What if you could find one strategy that, if properly executed, could:

• Triple your revenue
• Build a hyper-engaged community around your brand
• Get feedback on exactly what products to launch next (and create anticipation around the launch of new products)
• Create an ongoing, repeatable marketing vehicle that improves CAC and LTV
• Establish a content machine

Sounds too good to be true? That's exactly what creating "Challenges" did for Alicia Reynoso and her fiancé. They went on to build a "60-Day Hydration Challenge" around their brand: Live Infinitely.

They leverage their challenge to grow from a mostly Amazon brand, to 50/50 Amazon and Shopify, to having a successful exit.

In this episode, Alicia and I dive into the why behind "Challenges" and what it takes to make them successful.

Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the eCommerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce. And today we're diving into a topic we have never covered on this podcast before. We're talking about challenge-based marketing, but more than that, we're talking about how to build a community, how to build a loyal following, because I'm convinced if you're going to build a valuable brand that's in it for the long haul or that you can exit from a really nice sale, you need community, you need engagement, you need loyal followers. And so my guest today is Alicia Reynoso, and we met two different times recently. We spoke at Seller Summit in Florida. Shout out to Steve Chu and Toni. And then we also met at Blue Ribbon Puerto Rico. So we're speakers at both those events and no, was it Puerto Rico or was it another event? Alicia at Denver.

Alicia:

Denver.

Brett:

Denver, yeah. Yeah, blue Ribbon Denver. But so many people were like, man, you got to listen to Alicia's presentation. And so we connected. I'm so glad we did. And for those that don't know, Alicia is the founder of Challenge Makers, so she helps people with challenge-based marketing and then through the former co-founder of Live Infinitely. So we're going to talk about that. So Alicia, thanks for taking the time. Welcome to the show. And how's it going?

Alicia:

Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I've been super excited in all of our Blue Ribbon events. I've heard so much Curry, so I've always wanted to actually connect, so I'm glad we actually got the opportunity.

Brett:

That's awesome. And so I think we got to talk about this for those that are watching, and look at the video one, you started a health-based brand that you guys sold, which we'll talk about as we go, but you're not in a normal studio, not in an office. You're also not in a typical bedroom, which has become kind of the norm in a post covid world. But looks like you're in an RV. Alicia, can you let the folks know? Where are you right now? My

Alicia:

RV. Yep. So my fiance and I, we actually live on the road now after selling our business. So we live six months on the road and we're just started our next six months for our second year. This year we're traveling the East coast, so right now we're in North Carolina and it's

Brett:

Been a blast. That's awesome. And so this is your second year to spend half the year on the road?

Alicia:

Yep, yep. Last year was all West Coast. Oh yeah, love it. This has been the dream for sure, starting the business, selling the business, and then travel. So last year we did all West Coast. This year we're doing the East coast.

Brett:

That's awesome. I even have, part of me is like, man, the van life or the RV life would be really cool. Now I've got eight kids, so that is not my immediate future by any means, but I also know it's a lot of work. I had a guy that worked for me for a long time named Brandon, and he and his wife and two kids had an rv and he said had some really bad experiences, some comical experiences, but he told me, he said we had a travel itch and we scratched that thing until it bled. I get that too. I get that there could be some challenges too, but it looks super fun. So I'll live vicariously through you guys for now. Awesome.

Alicia:

Yeah, maybe when your kids are grown, you can hit the road, try it out.

Brett:

Very possible. Very possible. I may be more of a flying and Airbnb type of guy, but I like the idea of RVs too. So let's talk about this. So we're talking about building a hyper-engaged following community around your brand. First of all, how did you start your brands? So let's get a little bit of your background and then we'll get into the why behind challenges.

Alicia:

Yeah, for sure. So I was on 1920 looking, I thought the internet was the coolest thing. How can I make money? How can I start a business? I learned about Amazon F B A through amazing, the amazing course. I bought that course. Yeah,

Brett:

I just spoke at Amazing Seller a couple months ago. Oh, you did?

Alicia:

Yep. Oh, nice. Yeah, I've been wanting to reach out to them. That was really what kicked it off for me back then with the amazing course.

Brett:

I'll make an intro to the gang. They'll love to hear from you.

Alicia:

Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah, for sure. So I took that, got it started. We launched Live infinitely in 2014, more so 2015, 2014, we launched a dead product. So official launch 2015. And every year it was just super easy to scale. It was like the Wild Wild West back there, or you could just launch products and scale. So we were very successful the very first few years, but then things started getting more competitive. You had to get a little bit more creative. And so that's when we're like, okay, let's get on Shopify and try to build our brand Amazon and Shopify. And that's where really the struggle came in. That's when we joined Blue Ribbon and we're like, okay, how do we learn Facebook? How do we do all the things, email marketing, learn all of that. And we were slowly making progress until 2019, 2020, we learned Facebook ads in 2020 is when we launched our challenge. And that's just when it changed our entire direct to consumer website that just blew up from our Facebook ads and our community. And we went from 99% Amazon to 50 50, 50% on Shopify, 50% on Amazon.

Brett:

Beautiful. I think that's where healthy brands usually want to go or aspire to go that 50 50 split between Amazon and true D two C or with Shopify or BigCommerce or whatever. I think buyers are more interested in that, that feels like, and it is a more stable business. So kudos to you for getting there. And we already dropped the spoiler alert earlier, but you sold and you had a successful exit, and I think that was in large part to the fact that you had a diversified business, which I know helped a lot. So give us kind of the overview. We will dive into all the details. So this is more like a, here's what the challenge was, here's what it did, and then we're going to get into the ins and outs and the why's and hows and things like that. But I want to tease this for people because I don't know, we got a lot on our plate. We got a lot of marketing opportunities. We could go Facebook, YouTube, things on Amazon, bottom of funnel, mid funnel, whatever, but I think a lot of people are missing this concept of challenges. So what was the high level stuff and then how'd it work?

Alicia:

So it was a 60 day hydration challenge. Water bottles was our hero product. That's what we sold and most of. So we created a 60 day hydration challenge initially to nurture our existing community and just try to increase our lifetime value and get people to know us and understand the brand more. But then it ended up being something that we used for everything top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel. It was like all of it. It was this really unique way that we could go out into the world and attract people with something that was purely value-based, like, this is for you. It's free to join, come into our world and let us help you. And then when people bought our products or were in our world, then it was something that they got to actually know our brand more and fall in love with us.

And everyone in our community would market all of our other products, so then they'd buy more. And so it just became this big thing that completely changed our brand. Before, when we were just on Amazon, we were trying to convey our message of living infinitely, meaning live your life with infinite possibilities. Chase after your dreams, live bigger, live bolder. That was all of our messaging. But when you're on Amazon, it's a little bit trickier to share that. And so when we had the community, we were able to share that message of going after your dreams and being healthy and really create that connection with our customers that we never had before, which helped in all of our marketing because we actually knew our customers then. So it was high level this thing that came in, meaning our intention was to have it at the bottom of the funnel to nurture our customers, but it just changed everything, which is really

Brett:

Cool. And just to tease the results, I heard something like, was it double, triple the business or something over time? What was that

Alicia:

Little nugget? Yeah, triple revenue. And the biggest thing was our lifetime value increased by 47%, which was huge for us because we sold a 14 game changer, $15 water bottle. And so especially on Facebook, how do you go out and acquire customers on a 14, $15 water bottle? We had to get super creative with our bun ring and everything, but then we'd get people in and they would fall in love with the brand because we helped them in ways that other brands weren't, that the lifetime value just skyrocketed.

Brett:

Yeah, I love that so much. And so, I mean really the game with D two C is how do we get that appropriate CAC or customer acquisition cost compared to L T V? And so there's really only so much you can do to lower your customer acquisition costs. You've got to increase L T V to be able to really accelerate and press the gas pedal down. And one thing that I like to talk, one thing that I've been talking about a lot to brands is there's a difference between being a purveyor of goods online or selling stuff online and having a brand and a community. And when you have a brand and a community, then it becomes so much easier to sell the next product that you launch or to upsell or to bundle or to increase that L T V. If you are kind of a nameless, faceless community list product on Amazon or wherever, you can have success, you can make money. But really the next level of success is when you build a brand and you've got a brand when people are searching for you by name and when you've got a community and a following around that brand. And so challenges, that was the vehicle you used to really launch that. So walk us through, how did you get to this point where you're like, Hey, we should do a challenge?

Alicia:

Yeah, for sure. So finally just we were at that 200 19 or 20 where we're like, alright, we're kind of stalling. We're not really growing. We need to change something in order to continue to grow off Amazon. And so we sat down, we're like, okay, who is our customer? Who are we marketing to? At that point, we were selling Hamot backpacks, bug nets, we were kind of all over the place. It was Amazon, we looked for bestseller rankings we can be, and we were like, let's launch that and that works. But then we're like, okay, who is actually our customer? And we sat down and took the time and realized who they were, and then we're like, okay, how can we provide value to this customer even if they never paid us, how can we bring somebody into our world provide so much value to them even if they don't buy our product? And so I was super excited. I kind of was our customer. I love being healthy, I love sending goals. So I was like, I can create journals, I can create eBooks and guides and videos and workouts. I was going to do all these things. And then I realized that's just not realistic. We were a small team of three. So much, so much. Yeah, that's so much content

Brett:

Make, there's a lot of people that are doing that, right? There are content creators that have YouTube channels and that have guides and have personal communities and coaching and all that exists too, to a certain degree.

Alicia:

And it's great. And if you have the resources then you can do all of that. But I just didn't, we just didn't have a team. And so then I came up with the idea of a 60 day hydration challenge, and that just allowed me to take all of that value that I wanted to create and bundle it into this challenge, this community because they would join the 60 day Hydration challenge and pledge to drink water. But then every single week we have many weekly challenges where we'd work on our nutrition and goal setting and self love and all of those other things that were super important to our customer and our customer's journey to being successful. We could provide them all of that value in just a weekly live call, I'd jump on and be like, alright, this week we're going to focus on nutrition and I mean, I'm not a dietician or nutritionist or anything, but I just talk about my experience and this is my recommendation. Eat some whole foods and here's a little checklist to see that you ate some Whole Foods this week and introduce people to new concepts of the things they needed to learn on their customer journey to be more successful. And so that's kind of how we came up with that idea because it gave us the ability to dramatically overdeliver without having to go and create all this

Brett:

You could overdeliver and really the customers are creating the content and it's even probably more effective and more motivating and more engaging and more fun than even if you guys had just broken your back trying to create content. And so I really love this and I love what you said a minute ago, this idea of truly understanding your customer. And that's another part of the pivot from just selling stuff to being a brand is understanding let's not just be a product-focused brand. Let's be a customer-focused brand. Who are we serving? Who do we want to serve? Who can we connect with? And then let's provide value to them. And I love what you said, let's provide value even if they don't buy a single product because they will. People love to buy products and if they're connected with you and you offer good products and you offer community, people are going to buy stuff, right? We are addicted to buying stuff, but rather than just selling a random products, how do we curate products, build products, launch products that are for this set of customers? So

Alicia:

Love

Brett:

That shift, love that shift.

Alicia:

It just is way more fulfilling going from selling on Amazon to and Sword Live infinitely the name. I had a mission from day one but couldn't connect with our customers. And so it was finally, that was such a fulfilling time in our business with actually serving them and actually connecting. So it just provides a lot of fulfillment that way.

Brett:

Love it, love it. So I know you said that challenges are the most effective way to build community. Why do you say that?

Alicia:

I say that because it's really identifying the customer journey. And if you can in any of your marketing, know your customers and the journey that they are on and help take them from point A to point B, like I said, without them paying, you're going to have a lifelong loyal customer for life. Because if somebody comes in and you help change their life, whether or not they pay you, they're going to look at you as the source of truths, who they trust, who they would come back to. And so it's a challenge is the vehicle that can help take them from point A to point B because you're like, here is what you need all the resources to be. Our customer wanted to be healthy, hydrated, loved, motivated, all these things. And so with our weekly challenges and the 60 day overall, it was so much more than hydration.

It was like they come in for hydration, but then they leave a different person. They set goals, they felt like they loved themselves, they stepped outside of their comfort zone, and so they go through this transformation that they didn't even expect. And so that's why it's an even deeper transformation. And when you put them in a challenge community, they're going through this, they're going through this experience with people, and that's what really changes the game because when you go through this journey alone, it's like if we sent them some guides or like, Hey, knock yourself out. Here's some tools and resources and they just try to do it, they're not going to be as successful likely. Or if you can put them in a community where they can go on a shared experience and the challenge of the vehicle that is that experience, then it creates this hyper-engaged community because they start sharing their tips, their tricks, their failures, their successes. This is my favorite healthy meal, this is how I set my goals. And then people start commenting like, oh, I love that milk. Can you send me some more information? And it creates this community around that sharing experience that your customers are on. And so that's why I think it's the best vehicle for sure because it's systemized. It's super easy as a brand owner to deliver and just give your customers the ability to connect in ways that they wouldn't normally be able to.

Brett:

It's so good. It's so good. I love Donald Miller's building a story brand. And one thing he talks about in the book is that the hero in the story is not your product. It's not you as the business owner of the brand. The hero is the customer. And so our job is we're a guide along that journey. We're like a Sherpa helping our customer to the peak of the mountain that they're trying to climb. And so the more we can show that with our product, here's how our product can help you get what you want in your life. But then I think the challenge, the community really helps accelerate that where otherwise it might just be a water bottle and then the water bottle is just sitting at home. But with the challenge, it's like, no, no, no. I'm part of a community now where I can share my story, I can hear other people's stories, I can get motivation, I can get questions answered, I can celebrate, and I got people who will cheer me on and clap.

For me. It's a real experience in a community. Kind of an interesting story, I just got into running again. I went for several years without running, and I just run by my house. So there's big hills and stuff, but the other day I was running and running up this big hill and I saw two guys running down the hill, and then at the bottom of the hill there was, I think it was one of their wives in a Tacoma pickup. And so she picked them up and brought 'em up the hill and they just kept running up and down the hill. And every time I pass, they'd be like, you can do this, man, you got this. And as the lady drove by the Tacoma, she's like, you keep going. You just keep grinding. And I didn't know who they were, but I was like, Hey, this run feels pretty good. This is a better run than normal. It's just the spontaneous

Alicia:

Community.

Brett:

That's awesome, but we all want that. And so that's when you create these challenges, you can create the environment for that for your customers. And I think you nailed it where you said it's actually pretty easy if you structure this the right way.

Alicia:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's a great example where it's like you feel like the sense of motivation when you have people in your corner, it's just a whole different thing. And humans, we're designed to be with people, and so we all crave that connection. And whatever experience you're going on, sometimes you don't have people in your life going through that experience. You don't have people that are into running or that want to get hydrated or get in shape or, so if you can find a community through a brand that provides those people that are on that shared experience, you're going to lock into that brand and stay loyal to them.

Brett:

Totally. I think that's the real magic behind some of these communities that you and I are part of Blue Ribbon. I mean, okay, so part of the Magic Blue Ribbon is Ezra Fire Zone. He's a genius and he is an awesome, good actor, but the reason someone will stick around in that since the beginning, my business partner and I have been in that group since the beginning. It is because of Ezra, but it's also the connections. These are people and we are going through the same stuff all the time. I can't talk to some of my local friends or my family necessarily about what we struggle with as entrepreneurs, but I can in that group. And so you're creating that for your customers through these challenges, which is really cool. So let's talk about this. So I am sure there's some people listening that are like, okay, but you sold water bottles before you sold the company. That's easy to do a hydration challenge. So how could this work for another brand? And then how do you figure out where do you insert this or where does this fit in the customer journey?

Alicia:

Yeah, for sure. So there's two steps to that. And the first is the, I didn't come up with this, but it totally makes sense. There's three core markets that every product serves. When somebody is going to buy your product, they're either trying to serve something to do with their health, wealth or relationships. Those are the three core markets and needs that people are trying to fulfill. So that's the first step is identifying where your brand falls in that. Do you serve them in their health, wealth or relationships? And sometimes it's not so obvious. Maybe it's the relationship with themselves, maybe it's the relationship with their pets, maybe it's their health with mental health or emotional health or physical health. Kind of just have to dig deep in what of those three core markets do you help serve. And then the next step is really taking the time and mapping out your customer's journey because sometimes it's not so obvious. Even water bottles seem so obvious to me now, but it's like I was struggling. It probably wasn't

Brett:

The beginning though, was it?

Alicia:

No, I like spend a whole week, you could sell a water bottle to anybody. I could have sold it to 40 year old men. And that's a whole different customer journey than the middle-aged women that our community was made up of. And so really figuring out who your customer is and their customer journey in relation to your product. And that has to do a lot with your brand mission. So you have to understand one of your three core markets, but then next step is your brand mission. My brand mission was helping empower people to live their life with infinite possibilities and believe in them themselves that they could do things, they could do big things. So that's what I wanted to empower people to do. And so I found my six day hydration challenge and my group of people in the customer journey and designed that to fit my brand mission.

And that's just going to be you, your brand, your brand mission. And then just taking the time, I have built out this avatar worksheet essentially where it's the before state, the after state where your customer is, where they're trying to go, and what are all the objections that are stopping them from achieving that. And so I know one example, skincare, we had a client that was massively successful was their challenge. They created a confident in your skin challenge. They realized that the ultimate desire of their customers were to feel confident, to feel beautiful. They were like women 30 plus that are just hitting that age where like, oh my gosh, and they want to still feel youthful and pretty. And so they've made their challenge around feeling confident as you're aging and their challenge just knocked out of the park. And it's just really a matter of, it's not so much the product as it is your brand mission and what your mission is to what you are trying to do in the world. And so I think it can be harder for faceless brands or drop shipping brands. You need to have a mission. You need to know what you're trying to do with your products, and that's going to be the ultimate driver of how you can create your challenge,

Brett:

This element of authenticity where customers can sniff out if you don't really mean this or if you don't really care. Absolutely. And so this has to connect with your mission, with your brand mission, or else customers are going to be like, why would I do that? You don't believe in this. People just get that. Maybe they wouldn't verbalize it that way, but they get that sense. And so it does have to align with your mission for sure. Absolutely. As I was looking at some of your ads, some of the things that you ran to launch your challenge, you were in those ads, I think it was you and a family member or something maybe, and just was authentic man. You could see your passion. People connected with that. They commented on the fact that, Alicia, you're living this, you're doing this. We want to be like you, type of thing. So I think that's important to note too. The challenge has to line up with your mission,

Alicia:

And you're absolutely right, customers can sniff it out. I've seen a few communities or challenges be launched where unfortunately the brand owners weren't bought into their own mission or didn't really have a strong one, and they're successful enough, but the ones that just kill it are the brand owners that are truly passionate about the mission of their brand. So that really matters.

Brett:

Cool. So what would you do then if you sold auto parts or auto accessories or if you sold home goods or something like that? And I know I'm throwing some big categories at you, but thoughts there, and I know you've got to go through the process. I know this isn't just like a, oh, snap your finger and you come up with a challenge. But any thoughts there to help someone apply this by looking at the health, wealth and relationships and the journey?

Alicia:

I mean, yeah, so auto parts, it's likely to men, that's likely your customer and you'd identify health, wealth or relationships. It's likely relationships, or it could even be wealth could

Brett:

Depending on Yep. Because wealthy our Jeep or our truck or whatever is a status symbol to us. Yes.

Alicia:

Status. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Or it could be the relationship with themselves and their family. So really identifying which part of that you're in and then understanding that man's customers journey. And you'd be surprised these communities, I wasn't sure if it would work very well with men, but they do because even men are looking for community. We need

Brett:

Connection too, man. Yeah,

Alicia:

Yeah. They're looking for connection too, where you could join a community and talk about, I mean, my fiance brilliant with cars and can tear 'em apart and put 'em back together, and he geeks out when he can, finds somebody else that is as knowledgeable and can build these things with him. And so understanding, I mean, I wouldn't know exactly the exact challenge I would do, but understanding him, somebody like him that loves cars and that's why he used to do build 'em. And then providing him the community to meet other men that are knowledgeable or want to learn about auto parts and building cars and what's that for? Is it for racing? Is it for just buying and selling cars? What is your brand? What's the point of your brand? And really building that community because somebody that builds them to race is much different than the person that's building them and selling them. And so it's taking all those pieces and coming together for that person and best serving them.

Brett:

Totally makes sense. Yeah. Is it an off-roading community? Is it a racing community? Is it like a classic car restorations? We're building these and taking 'em to car shows. What is that community building? And building it around that I think makes a ton

Alicia:

Of sense. Yeah. Then they'd be so excited, I just entered this car show, check it out. And they'd show pictures of the subs that they put in the car. I don't know, whatever that they put in. So there's definitely people that would love to share that experience. And so it's really on the brand, obviously. And then how you can build that out

Brett:

Totally makes sense. And I can see this apply on the food side of things. If you're selling healthy prepackaged breakfast bars or something or packaged oatmeal or whatever, that would be a health play. If you're selling barbecue supplies and barbecue tools and utensils, that's a relationship play, right? Barbecue is about even the memory and gatherings and prints and memories. And so yeah, I like that thinking about what does this tie into and then building your challenge around that. Super, super smart. Cool. And I know you mentioned this in the beginning, but the challenge really accelerated every other aspect of your business. It was a three x multiplier of revenue, which is impressive considering how well you guys were doing on Amazon at the time, but how does a challenge help scale the rest of your brand?

Alicia:

Yeah, great question. So this is the part that was totally unexpected and totally welcomed. I did all of our marketing, ran our ads, emails, wrote our content, everything like that. And so when we had our community, all of a sudden these incredible stories with pictures of our water bottles and stuff were just flooding this Facebook group. And I'm like, man, these are way cooler stories than I could have came up with. They're they're real, they're authentic. And so I would scrape that content and turn 'em into blog posts, which then I would use that blog post to send as an email, which would drive revenue. And then if that email performed very well, I'd turn that content into a Facebook ad and then that Facebook ad would drive revenue. And so I was like this free content that was just flooded,

Brett:

Free content machine man.

Alicia:

And I mean by the time we sold, we didn't even tap into a fifth of that. I feel like it was just so much and we could just keep going through different stories that would relate to different people, different segments of our community, and we just run them as ads. So that was the biggest thing that helped us scale was just before I would beg people, can you please take a picture was our water bottle. Can you send us something? And we had no idea how to do influencer marketing or brand ambassadors. We didn't have any of that. And so to get that kind of content was really hard for us. And so I was the face of our ads for a long time, but then as soon as we had this community, they became everything. And so I didn't have to come up with all this content anymore in my life, just got so much easier and I could create my monthly plan. I'm like, here's a cool story, here's a great story, and just throw it all in there in these emails and blog posts and ads performed so much better than even the stuff I could come up with because it was so authentic. And so people would share their stories of how their lives were changed by coming into and being a customer of ours. And you can't make it up. And it wasn't forced, it wasn't paid for. It was real.

Brett:

Yeah, it's so great. And I think it makes a lot of sense in the beginning, especially to kind be the face of your brand if you're so inclined and you've got the personality and the ability to do that, but that's also hard and it's exhausting. And then if you ever want to sell your business, that becomes tricky too. So you kind of leveraged this challenge to allow the customers to be the face of the brand and to really have this content machine that you leveraged for scale. And so kudos to you for that. Let's talk a little bit about some of the mechanics here. So how did this work? So you got this 60 day hydration challenge, you got these mini challenges along the way. How did you promote it? How'd you facilitate it? And I know that that could be a podcast in and of itself, but kind of high level, how did you promote it? How did you structure it? How'd you facilitate it?

Alicia:

For sure. So the structure essentially is 60 day hydration challenge or six day quarter objective. The thing that you have your customer pledge to do for that time period, however long that might be, 30, 60 days. And then every single week I would break it up into mini weekly challenges. And there were so many reasons for this one, because six stay is a long time and people lose interest. So they were like, oh, I don't know. But then if you're changing up the conversation every single week, that's what caused the hyper-engaged ness of our community was like, it's nutrition week, it's self-love week, it's setting goals. And so the conversations were always changing and people were always interested in what's going on, so they would stay around and engage longer. And then the other part of that is that it helps them with all those other things that we talked about to be successful along the customer journey. And then my first challenge

Brett:

Too, because if all you had to talk about was water, maybe you kind run out of things to say like, I'm still hydrated. I feel great. There'd be more to it than that. But the idea that you have then specific mini challenges each week, change the conversation lot. Maybe the same person to comment every week and to share something new and fresh every week. There's going to be some people along that journey. The water's cool, and so the hydration is a nice benefit, but it was really one of those mini challenges that

Alicia:

Lit

Brett:

A fire under them and cause them to really make big personal gains in their life. And so love the idea of the weekly mini challenge.

Alicia:

Exactly, exactly. What happened. Some people were like, I'm working on my water, but I'm really doing my self love. They're doing that. And then the other really big pro to that is that people from our first round, they still do it like 16 challenges later. They're still in it because every single round is different because you change the mini weekly challenges. And so it's a senate and forget it kind of machine. Once you build it, you just keep it running and all you do is change out the mini weekly challenges and it's a whole new every single time without having to reinvent the wheel, which is really, really good because then people stay around and when they stay around, they start promoting you to the new customers and they're like, do you have the purple bottle? Do you have the grit green one? And they start selling your products, and that's better than anything you could say.

Brett:

That's awesome. And so are you mostly then facilitating this through Facebook and through community there, or are you doing something through Discord or Slack or email or kind of how are you facilitating it?

Alicia:

Yeah, it was all through Facebook. So we had a Facebook group mainly for a few reasons. Facebook groups are just like, I feel like the best community place right now has all the tools you need, being able to go live and set events and see who's engaging. And then also just because that was the majority of our ad spend, we were all on Facebook. And so it was easy. That was our customers, they were there. So that's what I always recommend. And all the communities I've helped, they're on Facebook as well. And it gives you all the tools that you need to run the communities, which is great.

Brett:

Very cool. So how much you and your fiance exited the business? Congratulations to you guys. I know that Thank you. For most brand owners, either that's the goal or they want to merge with somebody else, but usually some m and a is part of the goal for e-comm brands. So talk about that just a little bit. How do you think this success with challenges allowed you to have that exit that you had hoped for?

Alicia:

Yeah, I mean, it gave us so many pieces of the puzzle that when we were talking to our broker for years, they're like, you need this thing, this thing. I'm like, and then when we had this community, we're like, we have those things, now we got it. Here's a roadmap. Here's a five to 10 year roadmap of what the customers want. Because now we actually know them. We talk to them, they say, we run surveys and they want these products. Here's a game plan. We could give them that as well as it definitely provides a level of defense when you have an audience that is so valuable in so many ways. And that's why Facebook so such a big company, they've got a huge audience. And if you can have an audience of your own net rallies behind you, that's your biggest fan and grow your email list and stuff, it's very attractive to a potential buyer of like, Hey, look, here is some defense because you got this hyper-engaged community and a big email list and it's continuing to grow and here's a vehicle to attract new customers. But definitely most of all, just that roadmap because Shannon and I, we launched products back in the day that completely flopped because we didn't know our customers. And that's very expensive. That's so hard, so

Brett:

Much time, so much money in your first run and working with manufacturers and prototypes and all that just to then w w have it fail. Yeah, it's painful.

Alicia:

It's very painful. And every product that we launched after our community was a success because it was based off of what they wanted and we were able to be show them, us building it and it out to launch and they were ready, goodbye. And so that it really helps that roadmap. We didn't have one before. If somebody said, where do you take this brand? Before it was like, keep growing. It's wherever

Brett:

You want to. Whatever sounds good to,

Alicia:

Exactly, exactly. But

Brett:

Now when you know your customer and you have this community, you know what products to offer next because they will tell you, and what does a buyer of your brand want? What does a potential investor, whether it's a strategic or PE or whoever's going to come in and buy the brand, they want to know, how can I grow this brand more, right? I'm buying it at this value, but I want to grow it to 2, 3, 4, 5 x what you're currently doing. So what's my product roadmap? How defensible is this, right? How likely am I to be able to ward off competitors and then grow as competition increases? And having a community is about the best protection, the best moat that you can have around your brand. Certainly intellectual property, IP and pads and stuff, that's cool, but that's kind of hard to get in a lot of cases.

And so having this community around your brand really provides that, and then it increases L T V, it can help either lower CAC or just keep CAC at a healthy level. And so I love it. I think this is likely one missing piece that people need in their marketing and in their approach to building new customers or attracting new customers and keeping existing ones is launching challenges. And so I know you are not part of the brand anymore. You guys sold it and stuff. Are they still doing these challenges? Is it still running or do you know?

Alicia:

Yeah, yeah. I believe they still are. I think they're on the 16th round now.

Brett:

That's so cool.

Alicia:

Of the 60 day irrigation challenge. And we exited at the 10th, so I did 10 of them before leaving.

Brett:

That's awesome. But really the ideal thing here is you find a challenge that works, that gets people interested, and then you keep doing it, you keep running it and it becomes evergreen and you change out the mini challenges. But then the overarching challenge still works.

Alicia:

And the biggest thing is you can't mess up, to be honest. If you start a challenge and it doesn't hit the target, if you're showing up authentically and you're showing up like this is our brand, this is our mission, this is what we're trying to do, that shines through beyond anything else. And then you can make adjustments your customer's like, man, you're so cool. I really enjoyed this, but how about we try a step challenge now that would make more sense. So it's like it's going out there. And I mean, my first challenge, I just was winging. I had no idea. I didn't even know I was doing weekly challenges. I was just like, Hey guys, let's drink water. And it just evolved into something and people helped me build it because they could see the authenticity and they bought into the brand mission. So that's why I emphasize brand mission more than anything because you just really can't mess it up, like are genuine and you have a strong mission, and that's really what you're trying to do is help transform people's lives.

Brett:

Well said. I love that. That's going to be a good place to kind of wrap up this discussion. I do want you to share, though, people are listening. They're like, okay, this sounds awesome, but you know what? I don't want to do this by myself. So Alicia, what is the name of your company? I think it's Challenge Makers, correct. So tell us a little bit about that and how do you guys operate?

Alicia:

Yeah, for sure. So challenge makers.com is where I have a little course now where you can go through in the exact process of my templates, the M avatar worksheet, identifying your own customer journey, and then all my emails and all the templates into building a challenge. I have that available as well as the option to work one-on-one with me where my team comes in and we strategize it for you and actually build it for you. So we have both options available on challenge

Brett:

Challenge makers.com. Alicia Reynoso, ladies and gentlemen, Alicia, that was so good. So fun. Thank you for the time. Really, really enjoyed it.

Alicia:

Thank you so much for having me. That was a blast.

Brett:

Awesome. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We would love to hear from you. Hey, connect with me on the socials. If we're not friends on LinkedIn, what's going on? If we're not connected on Facebook or on Twitter, let's do that. I am beginning to post more regularly and check out the YouTube channel, O M G Commerce, YouTube channel, posting new content there, new shorts, new stuff. Maybe you missed a previous episode. We got highlights for you on YouTube. So check that out. And as always, until next time, thank you for listening.

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