Five Essentials For A Candle Business

#058. We break down the five essentials that turn candle making from a hobby into a business with consistent sales. We explain how we build trust with a safe product, a strong website, smart social media, an email list that drives revenue, and a real brand that goes beyond a logo. 
• testing for a safe candle product with no shortcuts 
• getting candle business insurance as added protection 
• using a website to build trust beyond transactions 
• choosing only the social platforms your customer uses 
• creating content pillars so you are not always selling 
• treating social media as top-of-mind marketing 
• building an email list as a consistent sales driver 
• using website pop-ups with strong signup incentives 
• capturing emails at markets by framing the ask 
• understanding one-click unsubscribe requirements 
• building a real brand with why, customer, USP, story, visuals, voice, and experience 
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Transcript

Why Candle Making Is Not Enough

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Today, I want to talk about the five essentials to starting your candle business. Now, most of us, when we first start getting into this hobby, we think that candle making is the hardest part. Actually, probably most of us think that candle making is pretty easy until we get into it. And then we all know the struggles that we all go through. That's something that we faced, I'm sure that you faced, and most of my audiences faced is the challenges that come along with candle making. But once we're in the middle of that and we're figuring it out, we think just once I have this candle, I'm gonna be able to sell it. And today I want to talk about the five essentials that you must have when starting and growing your candle business that sometimes might be overlooked in some areas. But if you have these five key components to your business, you will be successful.

Product Safety Testing And Insurance

SPEAKER_00 0:59

So number one probably goes without saying, but that is having a safe product. You need to make sure that you have tested thoroughly, that you are not taking any shortcuts, that you have the proper fragrance loads, proper wicks for the right type of wax. Everything should be safe about that candle. I also highly recommend getting insurance on your candle business. Uh, it is not legally required, but it is something that's going to protect you in the case that there is any accidents. It's just another layer of safety for your business. But have a proper product before you put it out there to the market. That should probably go without saying, but also don't take forever on that part, right? Some people, I believe, get in their own heads and think, okay, let me just do one more round of testing. Okay, let me just do one more round of testing. Uh, and they're testing the exact same thing over and over and over again. Same wick, same fragrance load, same wax, same vessel. And they just keep testing over and over again because they are nervous to get it out there. So once you have safely tested your candles, it's time to move forward because we are trying to turn this into a business, correct? So we've got to have a solid product. Let's put it out there. So, of course, that's gonna be step number one is having that safe product.

Your Website As A Trust Builder

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Step two is gonna be we have to have a website. Now, you don't have to do all of these in order. These are all the things that we need to have combined as we are launching our business to have the greatest chance of success. And step two is gonna be that website. You gotta have a website. Reason being, a website is not just for sales. A website is a place of building trust. It is a place where people can go to learn more about your products. It is somewhere that you are gonna build up your trust. You're gonna have all of your products there. They can learn more about you. They're gonna get an understanding is this product right for the reason they're needing to buy something, whether it's a gift for someone else, a product for themselves, this is the place where they're gonna go. This is your online address. So even though you may not have orders coming in right away when you open up your website, in fact, most everyone won't have orders coming in right away without an audience. Having a website is key. If I see a product out of the market, I want to maybe not buy it that day. I want to be able to go and buy it in the future. I want to be able to go and research it a little bit more, especially high-ticket products. Now, inexpensive items, you're gonna be able to sell those a little quicker, obviously in person than higher-ticket items. But if you have higher ticket items or you have an elevated brand, if you're selling candles more than $50, people might not want to buy them right on the spot. It might not be an impulse purchase for them. Your website does so much for your brand beyond being transactional. Okay. It is your home. You can make it and design it however you would like. You set it up however you want. And there's a lot of key features that you can add to your website to make it run even better. I actually have a template uh for you in the show notes below that you can grab. It's completely free. It's the 10 must-have items on your website. So grab that, make you know, compare that to what your website looks like now. And they're very, very easy things to do that will give you some big results. So that's going to be number two is we need to have a website. We need to have a home for our products.

Social Media That Fits Your Customer

SPEAKER_00 4:09

Number three is social media. Now, I personally am not a big fan of social media. It's probably because I'm not necessarily great at social media. I know where my weaknesses are. I see these reels that are really popular, that go viral. I see the TikToks. That's just something I can't create. If you follow my social media, I do a lot of yapping. I put the camera in front of me, I talk to it, I upload it, I send it. It's all very raw. Uh, sometimes I'll try to throw a caption on there or something. But I tell you what, it works. It works on not just my candle business pro page, but it works inside of my candle business. Uh, Chad does most of our social media for our brand, Garznet Beacon. Uh, and he's fantastic at doing it. Uh, he does, you know, a combination of images and videos and behind-the-scenes uh things for people to see. So having a wide variety of uh social media um is something that you're gonna want to have. Now, you don't have to go out and put social media on every single platform. You don't need to have Facebook, Instagram, YouTube Shorts, TikToks, Snapchats, um, Blue Skies, X, um, Pinterest. You don't have to have all this stuff. Think about who your customer is and where are they at. My customer leans 40 to 64 plus, you know, 40 older demographic versus the the college students. I'm I'm not selling audit candles to college students. Uh, it's a combination of my branding, it's part it's a part of who uh we're targeting with our communication, and it's also just our price point as well. So you need to know who your customer is. And then those are the social medias that you should be on. Now I recommend just starting out with just two. Start out with two social medias. For us, that is Facebook and Instagram. And now I know most people are on Instagram and do really well on there. We actually do better on Facebook. That's that's just who our customer is. Our customer is, I'm my customer's age, right? And at my age, we we're Facebookers. We've been on Facebookers for we've been on there for 20 some years, right? Uh, it's a lot easier for me to type something on Facebook than it is to create a reel or an image and make it beautiful that the algorithm on Instagram wants. But you might be your product might make you a fantastic fit for TikTok. And if you're if you're doing all video content, I would definitely recommend being on, say, TikTok and Instagram and not worrying with Facebook. It's interesting. There's some brands that I follow that are really, really big. In fact, one of them that comes to the top of mind to me is voicemails. They're very um, it's a fun brand. It's a really, really fun brand. Um, you just have to check it out. On Instagram, they are huge. They have tons, like hundreds of thousands or not over millions of followers on Instagram. But if you go to their Facebook, like they have less than I do. And I don't have very many. I have like less than 3,000, right? Um they might actually have more than I do, to be honest, but it's very minimal compared to like where their audience is, right? So they're on the other platforms, but they're not putting a lot of effort or energy into it because that's not where their customer is. Their demographic, who they're targeting with their brand is on Instagram. So that's their focus. And then if you have the time and energy, then you can throw that, repurpose that stuff on the other platforms, but don't worry about what exactly those algorithms want. Like we could open up a TikTok and we could throw all of our social media posts on there as well. For one, we don't we just don't have the time or the resources to do that. Our team's not big enough to take some of that load away from us so that we could uh do that. Um, but for two, if we were, if we are gonna put a post on, say, TikTok or Snapchat or Pinterest or other places, we're not going to re-redo all of our social media. We we're gonna do our social media for one channel at first, and then we can place it on other places if we have if we have time for it. So we won't go into it too much. One key that I know about social media that has worked really well for us is having different content pillars. Your content pillars, like for us, we break it into four different content pillars that so we're not always selling because we do see a lot of brands that are just selling. So they're just promoting 25% off, buy three, get one free, um, uh seasonal sell, July 4th sell, Labor Day sell. And they're not, they're not talking about the the background, they're not talking about their inspiration, they're not talking about the company as a whole. Um, and they're not giving any educational resources to their customers. They're only trying to sell them. So that makes it a little bit tougher to get that engagement. Because ultimately, for us, social media is not to create sales, it's to stay top of mind and be engaged with our customers. But when I post something on social media, I'm not going and seeing, did that create any sales for us? Our sales come from the next thing I'm going to talk about here in just a moment. Social media is just to stay top of mind, just so that if people don't need a candle today, uh that they're they're seeing what's happening within our business. They know that we're still around. So that time when they are ready to buy a product by our candles, then we're top of mind. It's just like, for instance, Old Navy. I get an email. I bought, I've shopped at Old Navy twice in five years. I'm on their email list because I saved 10% or something. I don't know. And I get an email from them every single night. It's like at 9.05 Eastern time, I get an email from Old Navy every single night. Uh, it's their way of staying top of mind to us, I guess. So when I do need some cheap sorts or I need a uh a throwaway type of t-shirt for me, I I oh, Old Navy, hey, they've got everything's ten dollars this week or something, right? So like they're staying top of mind to me in that way. Most likely I'll unsubscribe and get rid of it because it does get kind of annoying. Um, but it's the same thing with Macy's. Uh Macy's uh that I do like to shop at, uh, I I have their credit card, I have their loyalty programs and things like that. They send an email every single night. And I'm not even opening those emails up, but Macy's is top of mind anytime I need to go buy any clothing. It's just because I they are they're in my inbox every single day. So we're that's kind of what we're doing with social media. It's just staying top of mind for people. Don't use social media as a way of expecting to get sales because that's really not going to happen for most of us. Now, you might have a trending product like on TikTok. Uh, I know like the um you have something fun, uh something unique, something trendy. For instance, the like the squeeze melts. Um, that like the wax melts are like the squeezable ones, right? They're like kind of watered down a little bit so they can squeeze out of this pouch. You can put glitter and stuff in them. Those are popular for the trending sites. So those work really well on the TikTok. You can show the process of you making it, they look fun. They're usually pretty inexpensive uh to buy. Something like that, you can generate substantial sales from that. So just because we're not creating sales on social media does not mean that you can't either. I know that TikTok is pushing really hard for e-com brands to open up a shop on TikTok. So if that's something that you might be interested in, give it a try. But that's social media. You gotta have social media when you start your candle business. You want to stay top of mind with people, you want to engage with people that way. And also, people want to discover you whenever they're out at markets and other places as well. Now, the next one is one that I find most people aren't doing, and it is one of the foundational pieces to our success and our business.

Email Lists That Create Sales

SPEAKER_00 11:19

And that is having an email list. You've got to have an email list. An email list is something that you're gonna start at zero. Everybody starts at zero when you're building an email list. But you should grow your email list as you are building out your business, every opportunity you get. Your email list is going to be a driver of sales for you. Every time we send an email out, we get sales every single time. Every Monday, Chad sends out an email that doesn't even attempt to sell a candle. It's our Monday motivational email that he sends out to our list. It's basically just like a Kickstarter to the week. Hey, hope you're doing well. Um, here's a here's a super brief story. It does not talk about our candles. It does not talk about our brand. It is part of our brand. People are getting these emails. They like them, they respond to our email saying, Oh, thank you so much. That really motivated me. I needed to hear that. It's just a Chad's a fantastic writer. He has his own personal blog that he writes. Um, reach out if you want to uh subscribe to it. I'm sure he'll give you the link for it. Uh, so he he just does a lot of personal writing. Um, very vulnerable, very great. Uh, and what we've done is uh he he turned that into a Monday motival motivational email just to our email list. And we started this like three months ago. A few people inside of the inner circle have also now um drew inspiration from that. And they are doing the same thing with their email list and is finding success. So that this is just one aspect of an email list, but I just want to share that since it was top of mind that we send out this email. So even when we send out that email on Monday that doesn't talk about our candles, doesn't even hint that, oh, you should light a candle to have, you know, a relaxing moment of calm. We don't mention any of that stuff. It's just something that's motivational uh to get them jump started on the week. And then we have a shop now button at the bottom. And that shop now button just takes people to our website. Every single time we send an email out, we get sales. It might only be one, it might only be three, it might be five, it might be 10. Every time we send an email out, we get sales from that. Now it's gonna take some time. You have to grow your list. Uh, it's not gonna happen overnight. How can you grow your list? So, this is what is very key is you have to grow your list. The first thing that we should always have is on our website, we should have a pop-up. This is also on that list of the 10 things that you should have on your website that I mentioned earlier that you can download for free. Uh, the notes uh is a pop-up. You got to have a pop-up on your website to collect email addresses. That pop-up here, a key to those is the discount that you're gonna offer in exchange for someone's email address has to be pretty lucrative. Can't be 5%, can't be 10%. Uh, you've you've got a you know, 15, 20, 25%. Play with it. Start high, reduce it a little bit and see what your conversions are because it will show you and on Shopify, it will show you the conversion rate of that, uh, of how successful that pop-up is, how many people are giving you their email address. The higher of a discount you give someone, it's more of a reason for them to commit to giving their email address up. The higher percentage you give them off of their order, the more likelihood that they're going to give their email address. Uh, we've all probably done it where you go to a website because you're looking for something and that that pop-up comes and it's like, oh, save 10% or something. And I X write out of that because I'm not interested in that. It doesn't catch my eye right away. Now, I'm interested in saving. Don't get me wrong, saving money, saving money. But right away when that pops up, I'm thinking, oh, let me shop around and see if I want something from this website. And then I'll figure out how to give my email address to them for a discount if I commit to something. But if I get a pop-up that's like save 25% today only, expires soon, I'm more motivated. Okay, let me give them my email address, right? Uh, and so I give that to them. And then I may buy or I may not, but now they've captured my email address and they're going to be able to market to me and communicate with me going forward. So email uh on your website having a pop-up, that's going to be something you can set up right away. It's very uh easy and it's free on Shopify. It's just part of Shopify's plan. Um, if you need uh uh in the in the notes below, I'll also put my Shopify affiliate link in there. It should give you three months for a dollar a month, just in case you don't have a website yet. Um you can at least build it out and have it for a couple months. And then if you decide to cancel it, you totally can do that as well. Uh it does take a little bit of work to get your Shopify store up and running. It's actually our number one workshop inside of the inner circle is our Shopify workshop, where I walk you through. I actually build it out a brand new candle brand. It actually lives out there today still. Um and I I walk through that. So if you need help on building a website, I'm getting off topic here, but if you need help with building your website, um check out the inner circle. You might enjoy that. It's worth joining for a month just to learn how to build that out. But back to emails. Okay, another way for you to capture emails that is very, very easy to do. If you are already selling candles out of markets, uh most of us that are selling out of markets have a POS system, a point of sell system. You're using either Square or Shopify. Shopify POS is great. Uh, it's free with Shopify, so that's why we use that. Um, but Square is also another one. There's a there's a lot of options out there. But all of those that you're capturing someone's credit card information with has the opportunity to email your customers a receipt. Now, with Square, I think that they the way they are integrated with credit card processors, whatever the email account with their credit card company is, they automatically capture that for you. Um, with uh, I believe I could be wrong, or it might be based on whatever tier you're at um within Square. Now, with Shopify, it doesn't automatically opt them, opt them into uh getting marketing uh from you. You actually have to capture their email address. Here's the key to capturing emails out of markets. When someone comes up and they are saying, Hey, I'm ready to buy this candle, I say, okay, great. Is it cash or charge? And they say charge, I say, okay, great. I'm ringing it up on my phone. This is my point of sell. Or out of the markets, I'll have an iPad that I'm ringing everything up on. And then I have my little credit card reader, and then I present them with my credit card uh reader for them to tap their credit card on. Now, what I see a lot of makers do is after that transaction, they will then ask that customer, would you like me to email you a receipt? And 90% of the time, that customer is going to say, Oh, no, thanks, not worried about it. Oh, I just got the alert on my phone. Nope, don't need it. All good. Thank you. Uh, and walk away. The reason they're saying that is because they think that they're troubling you by having you send them a receipt. They think they're causing you more work by saying, Oh, yeah, well, okay, let me give you my email address and figure all this out and you can email this to me. Because most of us have electronic banking. We get the payments on our phone or on our watches and phones and everything now. Uh so they don't need you to email them a receipt. It's all about how you frame the ask. So instead of saying, Would you like me to email you a receipt? I don't even want you to say, would you like to be on my email list? What I want you to do is say what's your email address? Say it, present it to them as if it's part of the transaction. So when I present to them the credit card reader or the credit card reader is right in front of me, I say, okay, it's ready for you to tap. And then they tap, it thinks for a minute, and then it pops up, and then it's it's good to go. And then on my Shopify, it's gonna say like enter email, just email a receipt. I I present it to them as if it's still part of this transaction. And I say, Great, what's your email address? And I just sit there and it just will roll right off of their tongue. They will just say it to you because the way you frame it makes it sound like the email address is required to complete that transaction. So they put their card down or they put their Apple phone to or their, you know, to pay and it beeps and it thinks for a moment. I'm like, okay, great, what's your email address? Uh roll that right into the transaction. It might take a couple of times for you to practice it with them, but as soon as they so they're they're just gonna roll off the throne. Okay, great. It's Sebastian Agarznet Beacon. Okay, great. I just emailed you a receipt. Have a fantastic day. Thanks again for shopping with me. They have now given you their email address. You just sent them an email with that receipt, and now you have their email address, and now they are on your email list. As long as you have an opt-out and the emails that you're sending to them, a one-click opt-out is now the requirement of the law, the law requirement, at least in the US, um, is uh one-click opt-out. As long as your emails that you're gonna be sending to them has that, which every platform will, Shopify email does, Clavio, which we personally use, uh, does any email service provider is gonna have a one-click unsubscribe. As long as you have that, now that you've captured their email address, you can market to them as long as they have a way to get out of those if they choose to. So it's all about how you frame it. Another way of growing your email list is gonna kind of circle back to doing things on social media, right? You can do swaps with other uh, you know, us being candlemakers, I can do swap promotions or cross promotions with, say, a soap company, right? And it will be a, you know, let's say give us your email address. We're gonna enter you into a drawing. Let's do some drawings and things like that. So lots of different ways of capturing emails. Um, you can search on on YouTube. There's plenty of videos on capturing people's email addresses uh when we are selling to them. But growing your email list, because here's what's gonna happen is you when you post something on social media or you post something just on your website. When you post something on your website, no one knows about it until they go to your website. So it's great to have a banner up there of your buy three get one free or your seasonal sales, um, end of season uh sales, anything that you're running, of course, you want to have that as your hero image or your banner or your announcement bar on your website. And you also want to go and post all of that on social media. But as a business page on social media, the algorithms are going to throttle back your page. If I have, let's just say, 2,000 followers on my Facebook or my Instagram, probably a hundred, two hundred people are actually going to see what I post, maybe, right? Um, because they want you to pay to boost. They want you to run ads so that more people are going to see your. your post. And that's going to get expensive. So I don't recommend doing it that way. I recommend collecting emails because when you have emails, you now the email them all of those promotions. We send an email out every single Monday. So we're staying top of mind to everyone. And then again on Wednesday or Thursday or on Friday, we're going to send out a more of a sales type of email, letting people know of new products that come out, of sales or discounts or exclusives just for them. We want to make sure we put stuff in their inbox that they want to open, right? So we're growing that email list. We own that email list. And that is what is critical versus our website or social media because all that stuff's always changing, right? Social media is always changing. You hear horror stories about people getting banned or locked out of their account for no reason and they can just never get it back. If that happens and the only way you're selling to people is through social media, it's going to be a problem. Okay. Enough about that. We dive into if you are interested in the inner circle, we have workshops on uh growing our email list because it's just such a big part of our business. We talk about it often. Not just us, but the other 200 candle businesses that are inside of the inner circle we talk about our email list quite a bit uh things that are working, uh what's getting the conversion rates up higher the quick rates, the open rates, all of that. So come check that out if you'd like. Lastly, and this is a pretty good one. You need to have a real brand not just a logo. So you need to have all components of a real brand not just a logo. What does that mean? I know so often people are looking for a logo designer. They want us to look at two different logos and then give the feedback on there. And that's that's all justified. When you get to creating a logo it is important that it is something that you're going to absolutely love and it's going to resonate with your customers. But a logo is not a brand let me repeat that a logo is not a brand this logo here of mine that's my logo that is not my brand. My brand name is in the logo of course but a brand has what I put together my framework seven key elements. And yes one of those is going to be the visuals that's going to be the logo. But here's the seven key visuals that I'll cover with you really quickly that you need to have part of your branding and this is something that you want to have all of this dialed in as you're launching your business so that people understand who you are. And so let's talk about that for just a moment. What is branding branding is your entire story branding is going to be all seven key elements here working together and that is your brand. When you think of our brands that are out there let's just think of McDonald's who does I love McDonald's I love McDonald's uh

Branding Beyond A Logo

SPEAKER_00 26:12

what's what's the branding of McDonald's sure there's the visuals there's the golden arches right there's the red and yellow or uh cups well which are now I guess they're white and yellow um because they're foam now right uh and there's the french fries that's what they're known for uh there's a quarter pounder with cheese that's what they're known for these are all different things but there's more than that there's a slogan right there is the communication aspect of it there's the jingle anytime I hear an ad from McDonald's it's it's all it all has the same structure right so not only is a product going to be consistent with the quarter pounder and price and Dyke oaks are very consistent there. That's part of their brand but then there's the visuals um but there's so many other things that go into branding. So let's just talk about the seven key uh aspects of branding that I do in my uh in my framework and that I teach and so the first one is defining your why uh this is the whole reason why you exist. What is the reason why you're making candles? Because as you are going on this journey there's gonna be a lot of roadblocks there's going to be a lot of days that you're gonna want to give up you may have already experienced this we experience it often as an entrepreneur, as a solopreneur, if you're doing this completely on your own, you are often asking yourself why am I still doing this right? So you have to define your why of why you got into candle making and why you want to turn it into a business. And for everyone that can be completely different. For us it was so we could leave our nine to five jobs and we can go all in with something else. That's why we got into this it was for Chad initially because he hated his nine to five job I I loved my nine to five job it was great. It was definitely not nine to five I worked a lot more than that but I I enjoyed it. Chad didn't enjoy his he was doing numbers and math and doing title work for real estate company he hated that so okay let's turn this into something substantial that you can have a business with this that was our why but what what's your why do you is your why that you have retired and you just want to bring in an extra 500 bucks a month um to support your um other activities that you enjoy doing are you wanting to start a candle business so that you have more time with your family doing something together because it's something that you as a family enjoys doing or are you wanting to create a legacy that you possibly can pass down to other generations in your family? Are you thinking big like that? Your why is going to be different for everyone. So I know oftentimes we see what candlemakers are doing. You might see what we're doing and say wow they've done X amount of dollars in sales they've opened three locations they have a headquarters they have a production facility they're doing all this wholesale like you might see that and think that's inspiration. And for some that will be inspiration. But for others they would be like that sounds miserable and I work a lot. So for some that probably does sound very miserable right there's so many different ways we can go in our business. We have to define our why up front because there's gonna be so many things pulling us in different directions that it's how we get grounded and how we come back to center. Wait, why am I doing this? What what why did I get started? Am I still on track with that? So define your why that's gonna be uh the first thing that we recommend doing and we do all this framework inside of the inner circle. The next one is know who your target customer is. I actually teach this inside of our candle making course and our boot cam because it's so important. Who are you making candles for? You have to define your niche and you have to define your target audience because when it's time to sell your product you have to have them dialed in so that everything else within our branding here is for that one person, for that person we're speaking to so are you maybe we have some fantastic niches uh one of our members decided circle uh red caboose candles shout out to Linda at Red Caboose Candles her entire brand is about the railroad it's about trains. Something I don't understand. I'm not the customer but there are tons of people in that space that just love trains, love these cabooses and carrying products within that space like candles has opened up some incredible opportunities for her. We also have another one uh member that is um Elaine that is in the horse racing space she creates these great candles her labels are beautiful and they're all about these different horses and horse races. And now she has tracks across the country that are buying her products to sell it's just incredible. Now you don't have to go all that I mean the those are very very niche. Some other niches that might not be quite that deep would be something like the metaphysical space right um sports themed. We have someone that started with just making their entire candle brand was about golfing and now they've kind of played into more sports. So they lean a little bit towards men in their communication and their marketing um but it's just all sports themed right so I see a lot of makers that what's your niche and they come back to oh it's for relaxation it's for that five minutes of peace that uh you know for people to have to take that moment of of of time it's like okay so who's that person is it for stay-at-home moms that have five rug rats running around the house and then they got to get out to all the sports events and the ballet and the recitals and all that stuff and they're just exhausted. That could be your niece the stay-at-home moms that are just crazy crazy busy right um or is it for that corporate lawyer that is working 90 hours a week and they just need that five minutes afterwards right both people need five minutes we all need five minutes we all need to relax we all need to kind of come back to center sometimes right but the way I sell a product to that stay at home mom and that corporate attorney that's two totally different people it's not someone looking for five minutes of peace that's not who I'm that's that's a benefit of my product but that's not who I'm targeting with my product right um if I'm targeting a stay at home mom with these five rug rats I'm gonna have probably a more fun more lively more um bright colorful type of product and my communication is going to be all about relating to the struggles they're going through in life right um so hopefully that uh explains it a little bit more figure out who what your niche is going to be your niche is not the benefits of your candles those are you know the the all soy all queen fragrances um those are all just like benef features and benefits of your product but it's not your niche your niche is the kind of category the area in the candle world that you might want to be in um and then the target audience is okay who is that person and then you learn everything about that person. So if I'm making a brand we'll go back to the um the the horse racing uh brand uh that one of our members has created that's my niche target audience is going to be who is that person? Who's the person that's going to be buying that candle is it going to be this age to that age um what sex are they? Um what income levels are they at? Who is that person? Understand who that person is in and out that is going to help drive the rest of your branding because if if that person that is going to be buying all of those candles, let's just throw it out there is 55 male or female that are say retired. They're wealthy, they retired early okay uh the branding I'm gonna put around that is always going to be talking to that person. Now there's gonna be other people that are going to want to buy that product. Absolutely we make our products for um to share who we make our products for we want our candles to be in women's wear stores that are generally going to be women who are spending a little bit more money on themselves. They may have kids but their kids are now out of the house. So if the kids are out of the house say they're in their early to mid 20s that means our customer is going to be in their middle to late 40s starting so our candles usually sell to 45 to 65 give a few years in there. It's for uh women that are spending a little bit more on themselves because they have that income now they're middle class but now that they don't have kids at home or their kids are out of school they aren't spending as much on them now they're starting to spend a little bit more on themselves. That's who we target with our candles. So we go into the stores where they shop at we understand the candles that are in those stores and then we want to make sure that we're creating a product that fits on those shelves as well. So I could go into that a little bit more but that kind of wraps up who our target customer is next is going to be crafting your uh your USP that's your unique your unique selling proposition that is the thing that makes your candle unique is that going to be your all natural ingredients uh is that going to be your the wax that you're using the vessels that you're using what makes your candle unique within that niche that we just spoke about uh the next thing is going to be to share your brand story. It's important to share your brand story because people want to know who they're buying from and why they're gonna buy from them. Especially in the climate of the world these days there are definitely different sides of everything. Almost everything that we do now it's just it's just it's just the way the world is right now. And people want to know who they're spending their money with and if their values align. No matter what side of everything someone might be on if I'm going to support for instance there is a sticker company that is very vocal about their political um stance and people see that and that has cost them a lot of business but it's probably also gained them a lot of business because now people feel more attached to that candle uh or that that sticker company right because of that and so they either align with them even more or don't align with them at all. And I don't just mean politics I mean in anything uh when I go to someone's about us page um do I see myself in them uh in their mission what are they talking about what's the language that they're using how are they communicating with me that's all really important so sharing your brand story is really important. If I go to a website I click on about us and I don't see a picture of someone I don't see a story about who the owner of the small business is I also don't have trust. So sharing your brand story is going to build some trust as well. I know many people don't like to be in front of a camera you don't have to always create videos to do that. Just having images of you in your workspace post those on social media and have those on your websites will do wonders for uh for getting sales uh because people want to be able to feel a connection there. The other things that we have is that visual branding like we talked about that's going to be your logo that's gonna be your labels, your colors, your packaging the uh unboxing moment when someone opens your product up, what's that experience like? Ours isn't that fancy. We recycle packing peanuts and we um you know have a candle care card in there and we write uh a little thank you don't on there. But I know some people go way over the top with stuff. You can do it whatever direction you want to go. This is a part of your visual branding that you're gonna be known for. So just keep that in mind. After your visual branding it's gonna be your brand's voice and your messaging this is going to be the tone uh in the way that you write your emails the way that you write your social media when you send an email out to someone they should feel like it's talking to them if they are your target customer. They're your target customer they should feel relatable to what is in that content of your email same thing with social media. Your social media if you're one of those that can do the fun and wild and um exciting uh types of uh videos fantastic um that will be a communication uh factor and that should carry over to your emails right if you are fun and upbeat and bubbly on social media but then your emails are hey it's Sebastian here guards and beacon we have a sale going on check it out if you would like have a great day and let them like wait a minute what happened to the fun TikToks like you know so your messaging and your communication needs to carry over everywhere. Uh so something to keep in mind. Keep this in mind also if you end up say outsourcing part of your business I know a lot of people will outsource social media because they hate doing it. I totally understand. Make sure that whomever you have whether they're just creating assets for you or they're actually doing the posting for you they understand your brand's voice. Because if they don't understand your brand's voice and they're just throwing things out there, it's not going to line up people are going to be a little bit confused. And lastly you got to create a memorable customer experience and that's putting all of this together that is them unboxing your product loving your product enjoying your emails enjoying your social media you staying top of mind with them just checking in with them putting all of that together as part of the customer experience this is what's going to get you to have customers come back over and over again. So hopefully these five things to building out your Kindle brand is going to help you just to recap that is you have to have a safe product then you have to have a website you have to have social media even if you're not great at social media I'm not great at social media but you got to have it it's just to build up that trust. After social media we also got to have an email list. This is number one for us in growing our business has been our email list. I hope that you have one. If not today is a fantastic day to start that um and then lastly is that entire experience putting it together and that's what we uh call our branding our branding is going to be all seven of those key elements that we just talked about all together. If you have all five of these really dialed in then you should start getting consistent sales. Now there's going to be some other areas to work on and we talk about this in the inner circle every single week during office hours from working on our SEO to growing our wholesale and getting corporate accounts and working on private label and all the other aspects of growing our business but if you have these five things you should be set up for success. And now the key is just acquiring new customers. Hopefully this episode has helped you out today let me know in the comments below if you don't follow us I would love for you to subscribe to us leave a review if you'd like to that'd be fantastic if you're catching this um as an audio podcast uh I agree we appreciate it have a fantastic rest of your day we'll talk to you soon