Hosted By

Rabah Rahil
CMO at Triple Whale
Maxx Blank
Co-Founder of Triple Whale

Guests

Jason Wong
Founder of Doe Lashes

Jason Wong on Stages to Build A Profitable Business, Hot Pots, McLarens & More

In this episode Jason Wong, the international man of mystery and eye lash kingpin goes into the three stages of building a brand, talks about the intricacies of the supply chain and why packaging isn't only about the cost.#ROAS

Notes & Links

Follow Jason on Twitter @Eggroll - https://twitter.com/EggrolI
Doe Lashes - https://www.doelashes.com/
Building Blocks - https://www.bbclass.co/
Json's Discord - https://t.co/hrRHlyYzlF?amp=1
WongHaus - https://www.wonghaus.com/

Transcription

Rabah Rahil (00:11):

All right. 3, 2, 1. We are back people for the third episode of you are not your Roaz. Can you believe it? Max hasn't killed me yet. I am Raba your host. Join alongside my co-host co-founder max blank and overall eCommerce crusher. And then we have Jason, the international man of mystery, the eyelash kingpin, Jason Wong, everybody. Hello. So I am out in Austin, Texas, and our satellite campus. Max is crushing it in the Midwest at our HQ in Columbus. Where does this podcast find you today? Jason?

Jason Wong (00:47):

I am in New York. <laugh> for the week.

Rabah Rahil (00:50):

Oh, that's awesome. You're originally or you were out of, uh, California, right? Orange county. You're over there with, uh, chase.

Jason Wong (00:55):

Yeah, I'm right next to chase. Um, like five minutes away. I'm I, I usually live in orange county, but I'm here for the week. I'm working on Shopify for now. Um, just been fun, seeing some friends. Um, it's been raining out a lot here though, so I don't, I don't like the rain definitely missed a sun in

Rabah Rahil (01:11):

California. Look at that. Living up to your, uh, international man in mystery coast to coast. I like it. So I did a little stocking on you. Um, are you from Hong Kong or you were born in Hong Kong?

Jason Wong (01:22):

Yep. I was born in Hong Kong, 1997, uh, a month before the British handed over. So I'm technically British citizen. Uh, and then I moved to America. Oh yeah. Moved to America when I was eight. Yeah. <laugh> little fun fact. Huh?

Rabah Rahil (01:34):

That's awesome. And then, so do you hold a British passport as well as in America? Yeah,

Jason Wong (01:38):

I have, uh, both passports. I'm also, um, Canadian, um, resident and then, um, Hong Kong resident. So four countries,

Rabah Rahil (01:47):

You see the international media you're right. Guys is absolutely living up to it. Okay. So tell us a little bit about kind of, I know we have dough that I really wanna get into, but you also did something called w house, right?

Jason Wong (01:58):

Yeah. So started w house about five years ago as a way to be kind like my sandbox. I'm, I'm very restless. My mom, like to say that, uh, so I like to do a billion things at once. I cannot focus on building one single company. So wa house was like my, my playground for me to bring up all these ideas, things I wanna do without creating like a billion LCS. And if you've ever started now say, you know, the process of doing so is tedious. So I'm like, okay, let me just create one single company where I can be creative. I can work on a bunch of projects at once. And, and that's really the premise of longhouse over time. It kind of evolve over into a brand incubator if you will, where we develop brands our own, but we also start investing in scaling other people's brands. So that's kind of where we're at right now.

Rabah Rahil (02:44):

That's awesome. What's been the most fun project you've worked on so far there.

Jason Wong (02:49):

Um, beyond though, I would say like, I love working with, um, an alcohol brand I'm involved with connector, uh, seeing the growth of, uh, yeah. Alcohol brand has been very, very tremendously, uh, rewarding, but also just a lot of challenges that you will get when running an alcohol brand. You typically won't see with a consumer brand, so that that's been very fun. Um, seeing people consume something that you're a part of has been very, very fulfilling. Um, beyond that just been, I love teaching. So teaching is one of the, part of the components of wall house. So I have my own class. I also teach at Shopify. So being able to teach and help people has been also really rewarding.

Rabah Rahil (03:29):

Mm-hmm <affirmative> yeah. You, you, you dropped that big, uh, awesome course that website's beautiful will link it, uh, in the show notes. What, what is it called again?

Jason Wong (03:37):

Building blocks,

Rabah Rahil (03:39):

Building blocks. That's right. That's the website's gorgeous alone. The price is missing.

Maxx Blank (03:43):

Um, Jason don't you also do some, um, help sourcing through longhouse as well. Yeah.

Jason Wong (03:49):

Yeah. Uh, one of our company is a sourcing and logistics company, which is not really in a good time right now because everything's so expensive, right. That, that is something that we are, that we have a company for.

Maxx Blank (03:59):

Do you, do you see any potential cha I mean, I think there are, but from your perspective, I think it'd be really helpful. Any challenges coming up right now for this black Friday, what people can expect? Is it gonna be a bit more expensive this black Friday for your holiday presence?

Jason Wong (04:14):

Yeah. Um, everything obviously is increasing in price, raw tier prices. Um, merchants, if you're not increasing your pricing, you're gonna see a lower margin. Very obviously, especially with Facebook attacking you on one front end, you have supply chain attacking you on the other front. It's getting more challenging. So I'm not gonna say it's glamorous. Um, what we're guests see is that there might be some supply shock, um, inventories are going to get more difficult to get things. So we'll get a little more expensive. And at the end of the day, consumer eats all of that, right. The, the make always gonna be the consumer. So, um, I think that's just some of the, the trend that we've been seeing over the past few months that we'll translate into the next few months. Unfortunately, not really a light at the end of the tunnel yet.

Maxx Blank (04:57):

Right. Are you seeing a lot of brands diversify their supply chains at all, geographically,

Jason Wong (05:05):

Somewhat it's it's also limitations on like, can you actually get it outsourced to your domestic vendors over overseas? For example, electronics, it's very difficult for you to have an electronics manufacturer in the United States, right? So even if you don't want to do it in China, you have no other choice, but to do in China now fabric and textile, you can go to Pakistan, Turkey and all that stuff. So you could move out China for a little bit, but they're all going to be on the same ship, crossing the Atlantic ocean around Mexico. That's where the problem is. Yeah. Mexico is great. Um, I think for apparel, um, at least like print on demand items, Mexico is great, but Mexico is one of those things where you, you have to have that volume for it to make sense. Got it. Um, because typically for vendors that are close by, um, they're, they're generally working with larger, larger buyers than someone who's buying like 50 a pieces.

Maxx Blank (05:57):

I got it. It's good insight. I feel like there's not so much conversation in the DDC world about supply chain as much as there's about marketing. So that's a cool snippet. Maybe something we could talk about another time, you know, get more into it.

Rabah Rahil (06:08):

Yeah. Agreed. Max, there's another boring subject returns. Um, but it's also a huge part of the business and you can do, Amazon's doing some cool stuff with it now. Um, but wow, Jason, I didn't know. You were just a man of all talents as well as a, a, a worldly. Um, so you're obviously definitely the youngest guy on this podcast. You're in a Uber successful place. Like how did you, uh, from my notes, you started hustling at 14. How, how did you build up all this, like motivation knowledge, um, in that, that we'll link to the Shopify plus or the Shopify master's podcast, but the way you think about marketing, the way you think about life, like, how do you kind of stay the course? What's your north star? Do you have any frameworks or how do you stay so productive and so happy?

Jason Wong (06:58):

Um, I mean, in the beginning it was a means of survival. Um, I wasn't good at school. I was absolutely horribly school. Um, <laugh> and it was so bad that I actually didn't get accepted into most colleges I applied to. And so it was more so for like, okay, if I don't, if I'm not gonna be in school, I need to be really good at something else because I need to get out of here. Um, so my initial motivation was survival. I need to make money. And then my motivation started turning into, okay, I want fulfillment. Well, what does fulfillment mean for me? Fulfillment means spending quality time with friends and family, being able, build meaningful relationships, being able to enjoy the finer things in life and the motivation to accomplish all that is entrepreneurship. I'm able to have the freedom to, you know, leave for a week to New York, to see some friends, I can go see my parents and do whatever.

Jason Wong (07:48):

And so the motivation became less so on the extrinsic value of how much money I can make, but more so on how much time can I buy by doing what I do. Um, and at the end of the day, it's really money or time that you're trading off in this world, right? You, you spend time to make money, you get money to get some time back. And so over time it's been finding the balance, finding happiness and finding, uh, my passion and my passion is just creating things. I love making things that people can use and see and appreciate. And so over time, the end goal and the motivation has really evolved.

Maxx Blank (08:23):

That's great.

Rabah Rahil (08:25):

Love. That's beautiful, man. Wow. That's fantastic. Geez. I need to I'm amped up already. It was like a mini Ted talk right there. Jason. It's fantastic. Um, so what's the nicest thing somebody's ever done for you?

Jason Wong (08:40):

Ooh, <laugh>, there's a ton. Um, I'm very fortunate to be surrounded by a lot of loving people. Um, I think whenever people check in on me, um, when we haven't really talked, that's really nice. I appreciate these things a lot. I think like us entrepreneurs, you guys will most likely experience is that we're so in the weeds of our business, we're so in the trenches that sometimes it's very easy to forget that we have people we need talk, talk to you. Right. So being able to get that message saying, Hey, Jason, how are you doing, checking in on you? It's some, it's the little nice things that people do that you really end up appreciating and it makes you want to be like, okay, I want to be also very much present for the other people. I need to work harder so I can do

Rabah Rahil (09:21):

That. That's awesome. That's awesome. Okay. Last question of the main segment, what's one skill or talent that is really random that somebody wouldn't guess you have, and it doesn't necessarily need to be productive. More like a quirky kind of like what he can beat some video game under five seconds or something like that.

Jason Wong (09:44):

Um, I'm a sushi chef and a DJ.

Rabah Rahil (09:48):

No way. Wow. What kind of, what kind of music? Um,

Jason Wong (09:50):

I do a lot of house, some trap love to mix hip, hip hop. Um, I actually took that, took up that skill during quarantine because I realized I real, I just really liked to entertain people. And if, when you're in the music, when you're sorry, when you're in the party controlling the music pretty much controls the vibes of the party. Right. So I learned how to DJ and then, uh, back then a few years ago, when I was trying to make some side money, I took up a sushi chef job. So I became a sushi chef. I could make all kinds of sushi, either need me to do that. So, um, yeah, two, two quirks.

Rabah Rahil (10:23):

Okay. So the triple whale conference, we're putting you on the spot. You'll DJ it and cater it. Yep.

Jason Wong (10:27):

I got you. <laugh>

Rabah Rahil (10:29):

Boom. He's in max. He's in. There

Maxx Blank (10:31):

We go. Robert, what about you? What about you Rob?

Rabah Rahil (10:34):

Um, weird talents. Oh man. I'm such a odd bug. Um, I won freshman of the year, um, in my conference for cross country run division one. Wow. I'm a big fatty now, but I used to be really, really fast. Yeah. Yeah. That's my one weird quirk. All right now. Well, if we both went max, you can't just let us hang. What's yours.

Maxx Blank (10:56):

I've uh, been a drummer for over 20 years.

Rabah Rahil (11:01):

We can make a band there. There you

Maxx Blank (11:02):

Go.

Rabah Rahil (11:03):

Jason. Amazing. <laugh> all right. So that wraps up the main segment folks. Now this is what you've been waiting in line for. Now you get to, I hate I'm gonna use this phrase, but pick Jason's brain. All right, Jason, the way you think about building a business, I thought was so fascinating. The, the way you kind of have that sec, first secondary and tertiary stages, can you kind of walk the people through how you think that, who aren't familiar with that, that process that you have, cuz I think that is just spot on. Fascinating.

Jason Wong (11:34):

Yeah. So whenever I think about building a business, it's always about building up the MVP. Every single person always starts an MVP. Um, for me it was thinking about, well, what is that product that I'm making that is unique in this space and, and like the, really the UVP of it. There's no point into getting to a business if you're not making any substantial differences, otherwise you're just copying something else. Right? So my first stage is to figure out what is the least amount of effort and money I need put into, um, making this product to make it viable. Um, you know, time and money is very costly. So you don't wanna put too much time and money into the stage. Um, once you've test it out, it's time for the second stage. And that is to essentially build out the foundations of your business.

Jason Wong (12:17):

Can you build out who your audience is? Can you look into, how do you market this product to copy the angles? Um, really building out like the visuals of the brand in order to market to the customers. And then the third stage for me is scaling, but scaling isn't just about running facial pads and letting it rip scaling is getting your brand to be recognized, um, by your, by customers beyond just the visuals of it. So whenever you think about the brands that people respect, like the Teslas, the Allo yoga, the Lule, um, you know, all these things you think about, what is that one thing that you talk to your friends about when you're introducing about this product? So for example, AirPods, um, AirPod, isn't just a piece of he foam. Whenever you talk to your friends about buying a pair of AirPods, you're telling them, yeah, there's noise canceling.

Jason Wong (13:04):

It fits in your pocket perfectly yada yada, yada. These are the things that are just, not just visuals of a brand, but is the feeling and the experience that you get from using a product that you want to talk to your friends about. So the biggest challenge for any DDC brand is how do we emulate that idea and that concept for our product? What can we do for our product? And within our marketing message that will make our customers become our biggest advocators. And that's really like the, the three steps of building a brand for me at like a conceptual level. Of course, there's going to be a lot small details and tactics that you do, but happy to jump into those too.

Maxx Blank (13:40):

That's great,

Rabah Rahil (13:42):

Man. I need a cigarette after that. Jason. That's fantastic. <laugh> um, wow. So in terms of, I know kind of a little side digression here with DOE you kind of inverted that a little bit though, cuz you stumbled upon what you found was kind of what we called a, a blue ocean market, right? Where there was just no, no incumbent. There was just all this market share up for grabs. There was money in that segment of the market, but there really wasn't any big competitors. And then from that you basically went straight Sherlock Holmes and <laugh> from what I've heard, read pretty much every Reddit post ever on fake eyelashes and then derived kind of the value drivers for customers. And then you went to sourcing. So that that's just so cool to here, you blade out there and then think of how you implemented it for just one of the, we're talking about dough, eyelashes, if anybody doesn't know, uh, it's one of the DTC darlings, um, we we'll, we'll let, 'em plug it later in the show. Um, so the next question I have for you kind of speaking about DOE what are a few things that you,

Jason Wong (14:47):

Um, there's, there's a multitude of reason. I can't say just one because that that's not too strong, right? So I'll list them out for you. Number one is I think if we did a very good job at intentionally designing our brand, when we think about our brand as a tone, as a personality, as the mission behind it, right? Like when people look at do, it's not just a pretty brand, it's that we're a lifestyle brand. We stand for something. We have very particular style that when you wear our products, you feel our products, um, that's something that's, you can't really just run Facebook ads you can get to, right? So it's very well designed to create this experience that our customers can fit into. I would say number two is our, our heavy focus in influencer and, and brand marketing. Um, we picked the right people to represent our brand.

Jason Wong (15:34):

We picked the right messaging and we were very careful in crafting the message with them in order to get to their audience. We weren't just sending out PR boxes and hopefully someone takes a picture on their Instagram story. Now we're working very, very closely with every single person that pushes us to make sure that we're crafting the right messaging to their audience. I would say number three is our efficiency and operation. That's one of the things that no one will ever talk about, but operations for any type of business is super important. So one of the things that we did was automating any part of processes that we could automate. We brought down influencer marketing outreach from 30 minutes to 30 seconds, we built an entire backend to handle a gifting process that's virtually seamless and automatic, which means that we can actually run influencer marketing faster and more efficient than virtually any other brand on the market at no cost.

Jason Wong (16:25):

Um, we were also very much good at focusing on product. There's no point in building a brand with a product that people only buy once because the money is always in the second and third buy. So how do you do that? Well, making a really good product is one first and foremost, most important. If you just create a really bad product and hope that your market can save you well, it won't cuz you'll get bleed out by the CDC space. So making a product that people can actually love actually real and being very authentic in our marketing has been the key to driving people to come back again and again, but also the post purchase experience that we give to our customers, making them our second and third time purchasers, um, has been key because instead of spending money on Facebook and burning it because they're not coming back again, we only have to acquire this person once and they're gonna come back second, third, fourth time because the product is good and we have a very well designed post-purchase experience.

Rabah Rahil (17:18):

Solid. Yeah. Speaking of that post-purchase experience, you did some really cool stuff with kind of shipment, timing and reviews. If I recall, right. Or just shipment timing in general, you were, I remember a thread on something where you're using kind of, I, I forget the, the mix of, but there's some app that you had that then you knew when the right, when the thing was de

Jason Wong (17:38):

Yeah. So I, I didn't know for requesting reviews, if you ever bought something online, um, some after some time you place an order, they would gotta be like, Hey, would you like to take, leave a review for the box of chocolate you just bought? Um, but what if you haven't gotten that product yet? Like some people get emails, um, to get a review when they have never, even it's a word right there. So we're like, that doesn't make sense because right. People hate that. They don't like that. So we use this app called Wonderman, which allows us to track every single order that we ship out, as well as, um, events for those, the, the progress of the packaging. Um, so that we are able to trigger events based on the shipment status rather than on the order place. Most people do a trigger on oh seven days later after they place an order, we'll send them an email. But what if the product takes, uh, what if the product takes like nine days or 11 days then that's wrong? Right. So we made, made our trigger to be like, we're gonna send out this email three days after the product has to be delivered. And then they're gonna get the email to say, Hey, would you like to leave a review? So it's only after the product has to be delivered,

Maxx Blank (18:46):

Then they get, so that's great. I have two random questions. Okay. Number one, in, in, in the realm of retention marketing, have you tried direct?

Jason Wong (18:57):

Yeah, we have done postcards. We have done postcards, um, automatically for abandoned carts. We've seen like mixed ish, uh, mixed response there. I, I wouldn't rule it out yet, but I think direct now still has this place for D DC probably a little bit. If our audience was a little bit older, we gonna see a lot more bite, but we did like abandonment card postcards where if they left something in their cart, how long

Maxx Blank (19:19):

Did it take you? Yeah. Percent off. How long

Jason Wong (19:21):

Did it take? It worked for a bit, um, five, six days after abandoned card, we trigger immediately, but it's also dependent on the post system. Right. So that, I would say that's a caveat for it for abandoned cart. You typically want to get there, like within three days. Yeah. So that, that's kind of like the only caveat we've had with that is right. It's

Maxx Blank (19:40):

Very good. I would think a campaign would, would really work well with it, given that, like you said, right. A post, a abandoned card you want immediately. So I'm curious about a campaign how that would do mm-hmm <affirmative> um, second question. How much thought did you give DOE um, how much thought did you put into DOE when designing the packages to optimize for, um, costs on delivery? Right. Great. I feel like that's not talked about, I, I did that for one of my brands and I was able to bring it down half my, my postage costs. I'm wondering since you have

Jason Wong (20:15):

A, yeah, I mean, our cost has thankfully been very, very low, but we're constantly optimizing it to be better. Um, but at the same time, we're very much intentional with our packaging. Not on just the cost, but on the, okay. The, the green effects it has, right. Like experience, but also the green effect, like we're using recycled paper, we have to use the proper, um, material we're changing our plastic, uh, like the plastic insert, trace into paper, insert trays. So these are the factors that we're considering on top of how marketable the, the packaging is, but also how cheap it is to ship it. So there there's a multitude of factors affecting our final decisions on how we make packaging.

Rabah Rahil (20:53):

Oh, I love that man.

Maxx Blank (20:56):

Uhhuh. It's cool. It's very cool. And do, do you, do you, um, outsource some of that stuff? I mean, like, to be able to, I guess you have longhouse, so it's not like you have to outsource it. You already have that, that those lines, but you know, you don't hear much about the design and creation of

Jason Wong (21:15):

Yeah. It's all packaging

Maxx Blank (21:16):

Right. In, in the space. Yeah.

Jason Wong (21:18):

So guys

Maxx Blank (21:19):

Don't know how to do it,

Jason Wong (21:20):

How we maintain our quality,

Rabah Rahil (21:22):

Uh, and max to kind of circle back on your postcard question. It's a great, uh, question. We actually, for a client, um, have a, uh, a product and then there was some product that was actually messed up in terms of the packaging. Um, and so we, what we did, cuz we needed to fire sell this product so we could offer it 50% off. What we did was send postcards to all the people that had bought the product in the, bought the product once, but have purchased in six months. I'm like, Hey, here's a, and to Jason's point, it, it was, it was at best in a creative channel. Like it's, you're not gonna run your business off of, uh, paper, snail mail, but I would definitely suggest, especially with the intricacies of Clavio. Now you can do some really interesting things. There's something called post pilot that essentially just links into. Um, and it'll do that. The, the whale or snail whale mail sign up people, um, uh, the <laugh> snail mail for you, but um, okay, cool. I have a couple more for you, Jason, then we'll get into the rapid fire. So I'll let you get your, your mind. Right. But, um, right now, what do you think we're in just kind of this really almost a new epoch, if you will, of media buying, marketing, what have you, what do you think the most important skills as a brand operator are

Rabah Rahil (22:37):

Now?

Jason Wong (22:42):

Um, creatives? Um, I, I think as we see a lot more people competing in the ad space, more and more people would need to stand out with the right creative and things that essentially becomes dump, stopping, um, creatives. I, I think a lot of brands today have to be unique and stand out in order to really compete in the ad space.

Rabah Rahil (23:03):

Yeah. I love that. Okay. One quick, one more for you. If you were to start a brand now and I gave you a million dollars, how would you allocate it?

Jason Wong (23:14):

I would spend half into marketing, uh, a quarter of that into hiring really good talent. Um, the rest are going to be in, um, inventory and a little bit on the miscellaneous cost. So like the three biggest component that you really need to

Rabah Rahil (23:31):

Start brand. And for people who aren't watching, he's doing all this math in his head, people he's doing all the math in the head. All right, Jason, you've made it to the rapid fire segment. My man, I love you, but I dunno how max feels about you. So he's gonna take me rapid fire max, take it away.

Maxx Blank (23:51):

Okay. Uh, Miami overrated or underrated.

Jason Wong (23:55):

<laugh> Ooh, that's a that's <laugh> that's a hot take. Um,

Maxx Blank (23:59):

Real

Jason Wong (24:00):

Quick. I, I, I, I think there's a good space for it. Yeah. It's underrated.

Maxx Blank (24:05):

Okay. BFCM overrated or underrated.

Jason Wong (24:09):

Oh, overrated.

Maxx Blank (24:11):

Hmm. Wow. I like to hear more about that at some point. Okay. Loyalty programs, overrated or underrated.

Jason Wong (24:16):

Underrated.

Maxx Blank (24:17):

Yeah. I'm

Rabah Rahil (24:19):

Can you double click on that?

Jason Wong (24:22):

<laugh> oh, you want me to elaborate on

Rabah Rahil (24:24):

That? Yeah, just, just a little bit.

Jason Wong (24:26):

Yeah. I mean, not a lot of brands do, uh, loyalty programs properly. And even if they have a loyalty program, they don't utilize it fully. Uh, what we are doing right now is we're treating loyalty program as a special membership program where we give exclusivity, uh, we do early access cells. We give, uh, free airdrops into points into their accounts to stimulate purchases. Most companies don't do any of those three things I just mentioned. Wow. So like being able to fully utilize this loyalty program, um, I, I think that it's underrated that it's underused, but it's also like people who are using it are not really using it to its full

Maxx Blank (25:02):

Potential. Yeah, sure. Love that. Beyond the punch cards, you know, like those physical punch cards <laugh>

Jason Wong (25:08):

Yeah.

Maxx Blank (25:10):

Um, okay. Branding overrated or underrated,

Jason Wong (25:14):

Underrated

Maxx Blank (25:16):

Instagram over or under

Jason Wong (25:20):

Over,

Rabah Rahil (25:21):

But you have a huge following on there. You have a awesome Instagram. We

Jason Wong (25:24):

Do. Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (25:25):

That personally though, too. Have Instagram.

Jason Wong (25:29):

Yeah. That's what makes it overrated though. Like, I feel like we're putting too much of our ache into one basket. Like when Instagram goes down, we're all due. Okay. And that's why I think it's overrated, diversify. Otherwise I still love using it.

Maxx Blank (25:39):

Well, like diversify,

Jason Wong (25:42):

All gotta do that.

Maxx Blank (25:43):

Yeah. Okay. What's your favorite car?

Jason Wong (25:48):

Car? Mm-hmm

Maxx Blank (25:49):

<affirmative>

Jason Wong (25:51):

Uh, McLaren 7 65 LT.

Rabah Rahil (25:54):

Okay. What do those go for?

Jason Wong (25:57):

Like half a million around there.

Maxx Blank (25:59):

Spicy a little bit,

Jason Wong (26:00):

Little bit less. It's

Maxx Blank (26:02):

Half your budget right there, man. It's half your D budget. That's car or brand what brand? I said car or new brand. What? You know <laugh>

Jason Wong (26:16):

Uh, man, you gotta make your, you gotta make your assets worth.

Maxx Blank (26:19):

That's right. Reliability. That's right. Okay. Uh, favorite meal and why?

Jason Wong (26:25):

Oh, I love hot pot. Uh, hot pot is like a, it's like an Asian cruising where you have a pot and everyone just sits around the table and they just cook inside a pot. I just think it's like the best bonding experience, but also it is so good. Wow.

Maxx Blank (26:38):

Um, what's the best DDT conference.

Jason Wong (26:42):

Ooh. Um, love geek out for sure. Yeah. Um, econ world is great, but that's virtual. Um, I would say those two, like the only two I've gone to, I don't really go to any other ones. Mm-hmm um, nothing bad to them. It's just after a while they, they kind of get repetitive.

Maxx Blank (26:58):

Yeah. Favorite place travel to and why?

Jason Wong (27:04):

Uh, I really love Japan. I went to Tokyo, Japan climb out Fuji. Uh, the air is beautiful. Um, people are incredibly nice. It's so colorful. Um, cause you asked Japan it's top one for me.

Maxx Blank (27:17):

Favorite way to spend your time.

Jason Wong (27:22):

I love traveling. Uh, even though that's technically not really like a chilling, I just love to see sure. New places, new people getting out of my bubble. I that's where I get creative. Right.

Maxx Blank (27:32):

Uh, favorite follow on Twitter.

Jason Wong (27:36):

Ooh. Yep. Like someone that I follow. Um, I love Farook. Um, have you ever seen fur? He's a, he's a guy of many talents and I just love watching how he thinks. Um, everyone just, even myself included, we just tweet like marketing or like e-com or whatever, but FRS all over a place, which I love. I just love like being introduced to E conscience by him

Maxx Blank (28:00):

To check it out. Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (28:01):

What's the handle?

Jason Wong (28:05):

Uh, F a R O

Rabah Rahil (28:06):

Yes. I think I do follow

Jason Wong (28:08):

Perfect for, yeah.

Maxx Blank (28:10):

Interesting. Okay. So here's the, here's the final one. If you could have dinner with any three people dead or alive, who would it be and why?

Jason Wong (28:21):

Uh, love to get dinner with Toby from Shopify. Love to get dinner with Jack Mo and Alibaba just love the way that he thinks. Um, and I would say probably get lunch with my dad. <laugh> he's still alive. Don't worry. But um, haven't seen him in a while. So wonder

Maxx Blank (28:40):

Get that with him. Very nice.

Rabah Rahil (28:42):

That's wonderful. Wow. You made it through Jason, rapid fire. You look unscathed, unfazed, just stoic as ever man. Awesome. Well, this is kind of the closing of the show. Did you wanna plug anything Jason? Or are you, I know you're doing just tons of cool stuff. Dough is amazing. Take it away.

Jason Wong (29:01):

Um, download triple. Well, if you need really good Alex platform for

Maxx Blank (29:05):

ECommerce, this is our first believer. Our first believer right here, Jason.

Rabah Rahil (29:09):

Oh man. This has been great. Our

Maxx Blank (29:11):

First retweet.

Rabah Rahil (29:13):

That's awesome. Well, Jason,

Jason Wong (29:15):

Yeah. Prior

Rabah Rahil (29:16):

To that for you guys, I know we had to grease some palms with your assistant to get you on the show. Uh, but thank you again for making time for us. Um, if you guys want to get more involved in triple well go to try triple well.com. We're also on the Twitter is at try triple well Jason's on the Twitter is at egg roll and then I think that's it guys. We made it through another one. Thanks so much for your time. And uh, we'll see everybody on the flip.

Maxx Blank (29:39):

Thanks Jason. Do

Speaker 4 (29:40):

This.

Speaker 5 (29:44):

Awesome guys. That's fun.

Podcast

Jason Wong on Stages to Build A Profitable Business, Hot Pots, McLarens & More

March 18, 2024

29:57

Hosted By

Rabah Rahil
CMO at Triple Whale
Maxx Blank
Co-Founder of Triple Whale

Guests

Jason Wong
Founder of Doe Lashes

Episode Description

In this episode Jason Wong, the international man of mystery and eye lash kingpin goes into the three stages of building a brand, talks about the intricacies of the supply chain and why packaging isn't only about the cost.#ROAS

Notes & Links

Follow Jason on Twitter @Eggroll - https://twitter.com/EggrolI
Doe Lashes - https://www.doelashes.com/
Building Blocks - https://www.bbclass.co/
Json's Discord - https://t.co/hrRHlyYzlF?amp=1
WongHaus - https://www.wonghaus.com/

Transcription

Rabah Rahil (00:11):

All right. 3, 2, 1. We are back people for the third episode of you are not your Roaz. Can you believe it? Max hasn't killed me yet. I am Raba your host. Join alongside my co-host co-founder max blank and overall eCommerce crusher. And then we have Jason, the international man of mystery, the eyelash kingpin, Jason Wong, everybody. Hello. So I am out in Austin, Texas, and our satellite campus. Max is crushing it in the Midwest at our HQ in Columbus. Where does this podcast find you today? Jason?

Jason Wong (00:47):

I am in New York. <laugh> for the week.

Rabah Rahil (00:50):

Oh, that's awesome. You're originally or you were out of, uh, California, right? Orange county. You're over there with, uh, chase.

Jason Wong (00:55):

Yeah, I'm right next to chase. Um, like five minutes away. I'm I, I usually live in orange county, but I'm here for the week. I'm working on Shopify for now. Um, just been fun, seeing some friends. Um, it's been raining out a lot here though, so I don't, I don't like the rain definitely missed a sun in

Rabah Rahil (01:11):

California. Look at that. Living up to your, uh, international man in mystery coast to coast. I like it. So I did a little stocking on you. Um, are you from Hong Kong or you were born in Hong Kong?

Jason Wong (01:22):

Yep. I was born in Hong Kong, 1997, uh, a month before the British handed over. So I'm technically British citizen. Uh, and then I moved to America. Oh yeah. Moved to America when I was eight. Yeah. <laugh> little fun fact. Huh?

Rabah Rahil (01:34):

That's awesome. And then, so do you hold a British passport as well as in America? Yeah,

Jason Wong (01:38):

I have, uh, both passports. I'm also, um, Canadian, um, resident and then, um, Hong Kong resident. So four countries,

Rabah Rahil (01:47):

You see the international media you're right. Guys is absolutely living up to it. Okay. So tell us a little bit about kind of, I know we have dough that I really wanna get into, but you also did something called w house, right?

Jason Wong (01:58):

Yeah. So started w house about five years ago as a way to be kind like my sandbox. I'm, I'm very restless. My mom, like to say that, uh, so I like to do a billion things at once. I cannot focus on building one single company. So wa house was like my, my playground for me to bring up all these ideas, things I wanna do without creating like a billion LCS. And if you've ever started now say, you know, the process of doing so is tedious. So I'm like, okay, let me just create one single company where I can be creative. I can work on a bunch of projects at once. And, and that's really the premise of longhouse over time. It kind of evolve over into a brand incubator if you will, where we develop brands our own, but we also start investing in scaling other people's brands. So that's kind of where we're at right now.

Rabah Rahil (02:44):

That's awesome. What's been the most fun project you've worked on so far there.

Jason Wong (02:49):

Um, beyond though, I would say like, I love working with, um, an alcohol brand I'm involved with connector, uh, seeing the growth of, uh, yeah. Alcohol brand has been very, very tremendously, uh, rewarding, but also just a lot of challenges that you will get when running an alcohol brand. You typically won't see with a consumer brand, so that that's been very fun. Um, seeing people consume something that you're a part of has been very, very fulfilling. Um, beyond that just been, I love teaching. So teaching is one of the, part of the components of wall house. So I have my own class. I also teach at Shopify. So being able to teach and help people has been also really rewarding.

Rabah Rahil (03:29):

Mm-hmm <affirmative> yeah. You, you, you dropped that big, uh, awesome course that website's beautiful will link it, uh, in the show notes. What, what is it called again?

Jason Wong (03:37):

Building blocks,

Rabah Rahil (03:39):

Building blocks. That's right. That's the website's gorgeous alone. The price is missing.

Maxx Blank (03:43):

Um, Jason don't you also do some, um, help sourcing through longhouse as well. Yeah.

Jason Wong (03:49):

Yeah. Uh, one of our company is a sourcing and logistics company, which is not really in a good time right now because everything's so expensive, right. That, that is something that we are, that we have a company for.

Maxx Blank (03:59):

Do you, do you see any potential cha I mean, I think there are, but from your perspective, I think it'd be really helpful. Any challenges coming up right now for this black Friday, what people can expect? Is it gonna be a bit more expensive this black Friday for your holiday presence?

Jason Wong (04:14):

Yeah. Um, everything obviously is increasing in price, raw tier prices. Um, merchants, if you're not increasing your pricing, you're gonna see a lower margin. Very obviously, especially with Facebook attacking you on one front end, you have supply chain attacking you on the other front. It's getting more challenging. So I'm not gonna say it's glamorous. Um, what we're guests see is that there might be some supply shock, um, inventories are going to get more difficult to get things. So we'll get a little more expensive. And at the end of the day, consumer eats all of that, right. The, the make always gonna be the consumer. So, um, I think that's just some of the, the trend that we've been seeing over the past few months that we'll translate into the next few months. Unfortunately, not really a light at the end of the tunnel yet.

Maxx Blank (04:57):

Right. Are you seeing a lot of brands diversify their supply chains at all, geographically,

Jason Wong (05:05):

Somewhat it's it's also limitations on like, can you actually get it outsourced to your domestic vendors over overseas? For example, electronics, it's very difficult for you to have an electronics manufacturer in the United States, right? So even if you don't want to do it in China, you have no other choice, but to do in China now fabric and textile, you can go to Pakistan, Turkey and all that stuff. So you could move out China for a little bit, but they're all going to be on the same ship, crossing the Atlantic ocean around Mexico. That's where the problem is. Yeah. Mexico is great. Um, I think for apparel, um, at least like print on demand items, Mexico is great, but Mexico is one of those things where you, you have to have that volume for it to make sense. Got it. Um, because typically for vendors that are close by, um, they're, they're generally working with larger, larger buyers than someone who's buying like 50 a pieces.

Maxx Blank (05:57):

I got it. It's good insight. I feel like there's not so much conversation in the DDC world about supply chain as much as there's about marketing. So that's a cool snippet. Maybe something we could talk about another time, you know, get more into it.

Rabah Rahil (06:08):

Yeah. Agreed. Max, there's another boring subject returns. Um, but it's also a huge part of the business and you can do, Amazon's doing some cool stuff with it now. Um, but wow, Jason, I didn't know. You were just a man of all talents as well as a, a, a worldly. Um, so you're obviously definitely the youngest guy on this podcast. You're in a Uber successful place. Like how did you, uh, from my notes, you started hustling at 14. How, how did you build up all this, like motivation knowledge, um, in that, that we'll link to the Shopify plus or the Shopify master's podcast, but the way you think about marketing, the way you think about life, like, how do you kind of stay the course? What's your north star? Do you have any frameworks or how do you stay so productive and so happy?

Jason Wong (06:58):

Um, I mean, in the beginning it was a means of survival. Um, I wasn't good at school. I was absolutely horribly school. Um, <laugh> and it was so bad that I actually didn't get accepted into most colleges I applied to. And so it was more so for like, okay, if I don't, if I'm not gonna be in school, I need to be really good at something else because I need to get out of here. Um, so my initial motivation was survival. I need to make money. And then my motivation started turning into, okay, I want fulfillment. Well, what does fulfillment mean for me? Fulfillment means spending quality time with friends and family, being able, build meaningful relationships, being able to enjoy the finer things in life and the motivation to accomplish all that is entrepreneurship. I'm able to have the freedom to, you know, leave for a week to New York, to see some friends, I can go see my parents and do whatever.

Jason Wong (07:48):

And so the motivation became less so on the extrinsic value of how much money I can make, but more so on how much time can I buy by doing what I do. Um, and at the end of the day, it's really money or time that you're trading off in this world, right? You, you spend time to make money, you get money to get some time back. And so over time it's been finding the balance, finding happiness and finding, uh, my passion and my passion is just creating things. I love making things that people can use and see and appreciate. And so over time, the end goal and the motivation has really evolved.

Maxx Blank (08:23):

That's great.

Rabah Rahil (08:25):

Love. That's beautiful, man. Wow. That's fantastic. Geez. I need to I'm amped up already. It was like a mini Ted talk right there. Jason. It's fantastic. Um, so what's the nicest thing somebody's ever done for you?

Jason Wong (08:40):

Ooh, <laugh>, there's a ton. Um, I'm very fortunate to be surrounded by a lot of loving people. Um, I think whenever people check in on me, um, when we haven't really talked, that's really nice. I appreciate these things a lot. I think like us entrepreneurs, you guys will most likely experience is that we're so in the weeds of our business, we're so in the trenches that sometimes it's very easy to forget that we have people we need talk, talk to you. Right. So being able to get that message saying, Hey, Jason, how are you doing, checking in on you? It's some, it's the little nice things that people do that you really end up appreciating and it makes you want to be like, okay, I want to be also very much present for the other people. I need to work harder so I can do

Rabah Rahil (09:21):

That. That's awesome. That's awesome. Okay. Last question of the main segment, what's one skill or talent that is really random that somebody wouldn't guess you have, and it doesn't necessarily need to be productive. More like a quirky kind of like what he can beat some video game under five seconds or something like that.

Jason Wong (09:44):

Um, I'm a sushi chef and a DJ.

Rabah Rahil (09:48):

No way. Wow. What kind of, what kind of music? Um,

Jason Wong (09:50):

I do a lot of house, some trap love to mix hip, hip hop. Um, I actually took that, took up that skill during quarantine because I realized I real, I just really liked to entertain people. And if, when you're in the music, when you're sorry, when you're in the party controlling the music pretty much controls the vibes of the party. Right. So I learned how to DJ and then, uh, back then a few years ago, when I was trying to make some side money, I took up a sushi chef job. So I became a sushi chef. I could make all kinds of sushi, either need me to do that. So, um, yeah, two, two quirks.

Rabah Rahil (10:23):

Okay. So the triple whale conference, we're putting you on the spot. You'll DJ it and cater it. Yep.

Jason Wong (10:27):

I got you. <laugh>

Rabah Rahil (10:29):

Boom. He's in max. He's in. There

Maxx Blank (10:31):

We go. Robert, what about you? What about you Rob?

Rabah Rahil (10:34):

Um, weird talents. Oh man. I'm such a odd bug. Um, I won freshman of the year, um, in my conference for cross country run division one. Wow. I'm a big fatty now, but I used to be really, really fast. Yeah. Yeah. That's my one weird quirk. All right now. Well, if we both went max, you can't just let us hang. What's yours.

Maxx Blank (10:56):

I've uh, been a drummer for over 20 years.

Rabah Rahil (11:01):

We can make a band there. There you

Maxx Blank (11:02):

Go.

Rabah Rahil (11:03):

Jason. Amazing. <laugh> all right. So that wraps up the main segment folks. Now this is what you've been waiting in line for. Now you get to, I hate I'm gonna use this phrase, but pick Jason's brain. All right, Jason, the way you think about building a business, I thought was so fascinating. The, the way you kind of have that sec, first secondary and tertiary stages, can you kind of walk the people through how you think that, who aren't familiar with that, that process that you have, cuz I think that is just spot on. Fascinating.

Jason Wong (11:34):

Yeah. So whenever I think about building a business, it's always about building up the MVP. Every single person always starts an MVP. Um, for me it was thinking about, well, what is that product that I'm making that is unique in this space and, and like the, really the UVP of it. There's no point into getting to a business if you're not making any substantial differences, otherwise you're just copying something else. Right? So my first stage is to figure out what is the least amount of effort and money I need put into, um, making this product to make it viable. Um, you know, time and money is very costly. So you don't wanna put too much time and money into the stage. Um, once you've test it out, it's time for the second stage. And that is to essentially build out the foundations of your business.

Jason Wong (12:17):

Can you build out who your audience is? Can you look into, how do you market this product to copy the angles? Um, really building out like the visuals of the brand in order to market to the customers. And then the third stage for me is scaling, but scaling isn't just about running facial pads and letting it rip scaling is getting your brand to be recognized, um, by your, by customers beyond just the visuals of it. So whenever you think about the brands that people respect, like the Teslas, the Allo yoga, the Lule, um, you know, all these things you think about, what is that one thing that you talk to your friends about when you're introducing about this product? So for example, AirPods, um, AirPod, isn't just a piece of he foam. Whenever you talk to your friends about buying a pair of AirPods, you're telling them, yeah, there's noise canceling.

Jason Wong (13:04):

It fits in your pocket perfectly yada yada, yada. These are the things that are just, not just visuals of a brand, but is the feeling and the experience that you get from using a product that you want to talk to your friends about. So the biggest challenge for any DDC brand is how do we emulate that idea and that concept for our product? What can we do for our product? And within our marketing message that will make our customers become our biggest advocators. And that's really like the, the three steps of building a brand for me at like a conceptual level. Of course, there's going to be a lot small details and tactics that you do, but happy to jump into those too.

Maxx Blank (13:40):

That's great,

Rabah Rahil (13:42):

Man. I need a cigarette after that. Jason. That's fantastic. <laugh> um, wow. So in terms of, I know kind of a little side digression here with DOE you kind of inverted that a little bit though, cuz you stumbled upon what you found was kind of what we called a, a blue ocean market, right? Where there was just no, no incumbent. There was just all this market share up for grabs. There was money in that segment of the market, but there really wasn't any big competitors. And then from that you basically went straight Sherlock Holmes and <laugh> from what I've heard, read pretty much every Reddit post ever on fake eyelashes and then derived kind of the value drivers for customers. And then you went to sourcing. So that that's just so cool to here, you blade out there and then think of how you implemented it for just one of the, we're talking about dough, eyelashes, if anybody doesn't know, uh, it's one of the DTC darlings, um, we we'll, we'll let, 'em plug it later in the show. Um, so the next question I have for you kind of speaking about DOE what are a few things that you,

Jason Wong (14:47):

Um, there's, there's a multitude of reason. I can't say just one because that that's not too strong, right? So I'll list them out for you. Number one is I think if we did a very good job at intentionally designing our brand, when we think about our brand as a tone, as a personality, as the mission behind it, right? Like when people look at do, it's not just a pretty brand, it's that we're a lifestyle brand. We stand for something. We have very particular style that when you wear our products, you feel our products, um, that's something that's, you can't really just run Facebook ads you can get to, right? So it's very well designed to create this experience that our customers can fit into. I would say number two is our, our heavy focus in influencer and, and brand marketing. Um, we picked the right people to represent our brand.

Jason Wong (15:34):

We picked the right messaging and we were very careful in crafting the message with them in order to get to their audience. We weren't just sending out PR boxes and hopefully someone takes a picture on their Instagram story. Now we're working very, very closely with every single person that pushes us to make sure that we're crafting the right messaging to their audience. I would say number three is our efficiency and operation. That's one of the things that no one will ever talk about, but operations for any type of business is super important. So one of the things that we did was automating any part of processes that we could automate. We brought down influencer marketing outreach from 30 minutes to 30 seconds, we built an entire backend to handle a gifting process that's virtually seamless and automatic, which means that we can actually run influencer marketing faster and more efficient than virtually any other brand on the market at no cost.

Jason Wong (16:25):

Um, we were also very much good at focusing on product. There's no point in building a brand with a product that people only buy once because the money is always in the second and third buy. So how do you do that? Well, making a really good product is one first and foremost, most important. If you just create a really bad product and hope that your market can save you well, it won't cuz you'll get bleed out by the CDC space. So making a product that people can actually love actually real and being very authentic in our marketing has been the key to driving people to come back again and again, but also the post purchase experience that we give to our customers, making them our second and third time purchasers, um, has been key because instead of spending money on Facebook and burning it because they're not coming back again, we only have to acquire this person once and they're gonna come back second, third, fourth time because the product is good and we have a very well designed post-purchase experience.

Rabah Rahil (17:18):

Solid. Yeah. Speaking of that post-purchase experience, you did some really cool stuff with kind of shipment, timing and reviews. If I recall, right. Or just shipment timing in general, you were, I remember a thread on something where you're using kind of, I, I forget the, the mix of, but there's some app that you had that then you knew when the right, when the thing was de

Jason Wong (17:38):

Yeah. So I, I didn't know for requesting reviews, if you ever bought something online, um, some after some time you place an order, they would gotta be like, Hey, would you like to take, leave a review for the box of chocolate you just bought? Um, but what if you haven't gotten that product yet? Like some people get emails, um, to get a review when they have never, even it's a word right there. So we're like, that doesn't make sense because right. People hate that. They don't like that. So we use this app called Wonderman, which allows us to track every single order that we ship out, as well as, um, events for those, the, the progress of the packaging. Um, so that we are able to trigger events based on the shipment status rather than on the order place. Most people do a trigger on oh seven days later after they place an order, we'll send them an email. But what if the product takes, uh, what if the product takes like nine days or 11 days then that's wrong? Right. So we made, made our trigger to be like, we're gonna send out this email three days after the product has to be delivered. And then they're gonna get the email to say, Hey, would you like to leave a review? So it's only after the product has to be delivered,

Maxx Blank (18:46):

Then they get, so that's great. I have two random questions. Okay. Number one, in, in, in the realm of retention marketing, have you tried direct?

Jason Wong (18:57):

Yeah, we have done postcards. We have done postcards, um, automatically for abandoned carts. We've seen like mixed ish, uh, mixed response there. I, I wouldn't rule it out yet, but I think direct now still has this place for D DC probably a little bit. If our audience was a little bit older, we gonna see a lot more bite, but we did like abandonment card postcards where if they left something in their cart, how long

Maxx Blank (19:19):

Did it take you? Yeah. Percent off. How long

Jason Wong (19:21):

Did it take? It worked for a bit, um, five, six days after abandoned card, we trigger immediately, but it's also dependent on the post system. Right. So that, I would say that's a caveat for it for abandoned cart. You typically want to get there, like within three days. Yeah. So that, that's kind of like the only caveat we've had with that is right. It's

Maxx Blank (19:40):

Very good. I would think a campaign would, would really work well with it, given that, like you said, right. A post, a abandoned card you want immediately. So I'm curious about a campaign how that would do mm-hmm <affirmative> um, second question. How much thought did you give DOE um, how much thought did you put into DOE when designing the packages to optimize for, um, costs on delivery? Right. Great. I feel like that's not talked about, I, I did that for one of my brands and I was able to bring it down half my, my postage costs. I'm wondering since you have

Jason Wong (20:15):

A, yeah, I mean, our cost has thankfully been very, very low, but we're constantly optimizing it to be better. Um, but at the same time, we're very much intentional with our packaging. Not on just the cost, but on the, okay. The, the green effects it has, right. Like experience, but also the green effect, like we're using recycled paper, we have to use the proper, um, material we're changing our plastic, uh, like the plastic insert, trace into paper, insert trays. So these are the factors that we're considering on top of how marketable the, the packaging is, but also how cheap it is to ship it. So there there's a multitude of factors affecting our final decisions on how we make packaging.

Rabah Rahil (20:53):

Oh, I love that man.

Maxx Blank (20:56):

Uhhuh. It's cool. It's very cool. And do, do you, do you, um, outsource some of that stuff? I mean, like, to be able to, I guess you have longhouse, so it's not like you have to outsource it. You already have that, that those lines, but you know, you don't hear much about the design and creation of

Jason Wong (21:15):

Yeah. It's all packaging

Maxx Blank (21:16):

Right. In, in the space. Yeah.

Jason Wong (21:18):

So guys

Maxx Blank (21:19):

Don't know how to do it,

Jason Wong (21:20):

How we maintain our quality,

Rabah Rahil (21:22):

Uh, and max to kind of circle back on your postcard question. It's a great, uh, question. We actually, for a client, um, have a, uh, a product and then there was some product that was actually messed up in terms of the packaging. Um, and so we, what we did, cuz we needed to fire sell this product so we could offer it 50% off. What we did was send postcards to all the people that had bought the product in the, bought the product once, but have purchased in six months. I'm like, Hey, here's a, and to Jason's point, it, it was, it was at best in a creative channel. Like it's, you're not gonna run your business off of, uh, paper, snail mail, but I would definitely suggest, especially with the intricacies of Clavio. Now you can do some really interesting things. There's something called post pilot that essentially just links into. Um, and it'll do that. The, the whale or snail whale mail sign up people, um, uh, the <laugh> snail mail for you, but um, okay, cool. I have a couple more for you, Jason, then we'll get into the rapid fire. So I'll let you get your, your mind. Right. But, um, right now, what do you think we're in just kind of this really almost a new epoch, if you will, of media buying, marketing, what have you, what do you think the most important skills as a brand operator are

Rabah Rahil (22:37):

Now?

Jason Wong (22:42):

Um, creatives? Um, I, I think as we see a lot more people competing in the ad space, more and more people would need to stand out with the right creative and things that essentially becomes dump, stopping, um, creatives. I, I think a lot of brands today have to be unique and stand out in order to really compete in the ad space.

Rabah Rahil (23:03):

Yeah. I love that. Okay. One quick, one more for you. If you were to start a brand now and I gave you a million dollars, how would you allocate it?

Jason Wong (23:14):

I would spend half into marketing, uh, a quarter of that into hiring really good talent. Um, the rest are going to be in, um, inventory and a little bit on the miscellaneous cost. So like the three biggest component that you really need to

Rabah Rahil (23:31):

Start brand. And for people who aren't watching, he's doing all this math in his head, people he's doing all the math in the head. All right, Jason, you've made it to the rapid fire segment. My man, I love you, but I dunno how max feels about you. So he's gonna take me rapid fire max, take it away.

Maxx Blank (23:51):

Okay. Uh, Miami overrated or underrated.

Jason Wong (23:55):

<laugh> Ooh, that's a that's <laugh> that's a hot take. Um,

Maxx Blank (23:59):

Real

Jason Wong (24:00):

Quick. I, I, I, I think there's a good space for it. Yeah. It's underrated.

Maxx Blank (24:05):

Okay. BFCM overrated or underrated.

Jason Wong (24:09):

Oh, overrated.

Maxx Blank (24:11):

Hmm. Wow. I like to hear more about that at some point. Okay. Loyalty programs, overrated or underrated.

Jason Wong (24:16):

Underrated.

Maxx Blank (24:17):

Yeah. I'm

Rabah Rahil (24:19):

Can you double click on that?

Jason Wong (24:22):

<laugh> oh, you want me to elaborate on

Rabah Rahil (24:24):

That? Yeah, just, just a little bit.

Jason Wong (24:26):

Yeah. I mean, not a lot of brands do, uh, loyalty programs properly. And even if they have a loyalty program, they don't utilize it fully. Uh, what we are doing right now is we're treating loyalty program as a special membership program where we give exclusivity, uh, we do early access cells. We give, uh, free airdrops into points into their accounts to stimulate purchases. Most companies don't do any of those three things I just mentioned. Wow. So like being able to fully utilize this loyalty program, um, I, I think that it's underrated that it's underused, but it's also like people who are using it are not really using it to its full

Maxx Blank (25:02):

Potential. Yeah, sure. Love that. Beyond the punch cards, you know, like those physical punch cards <laugh>

Jason Wong (25:08):

Yeah.

Maxx Blank (25:10):

Um, okay. Branding overrated or underrated,

Jason Wong (25:14):

Underrated

Maxx Blank (25:16):

Instagram over or under

Jason Wong (25:20):

Over,

Rabah Rahil (25:21):

But you have a huge following on there. You have a awesome Instagram. We

Jason Wong (25:24):

Do. Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (25:25):

That personally though, too. Have Instagram.

Jason Wong (25:29):

Yeah. That's what makes it overrated though. Like, I feel like we're putting too much of our ache into one basket. Like when Instagram goes down, we're all due. Okay. And that's why I think it's overrated, diversify. Otherwise I still love using it.

Maxx Blank (25:39):

Well, like diversify,

Jason Wong (25:42):

All gotta do that.

Maxx Blank (25:43):

Yeah. Okay. What's your favorite car?

Jason Wong (25:48):

Car? Mm-hmm

Maxx Blank (25:49):

<affirmative>

Jason Wong (25:51):

Uh, McLaren 7 65 LT.

Rabah Rahil (25:54):

Okay. What do those go for?

Jason Wong (25:57):

Like half a million around there.

Maxx Blank (25:59):

Spicy a little bit,

Jason Wong (26:00):

Little bit less. It's

Maxx Blank (26:02):

Half your budget right there, man. It's half your D budget. That's car or brand what brand? I said car or new brand. What? You know <laugh>

Jason Wong (26:16):

Uh, man, you gotta make your, you gotta make your assets worth.

Maxx Blank (26:19):

That's right. Reliability. That's right. Okay. Uh, favorite meal and why?

Jason Wong (26:25):

Oh, I love hot pot. Uh, hot pot is like a, it's like an Asian cruising where you have a pot and everyone just sits around the table and they just cook inside a pot. I just think it's like the best bonding experience, but also it is so good. Wow.

Maxx Blank (26:38):

Um, what's the best DDT conference.

Jason Wong (26:42):

Ooh. Um, love geek out for sure. Yeah. Um, econ world is great, but that's virtual. Um, I would say those two, like the only two I've gone to, I don't really go to any other ones. Mm-hmm um, nothing bad to them. It's just after a while they, they kind of get repetitive.

Maxx Blank (26:58):

Yeah. Favorite place travel to and why?

Jason Wong (27:04):

Uh, I really love Japan. I went to Tokyo, Japan climb out Fuji. Uh, the air is beautiful. Um, people are incredibly nice. It's so colorful. Um, cause you asked Japan it's top one for me.

Maxx Blank (27:17):

Favorite way to spend your time.

Jason Wong (27:22):

I love traveling. Uh, even though that's technically not really like a chilling, I just love to see sure. New places, new people getting out of my bubble. I that's where I get creative. Right.

Maxx Blank (27:32):

Uh, favorite follow on Twitter.

Jason Wong (27:36):

Ooh. Yep. Like someone that I follow. Um, I love Farook. Um, have you ever seen fur? He's a, he's a guy of many talents and I just love watching how he thinks. Um, everyone just, even myself included, we just tweet like marketing or like e-com or whatever, but FRS all over a place, which I love. I just love like being introduced to E conscience by him

Maxx Blank (28:00):

To check it out. Yeah.

Rabah Rahil (28:01):

What's the handle?

Jason Wong (28:05):

Uh, F a R O

Rabah Rahil (28:06):

Yes. I think I do follow

Jason Wong (28:08):

Perfect for, yeah.

Maxx Blank (28:10):

Interesting. Okay. So here's the, here's the final one. If you could have dinner with any three people dead or alive, who would it be and why?

Jason Wong (28:21):

Uh, love to get dinner with Toby from Shopify. Love to get dinner with Jack Mo and Alibaba just love the way that he thinks. Um, and I would say probably get lunch with my dad. <laugh> he's still alive. Don't worry. But um, haven't seen him in a while. So wonder

Maxx Blank (28:40):

Get that with him. Very nice.

Rabah Rahil (28:42):

That's wonderful. Wow. You made it through Jason, rapid fire. You look unscathed, unfazed, just stoic as ever man. Awesome. Well, this is kind of the closing of the show. Did you wanna plug anything Jason? Or are you, I know you're doing just tons of cool stuff. Dough is amazing. Take it away.

Jason Wong (29:01):

Um, download triple. Well, if you need really good Alex platform for

Maxx Blank (29:05):

ECommerce, this is our first believer. Our first believer right here, Jason.

Rabah Rahil (29:09):

Oh man. This has been great. Our

Maxx Blank (29:11):

First retweet.

Rabah Rahil (29:13):

That's awesome. Well, Jason,

Jason Wong (29:15):

Yeah. Prior

Rabah Rahil (29:16):

To that for you guys, I know we had to grease some palms with your assistant to get you on the show. Uh, but thank you again for making time for us. Um, if you guys want to get more involved in triple well go to try triple well.com. We're also on the Twitter is at try triple well Jason's on the Twitter is at egg roll and then I think that's it guys. We made it through another one. Thanks so much for your time. And uh, we'll see everybody on the flip.

Maxx Blank (29:39):

Thanks Jason. Do

Speaker 4 (29:40):

This.

Speaker 5 (29:44):

Awesome guys. That's fun.

One Tab
To Replace Them All

Supercharge your growth with a purpose-built ecomOS for brands and agencies.

Before ...
Shopify
Ads Manager
Klaviyo
TikTok
Pinterest
Bliss
Triple Whale