social media side also
37:22
you can sell Candy's candy on Tik Tok if you want to through their affiliate
37:28
program right anyone can if if they're in if they're involved in the Tik Tock shop affiliate program we offer 15 20%
37:37
commission so super competitive so if you buy someone buys your product um we
37:42
we recommend selling bundles because that's what people love the most so it's seven different bags and um you can get
37:49
get some good money I just had a a lady the other day uh I won't say her name but she goes by strength on Tik Tok
37:57
she's just single mom struggling with finances hopped on live stream and and in in a weekend she
38:04
sold $3,000 worth of candies and I'm like let's go that's awes so happy for
38:10
you and man yeah it's fun for her cuz I mean she just ordered a box cuz she
38:16
loved us and she started live streaming and selling it and like it blew up and and like a lots of people loved her
38:22
content she she figured out how to live sell it's it's proof that anyone can do it she literally had a phone like this
38:29
with with a few bags kind of telling people about it for like 2 hours a day for a couple days and and it's crazy to
38:35
see uh how anyone anyone can make it happen so that was literally just this weekend so if if you're out there and
38:42
you want to live stream candies go for it and even if uh even if that's not for you whatever it is that you want to do
38:48
just just go for it and see where it goes Dane it's been awesome talking to you um your your growth and your
38:55
knowledge of this industry has been phenomenal to watch and learn from and I
39:00
I just hope all the best for you and congratulations on your your kid to come
39:06
here very soon and uh and yeah thanks a lot for joining me on this podcast and
39:11
we'll uh we'll hopefully be talking with you soon on part two sounds like a plann part two you got to come see our
39:16
facility deal awesome good to see you guys
39:23
[Music]

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