What I Wish We Knew Before Starting Our Candle Business - Part 2

#024. This is Part 2 with tips 6-10. To get tips 1-5, check out episode #010. 

We share tips six through ten for building a real candle business, not just making candles. We break down niche selection, email-first marketing, market feedback, legal musts, and why social followers don’t equal sales, then wrap with a bonus mindset shift.

• choosing a niche that creates superfans
• defining target customers and price anchors
• writing copy and designing packaging for one person
• collecting quality emails from day one
• using email for reliable revenue spikes
• running markets to read reactions and adjust
• keeping what works and pruning weak scents
• setting up EIN, business banking and insurance
• treating social as trust, not sales
• avoiding follow trains and bad audience data
• thinking like a business, not just an artist

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Transcript

Welcome Back & Roadmap

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to part two of the 10 tips that I wish that we knew when we first got started with our candle business. So if you've not listened to tips one through five, go to the previous episode. And if you have, welcome. Let's get back into it with tips six through ten, plus a bonus for you at the end. All right. So let's talk about the next step here. And that is going to be step number six. Your niche is more important than you realize. So if you are just starting out, you're probably just thinking about how to make a dang good candle. I totally understand. If you're wanting this to be a business eventually, then you need to st start thinking about what is your niche. Meaning what section of the candle world is your candles going to fit in. And if you go wide just saying it's just a nice candle, and I'm just going to put it out there, and hopefully other people will find that it is a nice candle. I'm not concerned if it's uh a man or a woman or young or old or what income level they're at. I just want people to see it, like it, and buy it. Sounds great because that means you have the entire world to potentially be a customer of yours. Sounds great. It's not gonna work. It's not going to work. You have to, especially more and more these days, in the environment that the world is in, everyone is very particular about where they spend their money. They want to buy everything from brands that they align with, whether it's their values, whether it's their mission, whether it is just feeling like they belong to something. That is how a consumer buys these days. You buy Nike shoes versus Brooks shoes, um, or vice versa, depending on that community. There's a feeling that goes along with it, right? People want that when they're buying candles. If I just see a nice candle online, there's a million nice candles online. I want a brand that is going to feel like it's speaking to me. And this is when it where it goes back to talking about branding. You have to have a specific niche and target audience, and you have to become the candle for those people. So make a candle with a very specific person in mind. Let me just give you a very wide example here. If you are a candle maker that wants to make location-based candles, and you want them of different locations all across the world. So you want to have a candle that's of Milan and one of Istanbul and one of Bali and all of these really cool places in the world that people dream of visiting. And you want to be the candle maker that is making a line of candles that's relating to other people that think the same about those locations, or someone that has traveled to these locations. Great. Make candles for those people and know that, know who that person is in and out so that you understand how to communicate with them, how to talk to them, how to write emails to them, the copy that goes into your social media post, all of that should be all around that person. Same thing if you were there is someone in our inner circle, Chris, shout out to Chris, that makes um his entire lineup of candles is all um outdoors themed, right? So if he comes out with this praying waffle candle in his brand, it's not gonna fit. His whole um, him and his wife's brand is all about outdoors, people that live in the like love living um outdoors versus indoors, right? So like they're camping, they're hiking, they're going to national parks, they're doing all of that stuff. So that would be a niche to um be in. Okay, so that's the niche. And then the target audience is who are the people that are in that niche? Who are the people that are going to appreciate that and start to dissect who that is? Okay, well, generally that person is going to be, let's say, 25 to 35. We're not seeing a lot of seniors, we're not seeing a lot of college age students. They're about in here, you know, about here in the middle, and here's where the income bracket is. And then where do they shop at? And where else are they potentially buying candles right now? Okay, how much are those candles that they're buying right now so that I can make sure that I'm going to make a candle that's going to align with that? When you can get that specific with your niche and figure out who your customer is, it's going to make actually getting sales so much easier than trying to make a candle for the entire world where anyone could be your customer, right? Because that person is going to say, Oh, that candle's for me. That candle is speaking to me. We had Family Dinner, which is our monthly um super candid, fun conversation, uh hang out inside of our inner circle last night. And one of the examples that I had brought up to them was shopping for clothes. You shop for clothes at a specific store that you enjoy. And you know when you go, like the clothes are speaking to you in a way, right? Like it's your store. My example was Express. I used to wear everything from Express. I was buying Express, if anyone is a little older than me, um, when it was structure. So it was a men's store only, and it was just, it was structured. It was and it was just a men's store. Then Express bought out structure, and it was Express for men. Uh, then they opened up, you know, the the women's side as well, right? So I would go on Express and I wanted everything. It was that it spoke to me. It was what I wore. That was my that that niche of clothes. I was the perfect customer for them because I had the credit card, I was maxing the credit card out. Uh, I was in there all the time. I have a stack of shirts that I've gotten a little bit too big to wear, but I'm convincing myself I can go back to them. They're just the most comfortable shirts from Express, um, but they're all one size too small for me now. But I've got a stack of this, and then they're just like t-shirts, but they have nothing on them um that I'm like hoping to wear again one day. I bought it in every single collar. I probably, there's probably 30, 35, wide range of everything. That's all I used to wear. I just wore a plain t-shirt every single day for 10 years. That store was speaking to me. I was a customer. That niche of clothes, I could have been, I could have been shopping all kinds of places. I could have been stopping at a uh like a Nike or and worn all athletic stuff. I could have been, you know, worn more fancy stuff. I could have been, you know, shopping at Target, all kinds of places, right? Abercrombie, like I never got into that. Express was my thing. They spoke to me. That's who I bought from. That was the niche that um they knew how to talk to me. They they got me. Here's the thing things started to change. And I started to not feel like they were talking to me anymore. That wait, I I wouldn't wear that. What the heck is that? Like that now, part of this is me growing out of possibly what their demographic is that they're sticking with, right? To where it's like, oh, they're they're not catering to me anymore. Last time I went into an express, it's like you take two steps in, you look right and left, and you're like, oh no, this isn't me anymore. Like, and again, it's probably me aging out of that niche, and now I got to go into something else. Um, I don't know what that's gonna be. But um hopefully you understand what I mean about a niche. Um, get those super fans. You're only gonna find those when you get really, really specific. Number seven, for advice is you should be collecting email addresses on day one. This is probably going to make you the most money of all of these tips. Where the other tips are gonna help you save money. This is gonna help you make money. Start collecting email addresses day one. Whether you're selling to a coworker, to your neighbor, to it doesn't matter who your potential customer might be, you got to collect their email addresses because social media is gonna change. All the followers you can get out there, you can have a million followers. Life is good, you're super busy on Instagram selling that way, and then all of a sudden, Instagram shuts you down. What are you gonna do? If you don't have their email addresses, you're never gonna be able to talk to them again. You don't know. And this happens. That sounds dramatic, but this happens. One of the um business mentors in a mastermind that I'm in, he's a really, really big podcaster and he's he's a business coach. And he lost his Instagram account. And he has the monetary funds to where if it was just a technical issue, he could pay someone to fix this. But this has been a glitch that has happened, you know, that happened about two years ago. And he can to this day talks about how he will never do business on Facebook or Instagram again because of how they they he was gonna have to start that all over again and out of principle, he doesn't want to do that. But collecting email addresses so you can always take your customer with you. Uh, whether you're switching social medias, where whether you are opening new stores, whether you decide in two years from now, hey, you know what, I'm gonna put my cannabis business on pause for six months. If you put social media on pause for a while and then start to get it up and going again, it can be kind of tough. You want to have email addresses. Anytime for us in our business, we collect email addresses every chance we possibly can. And when funds are tight, payroll is tight uh in our shops, uh, I'm talking our February, our March, and even our April, those are rough months for us in our stores. And we need a little injection of cash. I just send an email out. It is going to give us 10 times the result of posting on social media. Posting on social media is great. Of course, we we have to do it. That's what we do. But sending a direct email to someone that wants to be on my email list and say, hey, here's here's an offer. Buy three, get one free, 25% off, whatever it might be. Um, for them, for one, it's speaking to them. They opted to be on your email list. So they want to be there. They want to get emails from you. Versus on social media, when you post out there, sometimes they might not know if you're really talking to them. It's not as personal. So collect email addresses from day one. It's going to pay off long term. Anytime I need an injection in cash, hey, it's Friday and it's been a slow week. Hey, you know what? Let me do a flash sale. I'm going to put together an email, send it out to my email uh list of people. I'm going to get quite a few sales come in just from that. So that is something you want to start from day one. However, you want to decide to collect email addresses, just make sure that they're good email addresses. That would be a bonus tip in here. Don't collect email addresses just to have email addresses. Don't do giveaways out of markets to get email addresses. People will fill it out just so they can spin the wheel or so they can possibly win something. They will never become customers. What you want to do is make sure that you have steps in place to collect their email addresses whenever they check out. When people come to your website, any touch point with someone that might be interested in your brand, get their email address. Next one for us here is similar, is along the lines of markets. Markets are a gold mine for feedback. Now, some of us don't like to do markets. We don't do markets as much anymore because we're in our stores on the weekends when markets would generally be happening. We like to be managing and overseeing that. And we can't pull any of our staff members away from the store to go and do a market with us. Also, as a owner, you're going to do far better at a market than sending staff out to do it. Um, that's just the reality of it. People at, especially at markets, people know that if you're at a market, those businesses out there are generally going to be small businesses like ours. They want to buy in support from the owner of that small business. So markets are crazy incredible for just instant feedback. Even if you have a rough market, when people come in to our booth and pick up a candle and smell it, the facial reaction that they get tells you more than them swiping their credit card. It's a bonus if they end up buying it and swiping their credit card. But when you put something in front of someone, they pick it up, they will compliment certain things. We knew right away we had something going with our labels. They all told us, I love your labels, I love your packaging, I love your labels over and over again. So going forward in our business, we're not going to change up our labeling. So it's just something that has been part of us from day one. You know, we make good labels. We do. We have a great designer. Um, we don't do um the labels ourselves, not these. We do some of the other ones, Chad does, uh, or we have local artists that do these. But our labels just stuck out because we're in a space that our customer is that customer that's shopping at the women's boutiques. That's the niche we want to be in. They are shopping at women's boutiques over the department stores. They are a um a higher middle class income where they're gonna be spending, you know,$26 to$32 for candles. So when those customers are in our booth and and they see our product and they see that they pop, they're colorful, they would say, I love our labels. And that's how we kind of try to differentiate ourselves from other candle brands because there's such a kick in that space of women's boutiques that um clothing boutiques, that all the candles are very minimalist. Uh, they have a really pretty like cursive writing on them on a white label that has like the nice paper label. That's kind of the thing that has been around for the last eight years or so. Um, I wanted to kind of disrupt that a little bit. Um, in what little way we can do that by I want to be in the same store, same customer, but I want to have a bright, fun, colorful candle in that store and let's see if it's gonna work. And it has. But getting that feedback out of that market, you're gonna learn so much. Even if they can't afford it, they can't spend on it that at that time, you're gonna learn a lot. You will learn a lot if you see that all these people loved your candles, but you only got two or three sales. Why didn't why did why did nobody buy after they said they loved them? If they're not telling you that they love your candles, then maybe you have a presentation issue. Maybe it's the vessels, maybe it's the sense, maybe it's just your setup just wasn't good. But you adjust for one thing at a time until it starts to lead to more sales and more and more sales. Now we know we have a really, really good product from doing these markets. It's how we got started. So even though we are not doing markets anymore, it is definitely a way to get instant feedback, instant confirmation that what we are selling works and that the direction we're going with our brand seems to be working. But then we'll also see when they're like, oh, no one likes that lilac candle. Why is no one buying that lilac candle? Okay, we need to start to uh get rid of this lilac candle, or in our situation, you're still gonna have it for three years because nobody wanted that lilac candle. And that was just the reality. Um, but that feedback started coming out of markets. Um, the people that did like that candle was a very, very specific demographic. It was all probably like what uh, you know, older than what my mother is. That, you know, what it would be my grandmother if she was alive, would have bought that candle. That's who wanted that lilac candle. Um, which, if that's who you're trying to sell to, fantastic. But that doesn't fit into that target customer that we're going for. So we ended up having to um put that one um out. All right, the last two tips here. The number nine is legal and insurance stuff isn't fun, but it's necessary. Make sure that you have your legal uh stuff done um early on. I would go and get your IRS EIN number as soon as you know you want to do this as a business. Um, go ahead and grab that. It's free. Just go to the IRS's website. Um, get your um brand name uh registered with uh your state as well. Uh you don't necessarily have to go out and register your name um and trademark it uh necessarily right away. You know, it's it's at the cost, it's an expense, it's gonna cost you several hundred bucks. So you might want to make sure that you are going to do this longer term before going and spending there. So I'm not gonna suggest that you go and do that right away. In fact, we never got Garznet Beacon Candle Company trademarked until we were putting candles on Amazon, and there was actually kind of a back way into getting our products on there without putting barcodes on there. Um, that's why we went and trademarked our brand. But you're gonna want to go ahead and get registered with your with the IRS. When you get that EIN number, one of the things that's gonna be great is you can now provide that to your suppliers so that your suppliers stop charging you tax. So send it to Candleston, send it to Make Sea, send it to all of them. Every single candle supplier out there, send your EIN number to them so that you're now not paying taxes. So right away, that's gonna save you a ton of money because you will not be paying taxes if you're buying it for your registered business. Also, going and setting up a bank account. Once you have the EIN number, go to the bank instead of a$10 a month checking account, just so you can track and put some money, um, which is considered an owner's investment, into that bank account so that every expense that you pay comes out of that account. And then whenever you make sales, it goes into that account. So it's very easy to track the money going in and out because it's all happening through a business account. Setting that up early is going to make your taxes and things so much easier. You're gonna want to have that separate from your personal stuff. So make sure that you're doing that. And then also with insurance, here's the thing insurance is not a legal requirement. You do not need candle insurance, but you you want to be insured, you want to protect your personal stuff, your personal life, your person, like you want to protect all of your personal assets from being taken away if you end up selling a candle that somehow ends up being a liability for someone. You want business insurance. You just do. I'm not gonna get too into uh which insurance you go with. Um that's a topic for another day, but you want to get insurance. It's gonna cost you$30,$40 a month when you get started. But it's just something that you're gonna want to do. Now, when you're first testing and you're you're you're doing this at home, you're you're figuring it out. Um, if as long as you're not selling this yet, then then you don't need it then. You don't need it before you start making candles. You need it before you start selling candles because that's when you're taking on liability of that candles when other people are starting to do something with them. You're making candles for yourself, um, you know, you don't need insurance. Um, but once you get to that point, so whether that's in a month from now, six months from now, a year from now, before you start selling candles, get insurance. All right. Last one here. Social media does not equal sales. It is good to stay top of mind for our customers and post, post, post. That's just what we have to do. A day and age where that is how we stay top of mind with a lot of people, but those emails are going to do a lot better than social media generally, uh, is what we have found. Um, social media is important. You want to grow. Um, it's there's a trust factor there, right? If I'm about to buy something, um, I like to go and check out that that person's website. And I want to check out their social media to make sure that, you know, I align with them. Do our values align? Uh, is our mission kind of uh, you know, the same? And so having social media is very, very important for those trust factors. Um, but it's more followers does not mean more customers. People will, you can post something super trendy and you're gonna get follows because it was trendy. But that doesn't mean they're gonna buy anything from you. Just keep that in mind for how you're doing your social media is hey, is this going to actually attract someone that actually wants to buy my product? Um, will they actually become a customer? Also, one of the things that people end up doing often, especially in these larger candle groups, they will do, I think it's called a follow train. And what it is, is someone says, Hey, here is my candle business page. Mine's Gardens Net Beacon Candle Company. Please comment and follow me, and I'll follow you back. And then that's going to get us all more follows. That is one of the worst things you can do for your business. Sure, it might look good if I can get another hundred people from other candle makers to follow my social medias. But it's one of the worst things that you can do for your business as you grow, because what happens is with Facebook, Instagram, they, when you have a business page, are putting your page in front of potential matches, potential customers, potenti, you know, what we're going to consider as customers. When you're on Facebook, there's suggestions all the time, right? Suggestions of pages to follow, groups to join, all suggestions that aren't ads. We're not talking about the ads yet. Talk about that in a second, but just suggestions of things to follow. If your brand, if my brand is just being followed by a bunch of candle makers because I posted in a Facebook group and I wanted to get more follows, they're going to just keep promoting my brand to candle makers because that is what the algorithm tells them people that like my stuff. I don't want candle makers. Candlemakers aren't buying my candles. I need customers to buy my candles. So I want people that are actually spending money and interested in my brand following my pages. Because then on the ad side, when I decide to run ads, whether it's our seasonal things coming out, something um unique, there's a hot scent that's trending, I'll run Facebook ads and Instagram ads. Those ads, the first people that are gonna see those ads that Instagram, Facebook Meta, um, the parent company's called Meta, is gonna put those ads in front of are people that like my page. I don't want to promote my candles to other candle makers because they're not buying my candles. I want my candles being shown to people that fit that target audience and that niche that that I've created. And by having other candle makers follow me, that just makes it worse. And then it makes it it's more it's costly. How many of you are seeing ads that people are spending money on ads for other candle makers? We're all seeing it. In fact, I'm seeing it quite a bit. And you know, it's because it's because of this. So we all like getting to different thresholds. So we all like to get to that next level. Oh, I gotta I have a hundred followers, I have 200 followers, I have 500 followers, right? It feels good. I get it. It's a very um short, you know, hit of dopamine, I guess, um, to the brain. I'm like, oh, we we got there, you know, that's great. But it's gonna end up costing you money, actual money, when you decide to start running ads in the future because you're running ads to those people that are never gonna buy from you. It's just like collecting email addresses out at a market and then putting them on your email list of people that have no interest in your actual product, but they you put out a clipboard that says sign up for a free giveaway. And then you collect all these email addresses, and none of those people are ever gonna buy from you. It's just the reality. And now you're starting to send emails to all of those people. And Google and all of these email service providers are gonna see that so many people are not opening your emails because what's happening is they're just swiping and getting rid of them. So now your score with all of these email service providers is going down. So now your emails are starting to go to promotion and starting to go to spam and starting to go to junk because you were emailing a bunch of people that actually don't want your product because they're not going to open your emails. So that's why we don't want to do those things. I know it's so hard to not because we want to, we feel like we're getting to the next level by hitting different thresholds, but you're not. You're actually going to hurt yourself and slow down your growth. All right. Last thing here is the bonus for you. And that is kind of just a combination of all of this stuff. You're building a business, you're not just making candles. So we have to at some point change our focus and change our priorities based on us running a business and not based on being a candle maker. Often inside of the inner circle, I, when people are asking questions, um, and and we're in there every day, we actually have an app so that we can communicate with our members uh inside of, and they'll ask a question, and my response will be Are you a candle artist or are you a candle business? Are you a candle maker or are you a candle business? Make sure if you are the candle business or you want to be the candle business, that you're making decisions based on a business. So this goes back to don't buy vessels that might go out of stock. Don't buy oils that might go out of stock. All of these things are fine if you're a candle maker, you're just having fun and you want to create stuff, but think long term. What makes the most business sense? Okay, let me um create a whole collection that I'm confident I can sell year after year after year. What kind of social media posts do I need to make as a business? Right. So everything that you do, think about it as a business a little bit more than as a candle artist. Sometimes we want to go above and beyond. We want to have gorgeous packaging. We want to put bows around things, we want to send free um matches, and we want to do all of this unboxing beauty, right? Which is totally fine if you have a specific customer that appreciates it and will spend the money for it. For us, we are still, we've sold$1.2 million worth of candles. I still stamp our bags with a stamp. We have a craft brown bag and we have a rubber stamp. We have two of them now, you know, because we're we've we have three stores. So I upgraded, I didn't upgrade, I added an additional one stamp. I don't even have a third stamp. I've got two stamps for three stores and we stamp every single bag. It's a business decision. That bag cost me about seven cents. I can go out and get printed bags, they're gonna cost me about 30 cents, right? It's only 25 cents, right? We go through thousands and thousands of bags. And at 25 cents a bag, every thousand orders is another 250 dollars. Now, so you might not think it's a lot of money, but it's going to add up. Also, our our the tissue paper that we wrap our candles in, it's the most affordable, but is still of the right thickness that it makes sense. Um, so we're making business decisions. Our customer isn't luxury. We're not going for luxury, um, bougie, none of that, to where we need to have a fancy bag that has, you know, like the thick ribbon, right? When we all know those bags, when we go into a really nice store, you know what I'm talking about. The nice bags. Ours, ours isn't a plastic bag that says thank you a hundred times on it. You know, we're at least it's a craft bag that has a twine type of handle on it, but we are stamping our logo. And sometimes that stamp doesn't get on there very, very good and it's kind of off or crooked a little bit. You know what? We're not going to throw that bag away. It's a bag. It's to take something from here to there. And for our customer, the value of the Product they are buying from us is not going down because of that. For some customers, it would. If I went to the Gucci store at a galleria somewhere, which I wouldn't do uh and buy something, I would expect that multi-thousand dollar whatever to come in a really nice box and a really nice bag, and they're gonna open the door for me when I go in and out of that store. That's that's how it is in those stores, like uh Tiffany. So, like when you shop at Tiffany, um, you they have someone that's gonna open the door for you. Their their stores are spotless, and it they have a whole room that we can go into whenever we're getting wedding rings out to look at. That's that type of store. So the expectation is gonna be a little different. When someone's buying my$26 candle and I can sell$1.2 million worth of them, that's great. That doesn't mean I need to spend more money on that bag or that you're getting to a level or a point in your business that you have to start spending more money on something that's already working. So think about that. If it's if it's working, um, if it's not broke, don't fix it. But keep your business in its growth in mind whenever you are making decisions. Hopefully, this has been really helpful for you. Let me know what other things, tips, and tricks that you've learned as a candle business. In the comments below, put in something that could help other candle makers on their journey. I would absolutely love if we can start a conversation there uh in the comments below of what's working for you and some things that you've learned along the way that you can pass down to someone else. Again, thank you so much for tuning in. I greatly appreciate it. If you could like, subscribe, leave us a review out on Apple or Spotify. That would mean a ton to us. Uh again, come hang out with us inside of our private Facebook group, completely free for anyone. And if you want to take your business to the next level, come and join us inside of the inner circle. Have a great day. Take care.