Today we celebrate Harvest Growth’s 100th Podcast! We’ve met some incredible entrepreneurs over the years who have shared their stories of successes, obstacles, and tips for anyone looking to start their own business. On today’s 100th podcast, we review some of our favorite learnings from the entrepreneurs we’ve had the pleasure to interview over the past three years.
In today’s 100th Episode of Harvest Growth Podcast, we cover:
Watch the full interview here: https://youtu.be/yfoSRduUdk4
Visit HarvestGrowth.com/podcast to listen to our past 99 episodes, and follow along on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Google Podcast for the next 100!
Do you have a brand or business that you'd like to share on Harvest Growth Podcast? We'd love to hear your story! To become one of our next guests, please contact us at https://www.harvestgrowth.com/contact
Today we celebrate Harvest Growth’s 100th Podcast! We’ve met some incredible entrepreneurs over the years who have shared their stories of successes, obstacles, and tips for anyone looking to start their own business. On today’s 100th podcast, we review some of our favorite learnings from the entrepreneurs we’ve had the pleasure to interview over the past three years.
In today’s 100th Episode of Harvest Growth Podcast, we cover:
Watch the full interview here: https://youtu.be/yfoSRduUdk4
Visit HarvestGrowth.com/podcast to listen to our past 99 episodes, and follow along on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Google Podcast for the next 100!
Do you have a brand or business that you'd like to share on Harvest Growth Podcast? We'd love to hear your story! To become one of our next guests, please contact us at https://www.harvestgrowth.com/contact
Announcer: Are you looking for new ways to make your sales grow? You've tried other podcasts, but they don't seem to know. Harvest the growth potential of your product or service, as we share stories and strategies that will make your competitors nervous. Now, here's the host of The Harvest Growth Podcast, Jon LaClare.
Jon LaClare: Welcome to episode number 100 of The Harvest Growth Podcast. It's hard to believe as I look back our first episode aired on May 2nd, 2019. After about three years and 99 episodes until today, I'm going to share today some of our favorite learnings that our audience has had, from comments I've received, and certainly, that I've enjoyed over these past several years as well. One of our very early episodes was episode number four. I shared the OxiClean story. That's the first time and I think the only time until today that I actually talked just myself to camera, as opposed to doing an interview of somebody else.
I shared about how the story of OxiClean was founded. I encourage you to go back and listen to that. It's a great half-hour summary I think of the behind-the-scenes story of what happened to OxiClean. Now, technology has changed a lot since the 1990s when OxiClean was originally launched and video marketing certainly looks different today than it did back then, but a lot of the principles really remain the same. It comes down to making a great quality product or service, generating repeat purchases where possible, generating word of mouth really from quality, from experience, et cetera. I would consider OxiClean one of the first real social media successes before social media really existed.
Of course, this is before the time of Facebook, Instagram, and so many other social platforms that we know today. One of the reasons it was so successful is consumers of OxiClean would share their experiences with other. They were so amazed with the results they had in removing stains from their clothing. They literally would talk about it in the elevator, on the way to work, et cetera. Again, before social media existed, it started that viral nature. One of the reasons was is because it captured the attention of an audience and kept them through quality. Billy Mays was an icon. He was one of the reasons, ultimately, we were able to capture attention so well.
We're so successful because of his amazing personality, but also his credibility and trust. Now, of course, unfortunately, Billy Mays is no longer with us today. There are other ways to capture attention and also to increase credibility with your consumers. Back then, it was all about live, "live demonstration", so Billy would perform, let's say the fishbowl demonstration to remove black color from water. It was iodine or betadine at the time, pour a scoop of OxiClean in and it instantly turned to white. Magical, amazing demonstrations and real stains were removed from clothing, from curtains, from fabric, from carpet, et cetera.
Demonstrations can still be phenomenal when trying to prove a product works or show that a product works. There are many other ways to really generate credibility as well. It might be testimonials, for example. Today's testimonials look very different from what they did in the 1990s, early 2000s. Today, it might be more around UGC or user-generated content. Getting real people to share their videos, their experience, written or in video. Video is always great, of course, on social media channels, using those videos in your own paid marketing mediums as well. That was a great learning from my time. Of course, my experience that I shared in that "interview", or that story that I shared in episode number four.
Just a few episodes later was episode number eight. This was Gwee Gym. They have been a client of ours for a long time. It's a great product. It's a simple fitness product meant for, a lot really the elderly or those that are recovering. You had two handles you grab and some tension between them as you pull them apart, back and forth. We helped them launch on TV back in the day several years ago and had great success and a lot of fun with them. Really, this interview I did was with Dan Valdez, one of the founders or entrepreneurs really at the helm of this. He's also a founding stakeholder of the University of Houston Entrepreneurship Program, really one of the best in the nation.
He's well known in that field and a true expert on entrepreneurship. I encourage you to go back and listen to that episode. Again, Gwee Gym, episode number eight, from almost three years ago. He talked about the value of mentors. Now, Dan's a mentor of mine and of many, many people because of his experience and his connections through the University of Houston, of course. He's a great mentor himself, but he also talked about how he has been mentored over the years by so many different people.
I have found, in many interviews since then, that mentorship is a really common thread of many of the most successful inventors, entrepreneurs, and product marketers, finding people or agencies or groups or similar products for similar companies to connect with, to learn from what they've gone through.
They're going to go through, or you're going to go through similar mistakes and hardships and challenges that other people have been through before. Talk to them, get some learnings, and it can make that road to success, to get over the hurdles much simpler. Also, it can be a lonely world sometimes running a business, being at the helm, being a CEO, being an inventor, working with mentors, with colleagues. They may be at your level. They may be ahead of you. They may be behind you in terms of success, in terms of revenues, but we can learn so much and develop that social connection as well. On to number 10, so episode number 10.
Now, a couple of years ago, this was Bob Circosta. He is such a good friend. We've worked together for so many years. It still remains one of the top downloaded episodes of all time for our show. People still watch episode 10 from three years ago at a very high rate, so much so that we actually invited Bob to come back on the show just a few weeks ago. You can listen to that newer episode as well. In his original episode, back episode 10, Bob, who's the original TV shopping host and a true HSN legend, literally, the first person that sold anything on HSN, QVC style platform. Back in the day, it was radio. That's where they started in Clearwater, Florida on a radio station.
He'll do a much better job and did a much better job during that interview, sharing that entire story. I encourage you to go back and listen to it, where he sold an avocado green can opener on the radio as a last-ditch effort to get some revenue out of this inventory that they had, and they realized they were onto something. They went from radio eventually to local TV, eventually to national TV. As they say, the rest is history. He walks through that whole background of how it happened from day one.
One of the learnings that I've heard him share from conferences that we've taught at over the years, seminars and in person, working with clients as well, is a simple principle called WSGAT, what's so great about that, W-S-G-A-T, so what's so good about that. This is a way to really identify the benefits that come from the features of a product. So many times, we try to think about, okay, we all know the features of the product we're selling, the color, the size, how it functions.
We need to really communicate with our audience the benefits that we provide to them. That's where this WSGAT phrase comes in. If you think about a feature, again, a color, a size, weight, whatever it might be, the facts about the product, always ask yourself the question, "So what's so good about that? How does that benefit my audience?" Think about those benefits. That's the language you need to have in the messaging that you share with other.
Now, Bob has been on air, selling products live for over 40 years, over 10,000 hours of live selling experience, phenomenal amount, and thousands and thousands of products. He can see immediate results because of the way that HSN works, or see or hear as sales come in, see the charts going up and down depending on what he's talking about. He's honed that skill over so many years. If you watch some of his airings today or over the years, you'll see he's a master at the trade, but in that interview and in the more recent one as well, he shares how he does it.
In ways that maybe none of us will ever be as good as Bob is, but we can learn from that and improve the messaging that we share by simply sharing benefits more than features. How are we benefiting or helping our audience? Make sure you focus on that. Right after that, we interviewed the founder of Grillbot, that was episode 11. He's been a client for a long time, a good friend of ours as well. We first ran their national TV spot about five years ago.
They're still in their fifth year running it over and over again, especially in the summer months. If you're not familiar with a Grillbot product, it's essentially-- Think of a Roomba for cleaning your grill. It's a robotic cleaner, a brush-driven cleaner that you put in your grill, shut the lid, put a timer on, and leave it and it cleans phenomenally well the grates of your grill. Next time you come back out, you pull it out, your grill is ready to use. Super easy to use, fun product.
His learning that he taught us was, "Hey," he said, "Don't do retail." Now, one thing I'll mention of all these learnings, of all these interviews, sometimes they conflict with each other. I just completed an interview yesterday with someone you'll hear soon that talked about the benefits in retail, really doesn't do much in terms of direct-to-consumer and digital marketing, but has great success in retail. It's different for everybody. The Grillbot story though, his rationale for his product is how do I carve out a direct-to-consumer market so I can keep all the margins myself. You control your audience, you control your story, and he's had great success with it.
One of the ways he was able to really grow that business was getting massive PR hits on shows like The Today Show, Good Morning America, Fox & Friends, these national news TV show experiences. One of the reasons he was able to get on there is through persistence. This is not about, hey, come make a phone call. Hope they call you back. They don't, oh, well, move on. It's about being persistent. Continue to network, continue to find opportunities. That's another thread that you'll hear in a lot of our interviews, if you haven't heard them yet since then as well, it's a common thread going through is just being persistent, getting out there and doing it.
The biggest successes you hear, we always look at the end result of a successful product launch and think, why can't I be there yet? You'll get there. It just takes work. It was never easy for anybody. The ones that seem easy, that seem like they got to this road or this end result very easily. It's not the case. It takes work. It takes persistence. Again, in his case, it was about getting on shows and others. It may be through testing and optimizing and trying different price points and changing the product.
There's always challenges in any product launch or any product campaign, with persistence we can overcome them and turn them into a success. Again, all the biggest successes, any brand name you can think of, I encourage you to read their biographies listeners to our show as well, of course but beyond that, listen, read their biographies, hear their stories as an inventor product marketer, entrepreneur, you'll understand that you're not alone when you go through challenges, the best brands, the best products have all been there before.
After that, I interviewed Sergei Baranoff, he's a good friend as well. Sergei we've known for many years, we've long done a few product launches together, actually in the middle of another one that you'll hear about very soon, he's a good friend of ours, but also he's well-known in the invention and licensing space. He essentially has a workshop, comes up with ideas, creates them and licenses them onto others. He's done this dozens and dozens of times and had so many big successes.
We asked him for advice in our interview is, well, how do you do that? How do you create things that are consistently so successful? One of the learnings he shared was to learn from failures. Realizing, of course, not everything is going to be a success, but as you have failures, whether it's within a product or whether you realize, hey, one didn't work, let me move on to the next one, the next iteration, the next product, you can make it better if why your last product or your last version failed, so often in Sergei's words, we often give up or pivot far too soon, rather than analyzing our failures. Don't just give up and move on to the next thing, but learn why it didn't work and make sure it doesn't happen again.
Another principle he taught in that interview is to outsource tasks for free. He builds a lot of partnerships because he's in this invention space and not everything works. He works with engineers, with CAD designers, with prototype manufacturers and builds partnerships where they've got a piece of his success. Sometimes they're willing to work for free or less expensively.
Find those relationships that can reduce some of your risk in the very early stages of your business. At the end of the day, if you don't have the funding on your own, you can secure a license deal, realize that are partnerships out there. It's harder today than it was years ago. Sergei has great relationships. Companies know that he brings them good products. That certainly helps, but license steels still exist. It's less common in what we call as seen on TV space than it used to be 10 years ago but it still exists.
Big companies are so often looking outside for innovation, as opposed to trying to innovate in-house, that it presents opportunities to be able to bring ideas and products into them where if you can show a little bit of success, a little bit of runway proof, there's a market for your product. Then you can take on and let them really scale-up the business from that point forward.
Shortly after that, I interviewed Scott Tannin. He's another good friend of mine that I've known for years back to my days with craft foods. Scott and I worked together at Nabisco, which was owned by Kraft back then. He ran the candy stand.com website. I don't even know if it's around to be honest anymore. This is 20 years ago, but it was extremely innovative at the time. It was before again, before Facebook, it was a way to connect with your audience.
From kids to adults, they would go to candy stand.com, play these games that were themed around. They had brands in the background. Lifesavers was a brand we owned, Oreo and other Nabisco brands. We owned planters was on there as well. This candy stand website at the time was extremely innovative. It's not the same way you'd approach a launch or business today. It's not the way Scott did when he rolled out his next business. When he left Kraft shortly after I did a few years later, he started a company called Boll & Branch.
You may be familiar with them if you listen to satellite radio, if you watch news stations they are on Fox News, CNN and other platforms with national TV ads now.
They started with some radio ads that really drove them to be successful and grew that business from zero. Literally, he founded the company for betting sheets. They look the same as every other bedding sheet out there. They don't look innovative, but the story is compelling. The way they created it, the quality is very different and he grew that business from zero to over $100 million with no investors. Think about that, no outside VC investors. He did that because he built profitability into his marketing. That's a common thread as well, where to grow without VC investors behind us, we need to make sure that our marketing is profitable.
Now he's got the tagline, the betting used by three former US presidents. He's smart enough not to say which ones to not be polarizing in terms of politics. I don't even know as his friend who they are, but it's part of their positioning talking about quality but one tactic is really what drove their initial growth that comes back to radio.
A lot of satellite XM radio and local radio stations as well in news, he found that that was a market that was working. Before they found radio, they tried many different tactics and many didn't work, but once they hit that thread, they were able to make it profitable and able to scale it. That direct-to-consumer marketing started on radio eventually to TV. Of course, digital is part of that mix as well.
Again, radio may not be for you. I want to reiterate this, all these learnings, as you think back to these 99 episodes and many more to come, it's not about following an exact path that somebody else followed, but follow the process, learn from how do they launch their business. Radio will work for him and maybe something else, certainly for your business, but follow the process, the paths that these great inventors and entrepreneurs followed.
Another good friend I interviewed is Eric Child. Now I went to grad school with him at the University of Chicago. We both got our MBAs together, graduated together part of the ways and came back together as friends later on. He owns a business called FiberFix. Now, if you're a shark tank of [unintelligible 00:16:49], he's one of many shark tank inventors or people that appeared on shark tank that have also been in our show as well. He can hear some of his background story behind it. He got a successful deal with Lori Greiner, took his product onto QVC, and they sold a million dollars in a single day on QVC.
Now, the way he got there, wasn't about, hey, let's start on shark tank. They had success. They had a story. They had momentum before going on the show. Those are obviously the best deals, whether it's shark tank or whether it's other investors or whether it's growing on your own, it's that starting to generate success. Then really building upon that as you go forward.
For him, video marketing, he talks about made all the difference. It's a chance it was product. FiberFix is very different. It's unique. It's essentially to describe it. If you're not familiar with it, think of a video broken shovel, and you wrap this tape around it after it's submersion water, as it dries, it becomes like a plaster cast.
You'd have a broken arm, although stronger it's as strong as steel, this bond to bond two things together so that meant for around us or humans, but permanent solutions like a tool, a shovel, et cetera, very cool demonstrations, but they really had to educate their audience. They used video marketing to do that. For them, it was all about much like I shared with OxiClean grabbing attention.
This can be through being unbelievable or humorous or both. FiberFix, in their big video, the one that got the most attention for them, they used a quirky host, [unintelligible 00:18:16]. It was humorous funny, talked about the product. Then in the middle of the video, he hopped in a car and drove it off a cliff course. He's not actually in the car, when it drives off the cliff, but it makes it look like he is, it rolls down the cliff.
They've got this roll cage, all held together with FiberFix to prove that it works. It's that combination of humor, but also this unbelievable result, this demonstration, we call a torture test. If you can do that, then it can fix my shovel. If it can solve these massive problems, then for me, I just need a simple fix. I know FiberFix, for example, is going to work for us. Now that was a massive video budget to do something.
They couldn't have done that on day one of their business. They built momentum behind that and built up to that big budget video but there's some good learnings to take from that. Even if you're just starting off creating your own videos in-house or hiring somebody else, it's about making sure, especially in the digital world, in the first three seconds of a video, you grab their attention.
This could be done through an amazing demonstration. Going off a cliff is expensive, right in the car. There are other amazing demonstrations to that prove your product works. Does what it says it's going to do, grabbing with funny or an odd-looking spokesperson. Grab their attention like they stop this scroll. I want to see what this person has to say, or it could be even a product shot.
Grabbing their attention rather than just somebody talking on screen like UGC or user-generated content before that sometimes it can be very beneficial to either have them hold a product or put the product digitally on screen to show, okay, I know what this is. It's a supplement or it's a fitness product or whatever it might be, grab their attention, go into the testimonial. You have them leaning for, they know what they're about to watch or listen to.
Another success we shared was VIVA Life. Their product is called Med Manager, interviewed the team there behind it. It's a family business. They built a binder to hold prescription medications. Now this seems like a very simple product. I don't take a lot of prescriptions personally. I didn't get it when they reached out to me until I talked to my mom who takes a lot, a lot of elderly people, right? A lot of medications, I had no idea how difficult it is to organize and use the product. They understood their audience, right? Their father is a physician. He gets it, right?
That's understanding your audience drove the product development, but they've been able to achieve over eight figures in revenues, really by finding the right audience for them. It became a lot about targeting, finding those people that take a lot of medications. Some of it is driven by age and other factors as well, but video marketing and digital marketing channels is really what helped to educate and inform their audience and really build this sales base. Then one thing they did too, something to think about is they built a distribution agreement with Case-it. If you have kids that might be in middle school, you might be familiar with the Case-it brand.
It's like the old trapper keepers from my generation. Growing up, those binders they using in school, massive business that they sell in Walmart, Target, et cetera. They signed an agreement where Case-it actually manufactures fairly simple technology, right? Pretty simple binder similar, I should say binder to the Case-it. Case-it creates manufacturers' form, but also distributes it too to retail outlets. A distribution agreement like that once you've got a product that's proven that can be a great way to really propel your growth. Where you don't need to build each individual, both manufacturing relationship, as well as distribution relationship or retail relationship work with somebody else who already has those in place.
That's what these guys have done to really drive their growth. Another fun interview that came after that is by the founders of the onion. If you're familiar with the Onion, Babylon Bees, a new one like that. The onion is a college started off as college newspaper, now a website. Just very humorous it's satire, was a big brand a few years ago. They were the founders of that. They started a business called Pranco. If you've ever seen these gift boxes that are a total gag gift on the outside has pictures, it looks like a real product. It's just a box that you open up and give a gift to somebody.
There's humor involved in it. One example that they shared was the family Blankease. The Snuggie, if you remember that it was like a family version of a Snuggie. Four people can sit on a couch and there's eight arm holes coming out of it. Just a joke, right? You've got this box on the outside and it's something just totally fun. There's no need for that in anyone's life other than for humor. It's a funny interview. These guys are, of course hilarious. Go back and listen to that one. I encourage you if you haven't already. It's an older interview, but Pranco, is a great one to listen to.
They talked about the importance of giving your business a personality by injecting humor. Not so easy when you've got a funny product like they do. In Reality humor, it can be so beneficial. We don't need to take ourselves so seriously all the time. It's okay to laugh at ourselves, our product, as long as it's not, again, talking about credibility, where people lose belief that our product's going to work, but building that humor, that personality of some sort into your brand, into your story. They also closed out their story talking about the combination of e-commerce and retail for maximum growth.
Again, a previous interview talked about avoiding into retail at all costs later on. Just recently we interviewed someone who talks about just retail, not digital. Theirs was the combination. Finding that right business strategy for your product or service is going to drive your own maximum growth. For them, it happens to be that combination of e-commerce that drives awareness and then retail outlets so they, "Hey, now I've seen that on Facebook or Instagram or YouTube. I see it in store, now I'm going to grab it." That's a big learning from them. Another one was Wonder Wallet. Shortly after that, so you may have seen this product. It's "as seen on TV product." That's relatively recent.
The last few years, this was an interview where he, for the first two years of business, was slow. He generated $130,000 in sales over the first two years. That's nothing terrible. Nothing to sneeze at, but he knew there could be so much more. He just didn't want to deal with the set up the entire business, so he secured a license deal. He went on to sell over 2.5 million units and over $39 million in revenue. It's an inspiring story where he talks about the potential that can come with licensing. If you're someone who loves to do much like Serge. Loves to do product development, that doesn't want to deal with minutia of running a business, a license deal can work.
It still takes persistence. Just like running a business. When you secure that deal with the right partner, someone you can trust, someone who has experience, you can generate of course, high levels of sales behind that as well. I also interviewed the founder of ElliptiGO. You've probably seen these maybe in videos, maybe as you are around town. Essentially, they look like bicycles. They have two wheels. It's like a combination of bikes and an elliptical machine. You work on it just like you would be on an elliptical machine. It's more of a running motion, but it works like a bike.
For them, it was about finding the right distribution channel. It felt like, "Hey, this looks like a bike let's start selling in bike stores." Not a fit though, right? Cyclists don't want that. This is for runners, right? Those that want to keep running, but have issues with their knees, right? Don't want to just do ellipticals indoors. They want to get outside. Once they'd really understood that and started targeting running stores and where runners were at, general sporting, spotting good stores, because they understood their audience that propelled their growth tremendously. Over the past couple of years, especially their growth is really skyrocketed.
Once they understand who they understood, who their customer really was. A very recent interview, was with Derek Monk. He's the founder of Kitchen Inventions. He's got three product we talked about. The spoon buddy, the pan buddy, and this strip and snip. A couple will talk about, "These are in Bed Bath & Beyond home goods. They've been on HSN, Good Morning America." He's had great success with this. This business has grown this spoon buddy. To describe it quickly, is like a spoon rest with a suction cup on the bottom sits on your countertop can go on the top of a lid, great design for sure. Really fun product.
The pan buddy is a handle holder for cast iron frying pans. It can be really heavy. It gives you a leverage to pick up and hold. He's got these unique ideas. He was able to get them onto these national shows because they're good ideas. There's a lot of good ideas out there. Many of them never make it onto national news shows. He, again, talked about the value of persistence. It just takes time. Figure out those relationships, keep working at it. No, you won't want to bug them, but we want to keep at it until eventually we break through.
The nice thing is, once you have that relationship set, you've got one success. Get it on Good Morning America and they sell a lot. From their show, they realize the audience loves it. It makes it so much easier to go back with future products as well. Build off of those relationships. Another thing he talked about is the benefit of producing in the USA. It's hard to do, especially for plastics and silicone products. You almost think it's impossible, he's done it right? One of the things he realized is even though the piece rate cost. The manufacturing cost for individual unit is much higher in the US than it is in China.
Let's say the freight costs, especially today are significantly lower. You're not taking that boat overseas and your lead times are shorter. Even in two years ago, before COVID slowed everything down, before we've had these big logistical issues, even back then, it always took at least four to six weeks, typically to boat, a truckload, or a container full of product from China, let's say to America, and then truck it from there to wherever your fulfillment warehouse is. Even then it was a month and a half. It's hard to plan like that when you've got US based manufacturing, your lead times are so much shorter.
He's been able to be very flexible. He talked about how his business has grown by taking advantage of last-minute opportunity. One example was on HSN, where they called, "Hey, we've got an opening here. Somebody couldn't get us inventory and time, can you get us inventory? Get on the air?" He said, absolutely. He met with his US manufacturer. They're able to turn around very quickly, got it on the air. His revenues grew tremendously because of that short lead time, of course, quality was so much better than he would've had overseas. Then that freight cost made it.
It wasn't that much more expensive at the end of the day than when you work everything out. Buying it from a place like China. We also interviewed a couple of the founders of Boogie Board. Now there's a couple of Boogie Boards. This is not the surfing one. This is if you've seen or been around any kids, age two to 10, you've seen this product. It looks like a little simple iPad. They write on with a stylist and then hit a button to erase so they can draw, right, et cetera. In fact, here's a, if you're watching the video version of this, this is a Boogie Board. You can see, you can write even with a fingernail, hit a button and it erases. It's a great product.
They've got so many line extensions and have such great success in retailers like Target, Walmart, Sam's, Costco. They talked about how a lot of their success came from listening to their consumers. Now we do a lot of work. We love this client. We've done TV campaigns and dozens of digital campaigns with them to really help them grow in their direct-to-consumer market as well, but they talked about listening to consumers, help them develop, realizing that different versions of the product work for different maybe age groups, genders, et cetera.
They've got adult line products or products for parents or adults, and products for kids as well with characters and fun things in different sizes. Really understanding your market is really what drives growth for them. Another thing that Chuck talked about in their interview was knock-offs. Now, this is something that every inventor should be not fearful of but aware of right so especially in the age of Amazon, knock-offs are out there when you've got success.
Amazon even sees it and knocks-off simple products. It's crazy. Like the retailer, steals your idea if it's not patented, protected, et cetera, and knocks you off. In the case of boogie board, they've got the patents in place, but they've got cheap Chinese knockoffs that have come in that look very similar and they cut the price down low. What happens is people buy those, they have a poor experience and they even call up boogie board and complain saying, "Hey, your product doesn't work." They realize what's not theirs it's a knockoff, right?
There's the reason for that but that has helped them to build build a reputation with consumers that when you buy a real boogie board, you've got great quality you can know and trust. The way they win is with quality and awareness marketing. Building up a big awareness campaign, so people know the brand. When they have inexperienced to purchase your product, trusting the quality leads to further word of mouth and trust, and of course better reviews, et cetera. That quality story is how they've been able to win that battle against these cheap knock-offs that are coming in from overseas.
I can't summarize every episode I do encourage you go back and listen to those and many others and we're going to be around for a long time. Please listen to the next 100 interviews as well but after the first 99 interviews, so this is the 100 today, I've learned that every successful product launch really has its own nuances. There's a different path to success. It can look different, but the process is the same. The process that we follow and that I've seen every successful inventor or product marketer that I interviewed follow, it's really about three things test, optimize, and grow.
So the marketing channels, the language, the pricing, the manufacturing, there's so many different nuances to this can change but if you follow that process of testing a campaign, optimizing it, improving it, getting it profitable, and then growing it, it's not about bringing VC dollars in and just throw a bunch of money at it. Get it working, and that'll fuel the growth organically for your business. That process was followed by every one of these 99 successful businesses, and it'll work for you as well and the many more interviews that we have to come.
I encourage you please check out these episodes, you can go to Harvest Growth.com to see all the episodes we've recorded over the past several years and the many more that will come. Click on the podcast link at the top of our website. If you want to learn how you can profitably grow your own consumer product business, please subscribe to our show. Be sure to leave us a review and you can always reach out to us right from Harvest Growth.com Thank you so much.
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