Olly Hudson (00:01):

TikTok does awareness really well. It does like top of funnel. Very, very well. It doesn't do retargeting and lower funnel, um, a as well as other platforms. So if you've got like your, your display, your native, your Facebook retargeting, and your Google brand, all dialed in as well. And you can just stay top of mind after that initial visit, even if TikTok doesn't drive that, that conversion directly on their first, first interaction. Um, you'll find a lot of those customers do come back and convert at a later day. If you can stay present in the mind for a

Rabah Rahil (00:41):

All right folks, this is, this is one that I've been on the calendar circling I have from across pond, the, to king, the soar with us founder, Ollie, Hudson Ollie. How are you today?

Olly Hudson (00:55):

Hello? Yeah. Good. Thank you. Good. Um, it's been a while in the Mac and jump it on. Uh, am I a first UK guest or have you had other people from across

Rabah Rahil (01:03):

You? I think you're the first UK guest. Yeah, you are. So you, you have that. And then, um, you're also are probably a best looking guest, you know, and then there, we got that Ali and I actually, uh, we, we, it felt like we've been brothers forever, but, uh, we, we first met actually at, uh, geek out in Dubai and then we just really, uh, steamrolled from there. You've been a big proponent to triple well, you guys sort us as one of our favorite agencies, uh, big promoters of the, of the product, but then it just spiraled into, um, chatting, shooting the shit. Uh, you, Joe and I were, uh, we're trying to network and we ended up just kind of congregating at Dubai together and get like, get that away from, we gotta, we gotta go meet new people here. Um, but, uh, Ollie is a gem of a human, a young gun at that. And, uh, he, he has so much knowledge, not only in the agency space, but as well, um, in the TikTok space, which has been, um, something that has been, uh, really vibrant for a lot of people. But, but before we get into all of that, let's get to know you a little bit. Ollie, where does this podcast find you?

Olly Hudson (02:03):

Yeah. Um, well, yeah, as you said, foundered saw with us, uh, founders saw with us. Um, we also started a second agency, very focused on TikTok called for advertising, which is kind of what I've been tweaked about. And speaking about a lot recently off the back of the hype that's around the platform and the opportunity there. Um, so currently running both of those been work working in e-com for probably about five years now, um, which is a long time, I guess, at this age, um, started, uh, an e-commerce star with a friend at university, and then, um, that didn't work out some failures, a lot of learnings, um, and then started an agency about two and a half years ago now. And it's been a fun ride since then. Um, yeah, 23 inhouse people for, so, and then for you growing the team there as well, so

Rabah Rahil (02:49):

Yeah, it was this sizable industry and you guys or agency and you guys are, uh, out of the, the outcr or suburbs of London or where exactly are you at?

Olly Hudson (02:59):

We're north we're in lead lead UK. So about 150 miles north of London, ish.

Rabah Rahil (03:06):

Uh, okay. You, you using Imperial you're you're you're youre translating for how beautiful, how beautiful, what? Fantastic. Um, so tell me a little bit, so you got into through when you're in uni still, right? Like you started, did you start your own store or you just started running ads? I forget the story.

Olly Hudson (03:24):

Yeah, we started our own, it was about 20 17, 18. Um, started our own kind of dropshipping clothing store. It was, um, fleece ship is flee sheer jackets. T-shirts ripped jeans was what we actually went for which not the traditional drop shipping products, I guess, um, ran that with a friend, Matt Kelly, who some people who are watching might know, um, from Twitter and general econ, um, grew that to multi six figures and then we tried to move it into a brand. So we tried to take it from drop ship into, in, into, into the UK fulfillment centers. Got the costings of that process, incredibly wrong were very naive to, to some of the, to some of the, our technical problems and basically messed it up. Um, that business kind of faded out from there and then continued with university and then start an agency just before I left uni.

Rabah Rahil (04:23):

Well, how awesome what'd you study? What'd you study

Olly Hudson (04:26):

Economics and politics. So you did

Rabah Rahil (04:29):

All

Olly Hudson (04:29):

The new

Rabah Rahil (04:29):

You, an econ guys. Well, here we go. Let's go people. Oh, right. All right. Um, what made you wanna start your own shop instead of just starting a new brand?

Olly Hudson (04:41):

Uh, so admittedly Matt pulled me into the space, I'd say like, he got me into the online e-com and online business space. So it was quite him driven. Um, I spent most of my time on the, on the kind of marketing side and I'm a pretty indecisive person when it comes to brands and trying to settle on like one product to sell. I'm trying to do this at the moment. Like we wanna start a couple of internal brands. I feel like right now with TikTok being, and it's like infancy, it's a bit like the start of Instagram. It's it's that it can really like the fire under a product if you get it right. And I still can't pick something. So it's like, I couldn't, I just, it's just easier to do it for other people. Like it just go and get passionate about other people's products and sell 'em instead. Um, so took the, took the knowledge that I'd got from arbitrage and Facebook ads for the dropshipping install, um, and just started finding people with good products and doing it for them instead. Um, cause it's an easier ride, less, less complex, simple. I,

Olly Hudson (05:38):

I love that degree. Love.

Rabah Rahil (05:40):

Yeah, man. I love that. That's incredible. So, I mean you're what 24, 25 super young.

Olly Hudson (05:45):

Yeah. 24, 24.

Rabah Rahil (05:47):

Yeah. Beautiful. How did you gain so much mastery and understanding to run a shop of 20 plus people you're running? I mean, you're probably one of the, if not the biggest TikTok spender that I know you guys also spent proper money on Facebook, like, like how did you, is there any frameworks? Did you read anything? Was there any people that were influential? Like how did you gain this, this kind of mastery at such a young age? Because for people that Don know, I'm 36, I'm old as F like, uh, dust walks off me when I come's be 24 fourth. <laugh> I mean, it's almost a third older than you. And so, uh, tell me a little bit more about like what you used or coming from an economics kind of politics background, and then jumping into marketing. Was there like, again, the frameworks or any type of, uh, things that really helped you kind of catapult yourself to where you're at now?

Olly Hudson (06:35):

Yeah, I think multiple, I guess like, I, I very much like we've, we've obviously used courses, courses and mentors, expediate, any learning process. Like it just come, you take their learning process and basically apply it to you without any extended timeframe. It's just like instant expediate, a lot of mistakes and cuts out a lot of, a lot of things they did wrong. Um, so there's an element of that. And I also think seeking out the right, the right mentors and right, um, experts for specific areas of the business, rather than just going to one to one individual or one or one kind of stop shop for that. So for like mindset, you might have someone who really like I, Andy for seller is one that I always touch on there that listen to a lot of his stuff on that side. Then you've got like systems thinking you can get off.

Olly Hudson (07:22):

Like, Sullivan's like why Combinator videos on, on YouTube, just trying to get like that higher level, um, knowledge and information about how to run internal operations from different sources. I think I, I try and consume a lot of stuff around like VC high growth blitz scaling, why Combinator companies that are trying to hire like 200 people in a year. Cuz if you can take what they're applying and pull that down to a much smaller organization size, it's gonna be very optimized. So, um, I think there's been an element of that. And then yeah, following some of the more kind of YouTube econ people as well, which are still invaluable. Even the people do love a bit to bash them a little bit. Um, so yeah, just combining information sources, picking out things that'll help kind of build systems, build operations that are easy to plug people in, easy to train people, um, building a really good culture that makes people wanna stay. Cuz I think for agencies like talent is everything you're selling, people's selling people's knowledge and you don't want people coming, learning, and then leaving cause it's a very costly exercise. Um, but yeah, that's, that's kind of how I've been thinking about it really.

Rabah Rahil (08:27):

Yeah. I mean I love that. I think, um, it's such an incredible time to be alive where, uh, again, you're young, but when I was around man, it's, uh, there, there was definitely not the YouTube kind of, uh, I mean it is just an absolute like masterclass in everything and, and no pun intended cuz masterclass is actually kind of cool as well. But the, uh, I mean you can pretty much learn anything. And then the great thing about YouTube is not only that you can springboard yourself into finding the right mentor or finding these people that are actually behind these ideas or videos and then connecting with them even more. And, uh, man, I think that's incredible. We're actually, so AJ has a, we have a book club, um, through, uh, within triple well in the company and uh, blitzscaling is what we're reading right now.

Rabah Rahil (09:10):

And I'm actually step ahead of the game because, uh, I can't remember a month or so ago you turned beyond to the, uh, YouTube series, uh, where Reed Hoffman is just interviewing all these just crushers just gets killers. That's crazy like the Collison brothers, um, uh, all sorts of just incredible people and you're just like, this is free. Eric Smith was a great one, right? It was so fascinating. Um, and so I love that, man. I think being able to, to pull all this kind of smattering of things together and synthesize it into what you need is, is so incredible. I, I kind of joke, but the, I think this is the best time to be exceptional and the worst time to be average, like if you're a hustler and you want to get things done, man, you can really, um, you know, springboard your career into any, any place you want to go.

Rabah Rahil (09:53):

But um, if you really don't have that fire or drive, it can be a challenge right now to yeah. Yeah. It can be a challenge to kind of get to where you need to go where, you know, just 20 10, 15 years ago, like as long as you checked all the boxes, like you're gonna be fine. You're gonna have a wife, you're gonna have a, a, a great life. You're gonna have a 401k, et cetera, et cetera, where now it's like that, that just isn't the same economic environment that, uh, like my dad grew up in basically. So I love that man. That's, that's fantastic. So I saw someone

Olly Hudson (10:23):

Something out almost, sorry. I saw someone put something on Twitter about that. Like, you'd be surprised how little people are actually doing the work though. So if you actually just do that as a baseline and you already put yourself ahead of so many people, um, just getting the right communities, consuming the right content act, taking action at scale daily, letting for mistakes. Like most people just don't don't actually do that. It's sometimes easy to think that because you're in the Twitter space or the, the Facebook groups that everybody's on that level, but it's not true, I think to

Rabah Rahil (10:53):

A degree, oh, I couldn't, I couldn't agree more. And I think you nailed something there that's really, really appreciate where, um, like success doesn't happen overnight. And what happens like true success is just having win after win, after win, after win layer to top each other. But these wins are small, but then in the aggregate and you look, and if you have like, for example, if you just grow 1% every day, that's 30% growth month over month, like that that's substantial growth. And then you extrapolate that across to a year. You're like, wow. So I think that's something that like, just showing up, it sounds so cheesy. And so like cliche and bullshit, like, yo yeah, I just gotta do the work. It's like, man, there's just a certain aspect of like when you do clock in every day and clock out and every day you're making yourself just a little bit better.

Rabah Rahil (11:39):

You're insulating yourself from poverty. You're constantly sharpening the saw. Um, I think it's, it's, it's actually really, really incredible advice. And I think people don't succeed in this world for two reasons. One, um, they knock on the door and they're not patient enough where the universe is gonna answer. They're just, they don't wait long enough or two they're knocking on the door and the universe does answer, but they're not prepared when they get their shot. And so I think being able to just constantly sharpen the saw sharpen the saw, uh, it's just fantastic advice. Um, speaking of advice, outside of crushing it on the daily, what advice would you give to kind of aspiring entrepreneurs, marketers, uh, agency owners that you wished you received?

Olly Hudson (12:22):

Uh, good question. Um, I think, uh, I think focusing on fundamentals is, is key. Um, building like processes and fundamentals that you can fall back on. So not sweating the really small stuff, focus on pulling the right leaves at the right time. Cause not everything is gonna result in the same level of growth. Like people, people are focus loads on like what's a website looks like rather than just doing like some outreach or, or trying to hit or try to build an audience and, and, and generate interest in a service. And it's like, you really need to like map out the process, fit, like map out a 30,000 foot view, find where your bottleneck is and you can apply this to e-com as well, like map out the data to find out where your bottleneck is, zoom in relentlessly, fix that bottleneck, zoom out and then go again on the next one and just constantly keep that kind of process running. Um, I think that's one. And then also just building, like building a culture, I think a lot of people in the agency space, um, cause it is very low barrier to entry, but it's like tra something to be in a real business with a real culture and, and rewarding. The people who work with you nurturing that, um, is, is invaluable. I think,

Rabah Rahil (13:39):

Oh man, I, I love that. I think that it's just so spot on and they, the, I always, and I've said this on previous podcasts, but you can't out, like, for example, you can't out train a bad diet. Like you can't outm media buy bad economics or bad fundamentals. It just doesn't work dude. And so I think understanding that is so key because as an agency, obviously you wanna, you know, it's about making money, we're all capitalists and you wanna increase the billings, but at the same time, man, if you're gonna bring somebody on where, you know, the economics just will not work on paid, like it behooves you to tell that person or that client like, Hey, we really wanna work with you. But before we work with you, we need to change these economics. Or we can only promote bundles or we can only do this or that.

Rabah Rahil (14:26):

Because if not, we're just gonna burn your money. Like we're happy to spend your money, you're paying us. So we're happy to deploy your capital in whatever way you'd like, but you're also paying us because we're the experts. And what I'm seeing here is these economics and these fundamentals just won't net out on paid. And I think a lot of people don't, again, they, they disregard the fundamentals and I think it's been a bit of, uh, a function of the market as well. Like now you're seeing basically a come to Jesus moment, right. Where people are getting haircuts about 50, 60%. I mean, shops down 60%. I think Facebook got cut in half. Like all these huge, huge growth stocks where their, their P and E or, or their, uh, multiples were just, I mean, bananas. Right? Yeah. And so you're seeing that people are starting to have a swing back where there was that pendulum swing to like, oh man, cocaine and champagne to now it's like, Hey, what about profitability? What about fundamentals? And I think, yeah, it's gonna trickle down. And it's, it's a sign of a mature shop in my opinion, where that's one of the first things they talk about to you where it's like, Hey, you have a fantastic product. Hey, everything looks great, but these fundamentals need to be in alignment. And if they're not, you know, again, we'll spend your money. But at the end of the day, we're just gonna be lighting hundred dollars bills on fire. And I don't think that's what you wanna hire us to do. Yeah.

Olly Hudson (15:42):

Yeah. Definitely not, definitely not.

Rabah Rahil (15:45):

I love

Olly Hudson (15:45):

It. Sure, sure. I think that's the key. I think you're obviously triple well plug makes that process a lot easier. So, um, like, yeah, just, we always put people into that and it's been good to, to, to just get trans, to be surprised how many people you engage with, who don't have any pulse on those as well, especially those more hobbyist e-commerce owners, which you do come across quite a lot. People who start a passion project that go it's scaled really well, but they're not the best operator in that sense.

Rabah Rahil (16:13):

Yeah. And nor, nor nor do they need to be really right. Like there's a great book called the emo where like, it's fantastic. Like just be the product person, be driving the vision. That's why you're hiring the agency. But, um, I have came across kind of your point in that like million to $3 million run rate where you'd be surprised where like what's profit, what's net margin. You're just like, what's going on here? Like you're just printing money. I get it. It's fantastic. But like to get to the next level of scale, you really need to have the, that high fidelity view of the business where you understand like, Hey, it's not about just top line watching, like this needs to make it down to the bottom, uh, of the profit, like you can't just have. And I think, again, it was a function of the market where people were just making so much money that when the top line's so fat, like a ton makes it down to the profit. Even if you're egregiously, uh, irresponsible at the operating level, you're still gonna, gonna have a, a, a big nut to take home. And so, um, I love it.

Olly Hudson (17:10):

Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (17:11):

Ali, I think I'll go ahead.

Olly Hudson (17:13):

Go on. I was gonna say, I think on that side, I don't think every business is built to be absolutely massive as well. And some people find it hard to come to terms with that in the, in it's like you victim of your own success in econ. Like you see the numbers like, oh, I've got a hundred percent growth rate here on year. That's not sustainable, not like forever. And is also like not every product is gonna go to a hundred million a year in, in revenue. There's like very few products are gonna reach that point. And it's it's, I feel like finding that point of diminishing returns. I know we had a co couple of conversations about that when we were in, uh, Dubai. Like I think I spoke to AJ and max about it as well. Like being able to, to guide eCommerce owners of, and like, you shouldn't go past this point because you're just gonna become a busy fool because you're just gonna sell more for less, um, less bottom line. Um, and that's a, that's another problem that's not really discussed. I don't think like at what point does that division return kick in for, for a star and you, you have to pull much bigger levers to make it past that, that stage, um, to the next level, I guess.

Rabah Rahil (18:14):

Oh man, I love that that's, uh, like diminishing returns, pulling out the econ terms for you folks. Let's go, let's go. No, it's, it's really fascinating though, because I was, uh, a big fan of a gal named Marinn Kate. Uh, I don't know if you know her, but she was kind of this little hustler gal really, really smart. She started this business called virtual and, uh, it's actually, I think now actually back again, but, um, it was a great business. It was, you know, two, $300 million year business. Fantastic. Basically you would get VAs from this. And they were very, very, uh, vetted VAs and a sensational, really great business crushing. I think they had like 40 or $50 million in runway. The board was just a bunch of killers, but, but all the VCs and all the money that came in, they wanted a billion dollar business.

Rabah Rahil (18:58):

They didn't want a nice three, $400 million business. And it ended up pushing everything past, like the breaking point where the, the economics just fell apart and ultimately the company got scuttled and it went out of business. Yeah. She kind of had a little bit of a breakdown or, I mean, rightfully so, like this was her baby. That was fantastic. And she got pushed into a place where like she was telling them, Hey, this isn't a billion dollar business. There's nothing wrong with three, $400 million business. Yes. Fantastic business. Hey, but it's not a billion dollar business. And then it was trying to be something that I wasn't, and then it ended up, I think, got acquired by startups.com and then kind of got rebooted again. But it's the perfect example, I think, or just really top of mind for me, because everything worked like the runway was there.

Rabah Rahil (19:38):

The, the board was there, the product market fit was there. Like everything worked, uh, stitch fix another, I don't know if you know, a stitch fix what they basically do, um, on demand styling. So it's, uh, like a subscription box and you, you tell 'em what you like and blah, blah, blah, again, fantastic business. It was in that kind of 400, 500 million run rate business, really great business. They wanted to scale. They wanted to be a billion dollar company. They wanted to be the unicorn. They ended up firing all the stylists. And these stylists were just like, you know, part-time people that just like to style clothes. And so this is what OIE would like, this is what, and then they tried to do it all algorithmic because it was, uh, economically better. Exactly. They fired the founder and brought in kind of like a quote unquote operator it's fucking 80% off their all time high.

Rabah Rahil (20:20):

Like, I mean, absolutely just decimated the company just absolutely got decimated. It's a perfect example of what you're talking about. Like, Hey, no, know what the end game is, but also know where those diminishing returns are, because there's gonna be something that, where it doesn't matter how much capital you put into it. Like, when I think about raising capital, I think of either, uh, market constraints or actual capital constraints, if you're capital constrained and you just like, for example, like a SAS company like us, like yeah, it is a great company to give more money to cuz we're just gonna go hire more engineers and we're gonna make the product better, more robust, more stable, like all these things. Whereas like, yeah, if you're a DTC brand more likely, you're not really capital constrained your market constrain where it's like, it doesn't matter if you're gonna spend more money on ads. Like if you go from a hundred thousand dollars, spend a month to a million dollars to spend a month, how much is that really gonna move the needle into your point? Maybe it moves the top line, but you have all these marginal costs that you're gonna be selling $20 bills for $10. And it's like, unless the, the it's an exit or some sort of thing where you're only indexing on growth, man. It ain't the path.

Olly Hudson (21:24):

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Don't be busy for that's the, Ooh,

Rabah Rahil (21:28):

Ooh, I like that one. I never heard that one at all. Um, yeah. You ready for the value add segment? You ready to get nerdy on some TikTok? All right. This is why people bought the ticket. All right. So Ollie has been, I mean, it's pretty much unlocked TikTok for so many people, so we're really gonna just try and jump into his, uh, brain here. Um, what do you think the best parts and the hardest parts are running TikTok ads?

Olly Hudson (21:53):

The best parts is if you crack it, it's, it's, it's insane. Like the, it, it is like Facebook, 2016 kind of platform. It's just like, get it right. And then scale hard, super profitable, super cheap. Um, but it's also super unforgiving. So if you don't get your content, right, the content is king, um, on top, more than anything, um, if you don't get the content, right, you're gonna burn money. You're not gonna get the success, but if you can find that one angle or that one to three angles that work for your business, then you can really turn the, to just par the gasoline, as you'd say on that, on that. And, um, just scale it hard, put, put like six figures of spend beyond those, those angles and, and get some really, really good results. Um, so yeah, it's, it is creative led, as everybody knows, it's an, it's an entertainment platform rather ins current state rather than a social media in, in mine and other, people's quite a few of the people's opinions. Um, that's a great way people are going on there to get entertained at the moment. And if you can, if you can plug that gap, but also push your products, uh, as part of that, then you can get some crazy results.

Rabah Rahil (23:00):

I love that entertainment, um, play. That's a really cool way to look at it. Do you think you can build a business cuz back in the day you could build a business like dollar shave club did, um, you know, uh, MVMT watches, uh, a bunch of these people built a business off Facebook. Do you think you can build a business off of TikTok now?

Olly Hudson (23:17):

Definitely. I think the, the key to building the business is aware like you need that awareness in the early stages is you need to build attention drag traffic, and you can do that at scale on TikTok. And there's I think pop, I dunno if pop originated from TikTok, but that's where they really blew up in the last sort of 1824 months. Um, have you seen them that they're

Rabah Rahil (23:38):

Small? Are they,

Olly Hudson (23:39):

They're like a small tag you put on the back of your phone and if you go up to it and touch it, um, with your own phone, the other person's phone and it brings up like a link a bit like a link tree and then you can go through to their social profiles. Um, but they had a viral ad that that was like really like mid last year, I think, mid, mid to early last year. They've gone crazy from there. They're in loads of wholesalers, they've scaled so hard. Incredible. Um, there's so many people ripping dropshipping stores at huge scale. There's the back cracker that people might have seen

Rabah Rahil (24:09):

Where I saw that one. You posted that the guy

Olly Hudson (24:12):

Yeah. That, that the guy running that star is doing crazy numbers. Um, and they've just got this angle where someone lays on the back cracker and then it's got this like deep moan. That's obviously quite quite funny. Um, but they've just throttled that, that creative and it's, it's just paying dividends. Um, so I think, yeah, I think there's, there's huge potential to build brands, um, and build, build stars and, and, and arbitrage off the, off the platform, if you can understand it and do it well. And it's not even the paid side, like the organic side, um, which we advise on, but don't, you don't get as involved as the pay side is, is, is like another ad platform. Like it's somewhere where you can test angles. You can, you can find something that works for your company and then you can just double down on it and get crazy reach.

Olly Hudson (24:58):

So you'll find companies like popping candy or, um, there's a, there's a company called burnout chases, which is like a pro pressor board, um, popping candy, do like packaging order videos. Like every single video on their feed is packing order videos of suites. All of them are getting like 200,000 to a million views of video, just driving insane amounts of awareness. Same with burnout chases, burnout chases are like just people doing this challenge. So they, they give 'em the press board. They, they do this challenge, they post it on TikTok and all of their videos are the same. They just blow up. And I think if you can get cheap attention to a, to a brand or product, that's a big part of the problem when really getting started. Isn't it like? Yeah. It'll it's yeah. You, you saw it in early stage Instagram people smashing the influences or just getting huge organic reach and then being able to pull that through and then adapting as the profile is adapted to more like fundamental DTC strategies. Um, but yeah, I think that that period on top is now if you can get on now in the next six to 12 months, for sure.

Rabah Rahil (26:07):

There you go, go hire Ollie. Um, your, have you seen, so all the people that you're working on in TikTok, or just kind of what you've seen across the network, do you see certain verticals do better or there certain economic fundamentals that lend better or worse to TikTok or is it just, uh, pretty much the creative?

Olly Hudson (26:29):

It is very creative driven. I think there's some principles. And like when we've been thinking about how to like start in our own brand top brands internally, which we've been having conversation around, but haven't done like it's like, how do we reverse engineer from what we know about the platform to let the ideal black brands to take to market. Um, and I think there's some, some things with it that, that, that you can pull out. Like, I think anything that's got a very clear benefit or solution in terms of the product. So like something you can demo, something that has that wow factor, as soon as you see it, as soon as you see it being used or as soon as you see someone demoing it, or even if it's a wow factor, visually just something that'll stop people. Um, for those products that don't have that you can, you can generate that by just making really good hooks on the video.

Olly Hudson (27:15):

So it's not huge issue, but those products will do better. Uh, I think at the moment it's still slightly lower, mid to low price point will outperform will outperform those higher price points just because again, not, not, not, not consistently. And it's still POS possible to get the higher price points going, but the, the, the audience is on there are, do does still skew to a lower demographic. Um, not like eight, like 18 to 25 is still the dominant area for the platform. Um, so it is easier to activate and get scale behind the product. That's like 40 to $60 than it is 120 plus, although it's not, not impossible to do higher price point items. Um, so those are, those are the two kind of things that I'd say make it really easy to execute if, if you've got that wow factor. And if you've got that, um, that slightly mid to low price point,

Rabah Rahil (28:10):

The barriers ING and lower problem, that problem solution set up.

Olly Hudson (28:14):

Yeah. But content is still the biggest lever. Uh, again, like finding something that works for you and then running with it.

Rabah Rahil (28:21):

Our, um, so I, that's interesting cuz I would, uh, I, I guess it makes sense, but so do you see any luxury brands or kind of higher ticket items doing well on TikTok now or not really?

Olly Hudson (28:32):

Yeah. We're running a couple of, of, well, quite a few accounts that where we are running higher, higher price points, um, we've got a weighted blanket that they're doing well. Um, we've got a couple of there that kind a hundred dollars plus price point that moving that's working well for them. Um, it's just again about getting the content right. And sometimes having to adapt like the, the conversion journey a little bit for those higher price point products. So where for something that's a little low tick, you can just go content to, to, to product page, maybe for the higher price point. You have to take them down, either a quiz funnel or a, a more specific tailored landing page for your to traffic, um, or you'd take 'em down like a AAL or an advert and then take them to the, the product. Um, again, on the another thing that's important with high ticket having like your off platform retargeting and, and that side really dialed in.

Olly Hudson (29:30):

So TikTok does awareness really well. It does like top of funnel, very, very well. It doesn't do retargeting and lower funnel, um, a as well as other platforms. So if you've got like your, your display, your native, your Facebook retargeting and your Google brand all dialed in as well. And you can just stay top of mind after that initial visit, even if TikTok doesn't drive that, that conversion directly on their first, first interaction. Um, you'll find a lot of those customers do come back and convert a later day, if you can stay present in the, in the mind for a period,

Rabah Rahil (30:06):

I love it. And the math kind of works too, right? Because the, yeah, the CPMs and the traffic is so cheap that you're just refilling these retargeting pools with at least quality to higher quality content or, uh, users, excuse me. And then you have your, uh, your Facebooks, your Instagrams, your branded search kind of scoop up, um, these people that are kind of coming through. So you, you get into that full funnel and then because you're at a higher price point, the economics warrant are retargeting. Um, and so you, you're still gonna net out in the positive.

Olly Hudson (30:36):

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think value price point, you need those it's higher touch point, isn't it to, to drive a sale. Um, so I think, yeah, you got, you just gotta stay top of mind after that, but TikTok can still generate that, that huge scale awareness and that type of funnel traffic that will, that will help with that process.

Rabah Rahil (30:53):

I love it. When you guys are building creatives and ads for people, where do you find the inspiration?

Olly Hudson (31:01):

Um, so we split, we split a lot of ours into like buckets. So we'll usually do some more like evergreen, new GC concepts. So follow it following a framework of like presenting the CR like traditional UGC, creative, where you'll, you'll do a hook of some sort you'll demo the product you'll present the problem, the, the, the product as a solution to that problem, then you'll call to action. Um, so we'll, we'll do quite a lot in that angle and that works for some people we'll also then do, um, a lot more on kind of the trend side. So we'll tap into trending sounds. We'll tap into like viral videos that are on platform that we can kind of pull and, and do iterations of. Um, and then we'll also just come up with our own ideas. Like I think, I think the being create, again, lending to the fact that it's entertainment orientated, like people come onto the platform to kind of consume lighthearted content.

Olly Hudson (32:01):

So I think you always wanna try and innovate rather than just iterate on things that other people are doing all the time, try and find a unique angle, try and be the trend setter that, that, that can bring something that's unique to your product, to the platform. Um, so there's an element of working collaboratively with, with the, the companies we work with to come up with like series ideas or unique content angles, um, as well as leveraging sort of sounds that that are trending on TikTok or other, other things we've seen works across the rest of the clients we work with.

Rabah Rahil (32:32):

I love that. Are there any brands that are crushing on TikTok that you really like, that people could go look at at where it's like, man, this is exactly how you should execute.

Olly Hudson (32:43):

So there's different. There's a lot of brands crushing it in different kind of ways. Um, fair point, I think like what works for someone like you, you can, you can pull out the massive companies like lingo and Ryan and who are both killing it, lingo how lingo they're running the mascot angle, like, and they're killing it most, if you're on tick, you seen them, their videos are getting a million, 2 million plus 10 million plus for user video. Um, but have

Rabah Rahil (33:13):

A Duala,

Olly Hudson (33:14):

It's just killing it with that mascot angle. And it's just insane. Um, but that's not gonna work for everybody. Um, it's a good like example, but it's not gonna work for, for sort of every DTC brand. Then you've got like scrub daddy who are in that kind of top tier again, like they're all their posts are like trying to tap in just trying to go viral on every post. Um, but still on the organic side, the generating crazy reach, um, you've got stuff like peachy slime, um, popping candy, which I mentioned earlier. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, there's like, there's a card game called what do you mean? Like they're, they're doing, they're doing numbers on their organic side. Um, then there's stuff like pop that have run quite a lot of ads. They're doing crazy, crazy numbers. Um, I can send over, we've got, we've got like a resource that we have where we keep all of our, what we call greatest TikTok accounts as a reference. Maybe we could attach that to the bottom of this, this podcast. Yeah. We'll

Rabah Rahil (34:09):

Put in the show, show notes. Yeah, that's brilliant.

Olly Hudson (34:12):

Um, and we just updating that, but I think for people who are going on platform, it's like, yeah, you can look it for inspiration and this, the TikTok ad inspiration library a bit like the Facebook ad. Library's great. But it's also trying to craft what works for you as a brand that you really can find one to two angles that work, and then just, and just scale it. Um, from there,

Rabah Rahil (34:34):

I love that. Um, so kind of building off a little bit about this, and this is kind of me just picking your brain for free, which is great. Um, so like if we were gonna start a TikTok, is it good to have, so one, I guess the mascot angle is interesting, but two, do you, do you see it more efficacious when people have like a face on TikTok or multiple people, or does that make sense where it's like, when you go to the TikTok page, there's like the Ollie is gonna be on the store with us TikTok and I know I'm always gonna see Ollie or like on triple, if we, we brought on a TikTok, you're always gonna see the same face or does variety help out or having that ubiquity, which one have you seen be more, uh, effective?

Olly Hudson (35:18):

I, I wouldn't, I, I try not to push any absolutes on the platform. It's a fair point, like fast moving. And I think for one brand, I think for some brands, the trusted face at work. So for a brand like I think health, health and well wealth wellness is one where you like having an expert or expert position in, within new communities. So having someone who is presenting themselves on your account is like knowing the ins and outs of your product, the benefits, like if it was nutrition, for example, which is a bit of a bit of a difficult one on platform at the moment. But if you had an expert leading that, then you go into, you go to get more, like people are gonna come to you as a source of, of knowledge and it's gonna build authority. Um, you could also just having one person who leads like the tone of voice and the, the community.

Olly Hudson (36:05):

What, what a brand that does this really well is UCCI, which is a jewelry brand. Uh, okay. They've got their Instagram community and, and the TikTok is good, but their Instagram, like their tone of voice. And the way they engage with the community is driven by one individual. And it just feels very like congruent and consistent. I think that's a, a great way to do it and having like one person Le leading the process, um, and that'll work for a lot of people on the organic side, like applying to comments, et cetera, doing video replies. Um, but then I also think the, the variety of work for others, like having maybe multiple creators, one thing we're pushing on as part of our offering now is like, if we have a creator that's content works for someone like having them take over the page for seven days and seeing what the, what they can do there and then maybe moving on to someone else or keeping them on for longer or piecing them piecing together multiple creators. Yeah. Um, so I would say, yeah, it depends on the brand. It can definitely work. I think having consistency and congruency is, is a good way to do it, but you're also then tied to what happens if that person leaves, I guess, fair enough. You lose, you lose your, you lose your community lead. Um, so yeah,

Rabah Rahil (37:21):

Kind of, no, that's a, yeah, no, that's a very, uh, very leveraged answer. Your, uh, your poly sci background is coming out in you right now. <laugh> I love it. Then it is a fair point though. And it is cuz I do see what you're saying in terms of, especially, I guess in more authoritative verticals, like health and wellness or kind of an educational event, it does, it, it is helpful to have that kind of teacher professor or, um, same face that because then you don't have to constantly hit the credibility button, right? Like if I'm bringing in a new face every time where I know always the face of sore with us, he's crushing it on the agency. And I know I can believe what he says versus if you bring in a new marketer every single time, not to say that it wouldn't work, but, um, it does make sense what you're saying in terms like health and wellness education, et cetera, having that ubiquity might be a bigger advantage versus, um, a problem solution set where you have different people demoing the back thing where, um, you're gonna have that relatability is gonna be wider because you're gonna have different people that look different that have different body shapes, et cetera, that more, more people can relate to X and Y and Z versus this one person.

Rabah Rahil (38:29):

Um, so I think that's a really interesting, uh, take on that. I like that a lot,

Olly Hudson (38:33):

Same with same with clothing, clothing. Like I think clothing's something where having multiple body sizes and shapes and people wearing the same, like items has a, has a net benefit to having like one person just running the page. Um, in my opinion, I feel like that would be the better way to go about it for that vertical. So I think it's just about analyzing what, what the people in your space would would like, and even maybe like testing it for a period, like you could test it for seven to 10 days. Like, like I said, on seven to 14 days, you're gonna get so much data over that period. If you post a couple of times a day that you'll be able to make a decision of whether that's working or not.

Rabah Rahil (39:10):

I love that. Um, do you ever scrub the TikTok page? So like if there's tos that don't work well, do you ever new them and just delete, delete

Olly Hudson (39:19):

Em or you just, I would avoid deleting I'd I'd avoid deleting if you can, because like just, we found it does the algorithm. Doesn't favor that for profiles. Oh, okay. If you do it at scale, I feel like you, if you make mistakes and you delete a couple, it's never, never a problem. Um, I think if you're gonna really want to iterate on content and try, so we all sometimes try a spark out and then if we want to iterate it, rip it to dark post off, off the platform, test it. And just to cuz you don't want three variations of the same video on the organic side. Yep. Um, but you want try, can

Rabah Rahil (39:51):

You explain what that is real quick for people that don't know what a dark post is?

Olly Hudson (39:56):

So yeah. Yeah. Spark cards are taking an organic post a bit like a page post on Facebook taking an organic post, pulling it to the ads manager and then running that. So the org, so the engagement stacks on the video, the likes and shares comments, et cetera, stack on the video. When people click it, they go see your profile unless they click the shop. Now at the bottom or the call to actually the bottom where a dart post is just native to the ads manager. Um, you, you run it. And as soon as someone clicks on it go, they go through to the, the website rather than the actual, um, social rather than the top profile itself. So a little bit more direct, but then you don't get to sell to people like five times off one video.

Rabah Rahil (40:35):

Yeah, absolutely. And so just to be clear, the dark post will never show up on your proper organic profile, correct? Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Um, dude, you're killing it. Couple more questions and then we'll get into the rapid fire. Um, what do you see as some of the biggest mistakes when people are leveraging TikTok? Like what are, what are some not todos you've given us a ton of things to do? What are some things to stay away from

Olly Hudson (41:00):

Not using repurpose creator from Facebook? Um, not leveraging creators. I think I've seen like quite a big trend as people trying to use actors or like just not use people who spend all of their time on TikTok to make their content. Um, and people who have been operating within that space and, and kind of trying to, and not using that. It's a bit like the mentor relationship. Like why, why circumvent them when they, they know this better than you, they can expediate your learning process. They can offer ideas, they can offer angles and they could also offer gateways into like specific audience segments. Um, so I'd say that's, uh, at higher scale, not like having enough creative velocity, not having enough creative to test relative to the budget that they're spending, um, and not iterating and changing creative, um, fast enough. And that could be like, you've got a winning video.

Olly Hudson (41:55):

Well, you could take that and iterate on that video four times and you'd have five pieces of creative rather than one for very little effort. Um, so I think having that creative volume is important. Uh, not testing in like a very systemized manner. Like how we gonna, how you gonna test creative over what timeframe, what the KPIs most soft and hard metrics are you looking for? When are we gonna promote this to the more like stable scaling campaigns? Um, if we find an angle, how are we gonna iterate on that? Are we gonna go and partner with this influencer over a longer term? And like just thinking about things in more of a strategic and systemized way are probably the two, two things. Um, I'd say not using, not getting the content. Right. And then not, not running the right system, I guess.

Rabah Rahil (42:41):

Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Okay. Last one, before we're getting the rapid fire TikTok comments, keep 'em on, keep 'em off engaged, not engaged. What? Okay. Keep 'em on. Keep

Olly Hudson (42:50):

'em on. Definitely. I, I think as soon as you start getting the comments is probably where if you are managing the page, you should spend most of your time. Firstly, they're really funny. Like you get some jokes and you get some joke in there in terms of like people who think that really original, um, they're great source of information. Like if people are caught, like if people are making outrageous claims and the comments just, just start engaging with that, make videos. If, if people are calling out like objections, reply to that with another video, like it's just free content ideas. Um, it's a great way to en engage. Like you can, you can be quite brush, like don't be scared to clap back and um, ruffle some feathers being quite controversial works, I think on the platform right now. Um, but so yeah, I definitely keep em on and definitely engage as much as you can.

Rabah Rahil (43:41):

I love it. I love it. Did you made it with rapid fire? Can you believe it? Yeah. You know, I love you, but now I gotta rough you up a bit. Are you ready?

Olly Hudson (43:48):

So yeah. Yeah. Go for it. <laugh>

Rabah Rahil (43:50):

All jump.

Olly Hudson (43:51):

In's gonna be like,

Rabah Rahil (43:53):

Uh, Tesla overrated or underrated?

Olly Hudson (43:56):

Underrated.

Rabah Rahil (43:57):

Oh, okay. Thumb, stop ratio overrated or underrated?

Olly Hudson (44:03):

Underrated.

Rabah Rahil (44:05):

Underrated. Oh, okay.

Olly Hudson (44:07):

I think, yeah. I just, I really have bad creative with high thumb stop, but you can have bad creative with high, with like low cost per click and especially

Rabah Rahil (44:19):

You and Cody. Are you, you and Cody? Yeah. You and Cody are aligned with this. I like that. Um, London overrated, underrated.

Olly Hudson (44:29):

How, how highly race is it in the us? Uh, probably overrated. I think.

Rabah Rahil (44:32):

Overrated. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I dig it. I think it's probably properly rated here in the us. It's it's definitely a, a European hub where you wanna see it, but at the same time there's, I mean, you gotta, you gotta remember, like we don't have cultured cities, like cuz we're young compared to you guys. And so like London has just, just proper history. I mean outside New York and the Eastern seaboard, we don't really have old cities compared to you guys. And so, uh, London

Olly Hudson (44:56):

It's expensive. One

Rabah Rahil (44:57):

Fair it's

Olly Hudson (44:58):

It's expensive holidaying. That's so cheap. <laugh>

Rabah Rahil (45:01):

Yeah. Yeah. And it's all, all together. Uh, crypto overrated or underrated?

Olly Hudson (45:07):

Uh, underrated.

Rabah Rahil (45:08):

Ooh, really? What's your favorite?

Olly Hudson (45:11):

Even dark times. It's it's underage. <laugh> what's your

Rabah Rahil (45:15):

Favorites? What's your favorite ones?

Olly Hudson (45:18):

Uh, I'm pretty heavy in like lunar soul. Ethereum. Not, not a massive Bitcoin map.

Rabah Rahil (45:25):

Okay. Not Bitcoin. So, so soul E I like it. I like it. Yeah. Um, English cuisine, overrated or underrated,

Olly Hudson (45:36):

Uh, overrated. Like some, some, some of the food in this country is shocking. There's actually, there's a, there's a good Twitter or maybe TikTok. I can't, I can't remember which that is like just, just, just pitches of like English cuisine at different events, like football matches and it's so bad. It's so bad.

Rabah Rahil (45:52):

So bad. Nah, you guys do a lot of things. Well, but I gotta tell you, I don't think food is one of them. Uh, U GC overrated or underrated,

Olly Hudson (46:01):

Underrated. Underrated. Maybe, maybe just rated. I dunno. People, people

Rabah Rahil (46:07):

Got a lot. It could be properly rated. Yeah. It, so you're going overrated, underrated or properly rated

Olly Hudson (46:12):

I think properly rated.

Rabah Rahil (46:14):

Okay. Yeah, we can, we can roll with that. Uh, TikTok, overrated or underrated,

Olly Hudson (46:19):

I think broadly underrated. You gotta, when you're in the Twitter space, you're in that early adopter field Arent you. So I feel like you, everybody on there who, and quite a lot of people who watch this will be, may feel like it's been a while around a while, but it's, it's pretty under top still.

Rabah Rahil (46:35):

And we, I love that. I love that. Um, the FOS overrated, underrated,

Olly Hudson (46:41):

The FOS is in the band.

Rabah Rahil (46:43):

Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Olly Hudson (46:44):

Yeah. Um, underrated, underrated. Oh,

Rabah Rahil (46:47):

Okay. And one of my favorite bands as well. Yeah. Yeah. It's good. Good jams. Uh, favorite thing to do in the UK?

Olly Hudson (46:55):

Um, God, I'm a simple man. <laugh> I'm a simple person. Uh, what do I like to do? I can't even answer. I don't even have a good answer to that question. The easiest

Rabah Rahil (47:09):

One, you made it through all the heart, the easiest one you

Olly Hudson (47:13):

Fumble. Um, oh man. So I think we did that. Music events, music festivals. I'd say that's, that's something we do. Well, music culture. We've got down and that's definitely one of the, one of the better things to do

Rabah Rahil (47:23):

For you like to go to the concerts. Okay. I can dig it. Uh, favorite meal and why?

Olly Hudson (47:29):

Oh, um, I'm a B full English. Like I'm a full English breakfast mom. I know that's real basic. Like <laugh>,

Rabah Rahil (47:36):

That's what what's in English breakfast.

Olly Hudson (47:38):

Like the fry up the full, the full, the full thing. The beans, the sausage, the bacon, the toast, the, the, the, the eggs, the tomato, the mushrooms, the black put in might serve up.

Rabah Rahil (47:50):

Oh my gosh. You, you are through and through aren't you? I love it. <laugh> favorite place. Favorite place, travel shoe, I guess, or sushi. You, you know, surprisingly, a lot of people, uh, have chosen sushi, which is it's incredible to me. Sushi's

Olly Hudson (48:03):

Great food.

Rabah Rahil (48:04):

Favorite place in travel too. And why?

Olly Hudson (48:07):

Um, I'm pretty under travel, you know, as first it's young

Rabah Rahil (48:11):

To be fair

Olly Hudson (48:12):

Too, for this, for this like this year and next year coming to San Diego next week, um, to, to see you again, um,

Rabah Rahil (48:19):

Geek out.

Olly Hudson (48:20):

I enjoy Dubai to be fair. I definitely go back. It was very, yeah, very fun and interesting place. Um, so yeah, I'll pick that just cuz it's an easy answer, but love it. Hopefully that'll change this this year.

Rabah Rahil (48:33):

Favorite way to spend your time,

Olly Hudson (48:36):

Uh, working. Is that answer <laugh>

Rabah Rahil (48:40):

Oh my gosh. We're some hobbies or something

Olly Hudson (48:46):

Like, like watching football. That's probably the two football music.

Rabah Rahil (48:52):

Yeah. Who's EPL or who's your yeah. Who's your squad Newcastle or what you,

Olly Hudson (48:57):

I'm a, I'm a, I'm a Chelsea phone.

Rabah Rahil (49:00):

Oh man. Crazy stuff going on. Yeah. Weird stuff going on right now. Right. That guy can't sell anything is basically, Chelsea's all locked up for, for people that don't know it's owned by, uh, a Russian oligarch and um, with all the, the smatterings going on in the Ukraine right now, um, he basically can't sell any tickets. He can't sell any merch, only season ticket holders that have already paid can go to the matches. It's it's bananas right now. And then he can't sell it unless, um, he basically gives it over to the UK to then facilitate the sale. It's crazy. It's a, I was a big Chelsea guy when tos was there. Uh, and then I kind of fell off a little bit.

Olly Hudson (49:36):

He, he was a man monumental flop. So I dunno why

Rabah Rahil (49:39):

I know fair play fair play. He, yeah, he was definitely, uh, the Liverpool to the, uh, Liverpool Torress to the actual Chelsea Torress was a night and day to be fair, but uh, yeah,

Olly Hudson (49:48):

We got robbed. We got robbed. <laugh>

Rabah Rahil (49:51):

Indeed. Two more questions and you'll make it through favorite follow on Twitter.

Olly Hudson (49:57):

Uh, I following Cody, I think Cody drops a lot of heat and a lot of value.

Rabah Rahil (50:02):

He's the second, gosh, we need a quick pumping up his head.

Olly Hudson (50:06):

Oh Jimmy, Jimmy Farley. Who's if, if anyone's lucky, we, we do a lot of paid, but like he kills the organic side of TikTok. He's a great guy to connect with. Um, oh,

Rabah Rahil (50:15):

Cool. Yeah. I'll have to do that. I actually don't even know who he is. So that's a, that's a great, yeah. Help me out. All right. Last question. And then you'll make it through the rapid fire. So you can have dinner with three people dead or alive fictional non-fictional you're at a four person table. You're sitting at the head. You invite three people who are they?

Olly Hudson (50:32):

I should have, I forgot. This was a question I should have prepared. Uh, um, Robin Williams. I think I be, he would have some good stories. Love it. Williams, uh, Donald Glover. I find Donald glove a very interesting, very talent. Um, who else? Maybe like David Bowie someone like that. Again, just someone, people with good stories, people with

Rabah Rahil (51:00):

Good stories, all entertainers. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Those are

Olly Hudson (51:04):

Quick. We did. I feel like it depends what kind of did party, I guess if it's like a networking thing or an entertainment thing, I feel like they don't have some, some cool stories,

Rabah Rahil (51:14):

This some great choices. So Donald Glover, uh, Robin Williams and David Bowie. That's fantastic. Yeah. What is, that's a fun dinner. Appreciate. You're gonna have some stories there. You're gonna have some stories. Yeah, definitely. Ali, thank you so much for coming on. Tell the people how they can connect with you. How can they work with, so with us, how can they work with your Newt talk agency? This time is yours is my friend.

Olly Hudson (51:33):

Yeah. Thank you for inviting me on firstly. Um, yeah. Connect with me either on Twitter, Oliver, w Hudson or Ali Hudson, um, or, or, yeah, check our website for you advertising for the, for the tick top side. Um, and then saw whether it's dot co for the, for the more fully e-com side. Um, and yeah. Thank you for, thank you for inviting me on. It's been a pleasure.

Rabah Rahil (51:56):

Oh, likewise, man. Yeah. I'm excited to see you next week and thank you so much for coming on dropping all the TikTok bombs. I know people are really gonna enjoy this one. It's uh, yeah, I think you're right. It's still a really underserved market. And, uh, man, if you can pull, it's almost like buying lottery tickets and if you pull the right ticket on there, man, you can see just, just look at the triple well screenshots that people post. Man, when you, when they, when they hit a little pocket of success on TikTok, it is wild. It is no joke and it can really be, uh, straight to the top and bottom line. But anyways folks, that's it for number 28. If you do wanna get more involved with triple well, we are tri triple well.com. We are also on the bird app at triple whale, and then we have a fantastic newsletter that goes out every Tuesday, Thursday called whale mail.

Rabah Rahil (52:35):

And you can subscribe right on our Twitter profile, Ollie, our first Londoner or I guess UK or, and thank you for so much across the Palm. The internet was great. You sounded good. You dropped heat. The man really appreciate it. I can't when I was 24, I was drugged overdosed in a drain pool somewhere. And you're sitting here running the 25 person agencies. I mean you, your steps ahead of the game. Um, thanks again. Tell Joe I said hi and uh, we'll talk soon, my friend, that's it folks. 28 in the books and we'll see you on the flip.

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