Everything is easier when your product is awesome. Messaging is easier. Email marketing is easier. Getting repeat purchasing is easier. But, here’s the thing, the key to having a great product is NOT having a product focus. The key is to be a problem-first business rather than a product-first business. It’s more important to fall in love with your customer rather than falling in love with your product.
Cathryn Lavery understands great product design. Her first product, the Better Self Journal, raised $322,000 on Kickstarter and won her the Build a Business Contest from Shopify. Her success (learned partially from failures) in expanding her product line and her business won her the, Build a Bigger Business Contest from Shopify, which is an amazing feat.In this episode we breakdown some really important approaches to designing your next product and understanding how to think about your product mix.
Mentioned in This Episode:
Cathryn Lavery
Transcript:
Brett:
Welcome to the Spicy Curry Podcast where we explore hot takes in e-commerce and digital marketing. We feature some of the brightest guests with some of the spiciest perspectives on what it takes to grow your business. Season one of this podcast is all about the old business adage that what it really takes to succeed is three keys. One, have something good to say, two, say it well. And three, say it often. My guest in this episode is Cathryn Lavery, founder of BestSelf Co. And we're talking about how to have something good to say by making sure your products are awesome.
Brett:
And each additional product launch you have, and as you extend your product line, how to make sure each one is awesome and really resonates with your customer. And so we're talking about product lessons from bootstrapping $36 million in e-commerce sales. So lean in, buckle up and enjoy this interview with Cathryn Lavery. The Spicy Curry Podcast is brought to you by OMG Commerce, Attentive, OneClickUpsell, Zipify pages and Payability. All right, Cathryn Lavery is my guest. I am absolutely thrilled to be getting into this content. And so Cathryn, welcome to the show and how's it going?
Cathryn Lavery:
It's great. Great to be here, Brett.
Brett:
Yeah, really excited that we connected and that you agreed to do this. We met at Ezra Firestone's event, Blue Ribbon Mastermind in Denver recently. And I heard your presentation and two guys from my team, Greg and Bill, also my son, Nate was there and they were all like, wow, that presentation blew our minds. And so we're going to be digging into the way you guys look at product development and product expansion. And the official title of the podcast is product lessons from bootstrapping $36 million in sales. And so really love your approach. I love some of the mistakes that your company learned from in the beginning and now really what you've gotten right. And just so much to unpack here. And so I want to start with, tell us a bit of the story, how did you launch your flagship initial product? Where did the idea come from and how did that launch go?
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah. So the first product that we created was called the Self Journal and it was a 13 week based goal guided journal that I just wanted to exist. So I didn't think it was going to become a big business. I just was like, I want to have this to use myself, turns out it's really expensive to make just a couple of books. So I had done a couple of Kickstarters from a past business before, so I knew generally how it worked and each time I did it, I got a little better. And so I didn't have the money to just fund a bunch of journals. I knew that crowdfunding is a great way to both validate an idea and basically you're selling pre-orders, you're not selling equity. You don't have to raise money. You're basically selling the thing and funding your whole company from that.
Cathryn Lavery:
So our public goal for that was 15,000. So that was the minimum amount that we needed in order to make this thing happen. And my internal ... This is my real goal, but I'm not going to tell anyone because anyone I did was like, it's never going to happen was 200,000. So I had basically broken down what that goal looked like, how many email subscribers we would need. I basically used the journal, which is all about goal setting to create the goal for the Kickstarter, which is ...
Brett:
So you used the journal to sell the journal. That's crazy. That's good.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah. So we ended up getting funded to that 15,000 in 28 hours or something.
Brett:
Wow.
Cathryn Lavery:
And then by the end of the campaign which was 34 days, we hit 322,000. So that was enough to basically pre-sell 10,000 units. So we pre-sold just over 10,000 units and then we were able with that money to order 30,000 units from our manufacturer. And so then we had the Kickstarter people and then we had what is actually going to launch the business. Because the last thing you want to do, and I try to tell people is you don't want to have to always go back to Kickstarter. So making sure that you are funding enough for inventory, for both the backers and then also for your store so that you don't have to continually be on this hamster wheel.
Brett:
Nice. So even though it was more like, hey, I want this journal myself, you recognize there could be a business here. And so you structured it in such a way that if it worked, you'd also fund a pre-order to fill up your inventory to sell beyond the initial backers from Kickstarter.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah. And it was only after the Kickstarter ended that I was like, oh, this could actually be something. I had other things going on at the same time and nothing had done as well as this had. And this was a passion project that I'd started. So then I'm thinking, okay, maybe this is the thing that I do instead of all this other stuff. I'd always expected to have it be more of a grind of something that I didn't like to do, if that makes sense. I'm like, I actually really enjoy this but this got to be the thing that makes me money, that would be insane.
Brett:
Right. It can't be something that I enjoy and that I'm passionate about that also makes me money. It almost feels wrong even though I think it actually aligns perfectly. So that's awesome. So you realized once this thing blew up, $322,000 raised, all right, we've got a real offer here. When did you start to think, okay, we need to go beyond this product? Because you could have just said, hey, let's just sell the journal forever, and be happy with that potentially.
Cathryn Lavery:
It's not like the product line came right after. So what happened is we finished the Kickstarter, we launched the store, we're selling a lot of journals. Then word got out that we're selling a lot of journals and you see more competition come into this space. Not everyone... Has a journal. And so what we were doing-
Brett:
It's not really something you can necessarily trademark precisely. I mean, someone could copy or knock off the journal in a lot of ways if they wanted to.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah, we've had a ton of ... There's so many 13 week journals out there now that ... Ours is the first one and it's like, oh, you can sell four of these a year. And so they go at it for more of a business idea, not the framework that we started with. But it's difficult to be like, you start with one flagship product and how do you go to the next thing? So we had things like a leather cover and accessories to the product. And then when you just almost become like a journal company and every ... If you have a hammer, everything's a nail. If you're a journal company, everything's a journal. And so when we were chasing this revenue of, okay, what's the next product? We run into this ... Mistake that I think a lot of people make is you start chasing the revenue and not what people actually want.
Cathryn Lavery:
So for us, we're like, oh, we sell a gold journal which you use at work. So now let's try to own the office space and let's get into a mouse pad and a monitor stand and a T-shirt and hoodie. So all this just stuff. And because we're bootstrapped, we don't have a ton of money that we can just throw into these products that are not going to sell. And so we went down that road for a bit until I realized that it was a huge mistake. And even though that we put in a ton of time and energy, I was just thinking like, I started this self journal because I wanted this product to exist. And I'm looking at this potential product line and some that we already made like hoodies and things like that. And I'm looking at this potential product line, I'm like, would I buy this?
Brett:
Yeah. Do I even want this to exist?
Cathryn Lavery:
Do I want this? And when I said, honestly I thought ...
Brett:
Who buys mouse pads? Actually, there are still some people that buy mouse pads. There's one person on my team who still likes a mouse pad and he will go nameless. He's actually a rockstar, but he still likes the mouse pads. Mouse pads are dying but anyway, yeah.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah, exactly. So it was only then when I'm like, I wouldn't buy this, so why am I trying to sell it to my customers? And I think when you are pushing things like that, your customers are going to get tired and they're going to see what you're doing. Why did you start with this and then suddenly you're way over here with what I cal me too products? Or just products that you're making that are like everything else, but are not going to drive anyone to your store or to you as a brand. Your super fans might buy it but what happens is if you don't create another really great product that solves a problem, you're not going to have any super fans because you're not actually creating anything of real value.
Brett:
Right. I love it so much. And I'm thinking of some other examples too that we'll mix in here as we go. But one of the things you talked about in Denver and you map this out, it was what you call your tiered approach to going from one to many products successfully. So there's a lot of brands that don't do it successfully, but you guys have done it very, very well. And I think that the model that you teach is really a model that will be instructed for any e-commerce brand. So what is that tiered approach and how did you land on that?
Cathryn Lavery:
So whenever I went back and I was just seeing like, why are we going down this path? I'm looking at, what we were trying to do is we're trying to just create products. We're becoming this product first company and not a problem first company. So when we started with the first product, we're trying to solve this problem around productivity and getting things done. And now we were just creating stuff. We were just adding to this consumer stuff without actually solving a problem. So from there, I realized that the couple of products that we had come out with that had done well were all based around solving a problem or basically creating a framework that helped other people do something better. And so the tiered system that I came up with was this tier A, B and C.
Cathryn Lavery:
So tier A products are your flagship products. They solve problems, they're the things that people will come and find you for. And you don't need to drive as much traffic because people actually seek you out. And then tier B are upgrades to tier a. So this could be some thing that makes a tier A product better, but they're not ... It's how to boost your AOV, but they're not going to come just for that. So that could be like some of our customers buy leather covers that are more expensive than the journal, but they just love them. But they're not buying a cover if they don't first have the journal. And then you have tier C products, which these are another thing that boost your AOV. These are for your super funds, these are swag. These are things you can sell to, again, boost your AOV but they're not things that are going to drive people to you.
Cathryn Lavery:
So when you look at your time, where are you spending it? So are you spending 80% of your time working on tier C products? Because you're never going to get that time back and it's never going to drive the revenue that you need in order to succeed. So for us, that was where we were spending time, because it's easy to create me too tier C products because everyone's doing it. And oftentimes we're chasing revenue, we want some sort of progress. It's much harder to sit down and figure out a new unique product that is solving a problem in your own way, which is why we often try to just do these easy wins, but actually are not going to drive revenue. And if you're bootstrapped like we were, you're just throwing money into this pit of money that might not ever come back.
Brett:
Totally makes sense. And it feels natural. It feels like, hey, okay, we can own the office space because we're a productivity journal. We can add all these other office accessories, but then you're not really solving a problem. You're just adding to the noise and creating maybe slightly better versions of things that already exist and no one's going to seek you out for that. So yeah, that's a great point. Were you about to add something to that?
Cathryn Lavery:
I was also going to say, if you've become less of a product first company and more of a problem first, then not everything needs to be a product. Sometimes you can solve a problem with content, with a video, with something that you're not trying to sell. And then other times it makes sense for it to be a product. But one thing that I've been teaching the team is, let's not try to sell everything. Let's try to solve problems without asking for money because then they'll trust us more to buy a product when it actually needs to be a product. Not because we were trying to drive every dollar out of them.
Brett:
I love that. So I want to dive into this just a little bit. So becoming a problem first company instead of a product first company. And one thing that I've heard Ryan Daniel Moran say ... And I know you and I were both at Capcom 2, which we'd now just realized before he hit record here. ...
Cathryn Lavery:
Ryan's ...
Brett:
Yeah, he's a great guy. I love working with Ryan. But he says, "Hey, fall in love with your customer, don't fall in love with your product." And I think those are similar. This is more of a customer focus. And so can you talk through how that evolved for BestSelf Co., how you started realizing, okay, who is our customer and what are the problems we're supposed to solve or that we should be solving?
Cathryn Lavery:
Well, actually one of the people that I learned from with that is Tony Robbins talks about this idea of falling in love with your customer, because then you can keep serving them the best. And when you compare people like Blockbuster fell in love with their product. They fell in love with the idea that people would want to go to their local blockbuster and pick out a movie and that was their ritual. They didn't fall in love with the idea of just entertaining people in whatever way that was. ...
Brett:
... to riff on that for just a second. What's interesting is if at the time, if you ask people, "Hey, do you like going to the movie store?" They'd say, "Yeah, love it." Grab some popcorn and I want to watch a movie, but really people said they loved it because they didn't know there was another way. And what they really loved was watching movies. And so then as soon as something easier and more frictionless came out, of course they abandoned the movie store. So that's one of those things. Yeah, they were in love with their model and then they were doing research to self reinforce their perspective, which was off.
Cathryn Lavery:
And they actually had a chance to buy Netflix for 50 million and they said, no. And then by ...
Brett:
...funny enough.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah. And by the time they realized they were behind, they tried to create their own platform. But by that point, Netflix had already come in and .. they couldn't catch up. So that was just an example of falling in love ... It's the same with Kodak, they fell in love with the ... They actually invented digital cameras but they fell in love with the idea of printing your photos. And so they just locked it in a box and we all know what happened to them.
Brett:
And what's interesting about that too is they were ... And I did a little research on this and it was in a book or something that I read, but they were so passionate about good photography that in the beginning they said, film is so much better. No one is going to want to take a digital picture because film is so much better. So we don't want to water to down the art of photography. They were purists. When they didn't really think through, digital photography's going to get better. And this is enabling a mom and dad who don't know photography to become a photographer. And so short sided and again, thinking inside their own little box.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah. So I think reading books around that idea and then realizing people don't want to carry around a journal for their day. They want to be intentional with their time, they want to make sure they're achieving the right things and they're hitting their goals, but that has nothing to do with our product. We're just a vehicle for them to get there. And so that's when I started thinking of, okay, how do we not fall in love with the idea that everything needs to be a journal and that things should be a framework that can change, but as long as they help people get to their goal.
Brett:
Yeah, I love that. And I think there are multiple ways to do that but I think, well, your framework and the way you look at is beautiful. I'll brag on, a friend to mine, Peter Goodwin of Groove Life, silicone wedding ring, so I'm wearing one right now. I'm also wearing one of his belts, which I won't show you because that would be awkward. But they're really geared towards adventurous people that do CrossFit or hike or get out and about, not the stuffy old school type thing. And so they were one of the fastest growing silicone wedding ring companies on the planet and they could have just stopped there. And they could have said, well, maybe we just create other rings and stuff, which they've been doing. They got all kinds of rings now, but then they started branching out and they started thinking about, okay, what is this active customer need?
Brett:
And what are some pain points? So their belt is actually really great because ... And just to riff on belts for a minute. I know for me, I'm a pretty large guy about 6'3, 225. And I was always between notches on a belt. I could never find a belt to work. Or the slider kinds were just crappy, they'd break. And so they invented this new belt to solve a real problem. And now the belt is actually the biggest part of their business. And so it's one of those things though where, hey, clear picture of my customer. Falling in love with the customer and then solving real problems. That's it, that's the way it works. And what a cool revelation for you to realize this is really about self betterment, not just about the office. And so then where did you go from there? Because some of your new products are just amazing, so thoughtful and so powerful. Walk through what that looked like.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah. So I think it's funny ... My team has a joke that as the business is changing, it's changing with whatever I'm going through my life as far as products. And so when I first started BestSelf, ...
Brett:
But if you are your consumer, that's not a bad thing.
Cathryn Lavery:
I joke, I'm like, yeah but I'm growing with our customers. So we're solving different problems. But at the time when I started BestSelf, it was very much type a productivity, hit your goals, high achievement. That is what makes you your best self. And as the business was doing really well and we won the Shopify contest, we were hitting all these external goals ... At the time I was going through a divorce, it was an amicable thing but I'm thinking like, wow, how can I be so successful in this business? And then not as successful in these other things like my relationships, weren't where they needed to be. And so all of these things that I'm like, this is not your best self, is these external business money goals. And so that's when I started rethinking the idea of, okay, we call the company BestSelf, but we've been so focused on productivity and achievement instead of all the other areas.
Brett:
The work stuff.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah. And so that's when we started looking at what other ideas could we be thinking about and your relationships to your health. And it's funny how we came up with what became a huge product line for us. So I got a lot out of just journaling thoughts and reflection and things like that. And we talked about it to our customers and our customers were like, yeah, but when I open up .. I just don't know what to write. Or they start going in circles and they're not actually figuring stuff out because their mind is stuck on one thing. And so we came out with just a blank journal. So the one we had ... The self journal is all guided with a framework inside. The scribe that we called it, it's just plain.
Cathryn Lavery:
And everyone was like, well, I don't know what to write. And so I was like, well ... The team were thinking, oh, we could come up with a prompts inside of the journal so that they know what to write every day but I'm like, yeah but then sometimes ... What if you open the next page and it's a prompt, you don't really feel like writing about that day. And then you don't want to skip a day because you're a type A like me.
Brett:
That feels really weird to have 30 blank pages between your two posts or something. It doesn't doesn't work, doesn't feel right.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah. So I was thinking okay, well since ... And then at that point, everything's a journal. So again, the hammer nail thing... prompt journal and I don't think that's ... It's falling in love with the product. And so from there we thought, oh, well, what if we came up with a prompt deck? So it's prompts asking you different questions to enable you to journal. So we were trying to sell more of our ...
Brett:
But if you don't like the prompt that you draw ... It's like a deck of cards in this cool little box here...It literally is a deck of cards. That's all it was. We printed them in the US. They were expensive. We only did a thousand for the first run because we were like, we don't know if this is going to work. We're just trying to ask sell this other product. And what we realized is people loved it. Even though the quality wasn't up to the standard I liked, there was a lot of things that I would've wanted differently, but again, we were just testing it. And then as soon as we realized, oh, actually we're onto something, we took it to our regular manufacturer, we upgraded everything.
Cathryn Lavery:
We added more prompts. The packaging looks like a real product .. that I'm proud of. And my architecture background, I'm like 3D modeling the box because I will go in on this stuff ... And then we had this beautiful product that was cheaper to make, we could raise the price on and that ended up becoming a big thing. So the first product was called the Wordsmith Deck and that was just prompts around journaling. And then one time in a product meeting, we are just selling so many of these decks and we're just like, ah, you know what people do more than journal, is they have conversations with each other. And I'd been ..Because I love this and you guys come with so many good ideas through this process and I know that any process for ideation and product design, there's going to be a scrappy, probably terrible ideas too. But any tips or insights for how you structure those meetings and who from your team is on the meetings? Is it company wise, just a select group of people, any insights there?
Cathryn Lavery:
So for a while we'd have product meetings, but then every week we do a product marketing meeting and the product team would update the marketing team on where they were at. And I ended up stopping that because what I find was if you have a weekly meeting, how are you creating anything unique or different that they can sell in a week? And what I find was we were actually .... What I said earlier where we were trying to solve these easy problems so that we would have something to talk about in the marketing so that we don't feel like losers. That we're like, guys, we actually are working but it's not a linear ... Product design is not a linear process where you're like, I'm going to sit down at 2:00 PM today.
Cathryn Lavery:
I'm going to come up with a product. And then by 4:00 PM, it's going to be ready to go. That's not how it works, nor should it work like that because then I feel like you're only hitting surface level problems and not really going deep on what the problem actually is. And so at the beginning, when we used to do that, I saw what was happening as far as, oh, we're just trying to solve easy problems to be able to report something back. And then I stopped that. We still do a joint meeting, but it's more of what's going on with current products and marketing things we're doing. And then product brainstorming is a completely separate thing where it's only the product team and we come in with problems. So we start with, okay, what's the problem that we're solving? And we also have ... It's just a Google spreadsheet where throughout the day as something annoys me, I will put it in there. Or I don't do it this as much as when I started but-
Brett:
It's your annoyance journal that you keep track of to see, hey, is there a problem here we can solve?
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah. And again, sometimes that's for BestSelf, sometimes that's just like, oh, I should write a blog post about this once I figure it all or it's something else. But it's a place where again, if you're thinking problem first instead of product first, that could lead to something, you just don't know where it's going to lead. So in our product brainstorming meetings, we start with, okay, what's the problem? And I didn't talk about this in Denver but we also write a product story before we create anything, which is what the product is actually supposed to do. What's the problem with solving, who do we think would actually buy it? And things like that, before we go into any design work.
Brett:
I love that so much. And that's what Amazon does before they launch a new initiative or something is their S team or their senior team is working on new ideas. Part of what they do ... One, they don't do PowerPoint decks. They just do what they call six pagers, these reports that are written in narrative form to pitch an idea internally. But the other thing they do is they write a press release. So they write a press release as if this new initiative, this new digital product or new feature, whatever was launched. And so they have to think through how would this be talked about? Who would use it? Why is it a big deal? What are the main selling points? What is this all about? And so I love that. I love thinking in a narrative form, thinking in stories, what's the story of this product, even before you get into design. That's fantastic. So very, very cool.
Cathryn Lavery:
Once we do that ... It's funny, whenever I was putting the presentation together for Blue Ribbon, it was actually another blue ribbon member that gave me the idea for this talk ... I actually changed it last minute. Ezra was like, "Send me your slides." I'm like, "They're not ready." So this product map of how we did it, it was only when I was putting this presentation together was I able to look back. Because everything in the moment is messy and you stumble upon stuff and you might take a wrong turn then you go back. And then eventually it will lead to something. And then it's only looking back that I was able to draw the line ... Steve Jobs, it only makes sense looking back, connecting the dots.
Brett:
Totally.
Cathryn Lavery:
That's how it was with this. So don't expect in the moment for you to know exactly what you're doing, but I think as long as you are focused on really understanding the problem and then solving it and not feeling like you have to just push something out for Q4 because it has to be done. Because what you will realize is you'll put something out that's not actually there and it just won't make the impact that you want.
Brett:
Yep. It could potentially do more harm than good, could damage the brand trust that your customers have in you. And so putting out a product just to reach a deadline ... And I do like having deadlines because that can force creativity and things. But putting out something just to meet holiday demand or just to meet a deadline really is faulty. It's a faulty approach that you'll likely be disappointed with the results. So this has been fantastic. Just recap a little bit and then there's more that I want to get into here. But we're looking at this tiered system. So A, B and C products. A are your flagship products. Those are the ones that people seek you out for. So in Apple's world, this is iPhone and iPad, really an iPhone first company, everything else now comes later but still MacBook and stuff could be flagship.
Cathryn Lavery:
AirPods.
Brett:
Yeah, AirPods. How would you classify-
Cathryn Lavery:
They started as a tier B product and then they became tier A. Neither bigger than ... They're doing more revenue than Spotify and all these other companies just with these.
Brett:
Isn't that crazy? So it's really just designed to support because that's what tier B is. It supports your flagship, but now AirPods are just massive and they do work amazingly well.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah.
Brett:
And then you got your tier C, which is just the more for super fans but it's swag. And it can be me too products there where someone's just like, oh, I got to buy this thing, I may as well buy it from you instead of someone else. So we've got these tiers that we look at. We've talked through your process of how you develop and how you find new winners that you can promote and stuff. Let's talk about product experience. And I love this topic, but you talk about three steps in this product experience cycle. And you also mentioned something in the talk that I think is extremely valuable and you're a physical product company, but experience is greater than things. And so thinking through that, any thoughts on that in general? And then walk us through those three steps.
Cathryn Lavery:
So one of the things I talk about is Apple has an experience. I talk about this idea of ... Every time I talk to people, I'm like okay, how many of you have an Apple box of any product, speaking of AirPods in your house? And it's like, yeah, why would I throw this out? And what I realized is these certain companies will create an experience around everything. So from Allbirds unboxing experience to Apple to even Harry's razors and Starbucks, for example. Is Starbucks the best coffee product on the market? No. But they took what could have been a commodity ... So you have coffee beans as a commodity, you have a bag of coffee is the product, a service is serving the coffee. And then the experience of Starbucks, they created this idea of having a third place outside of your house where there's internet, there's co-working space.
Cathryn Lavery:
And so now they created this whole other place for you to go. And they also changed the way they describe their coffee. So they didn't have a drip coffee, it's an Americano coffee. So somehow the way they describe it is different. And so you do not equate a Starbucks Americano with a drip from Dunkin Donuts. And because of that, they can charge more for that. And you also feel better when you're like, yeah, I'll get ... Americano feels better because you are now saying, I am a person that would drink this fancy coffee and that is who I am. And so the three parts of product experience-
Brett:
Just a quick side note on the Starbucks thing. So I'm a bit of a coffee purist. If I have the choice, I prefer local roaster over Starbucks. But if we're traveling or if Starbucks is easy, I'm totally drinking Starbucks. I do enjoy it a lot. So this year for Halloween, my 11 year old daughter, Maggie, she's super cute, she had the idea to go as a Starbucks cup. And so she had white hoodie, white sweatpants, we wrapped a brown paper bag around her midsection and then just stapled it in the back and then glued the Starbucks logo on the brown paper bag. And I have a lot of kids ... I've got eight kids. I can't remember if I told you that. Yeah, I did tell you that. I've got eight kids, so there's lots of cuteness around. We had more people commenting, yelling from across the road, "Oh look, she's Starbucks." Everybody loved the Starbucks cup idea. And I think it just shows the power of that brand. It was one of the most simple costumes that we had, but people love Starbucks.
Cathryn Lavery:
To come up with eight costumes every year, it's a lot.
Brett:
We do try to reuse. And so we need more simple ideas like the cups. So anyway, three step product experience.
Cathryn Lavery:
Okay. So when you're thinking of product, there's two that you think of, form and function. So the form is the visceral first reaction. So that's like the color, the form, the texture....The unboxing, the packaging, all of that.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah. Which is what you'd first think of. And then there's the middle point, which is the behavioral, which is when I get this product, do I know what to do right after? Is it easy to use? Do I know what success looks like? It's a little bit more difficult but if you can get that part right, showing people what success looks like. And then you have the end, which is the reflective part. So it's like the memory of the experience, the emotional part of the experience and how your product relates to their self identity. So for the self journal, for example ... And this is a much more woo woo part, but it's very important to get those three parts right. And so for that, when someone posts your really nice self journal, boxed product ... They open it, it has a really great on-boxing experience. We have all this content around how to find success with it.
Cathryn Lavery:
Here's different people with different goals and what they've done. And then when they post that to their Instagram story, they're both marketing it to you. But they're also saying, I am a person that works on my goals and I am working to achieve things. And so every product that we create, it's like, what is this having on my coffee tables say about me? And so if you can have your product become part of someone's identity that they want to share, then that is the third piece, which is the reflective piece.
Brett:
That's amazing. So let's map that out a little bit and maybe dive into a few more examples as we go. You've already given some. But the beginning, that's the visceral, the visual, the touch, feel, see, all that. In the middle is the behavioral, and that's where you're really trying to get client success. I'm using the journal and it's impacting my attitude and my mood and my direction of my behavior, or I'm using my iPhone and I'm more productive or more whatever. And then the end is the reflective. What is this product saying about me and what are the memories and things associated with this product? Can you walk through some other examples or maybe some things you should think about at each step?
Cathryn Lavery:
So I think what you name your product might be one. So for us, we called it the self journal, a 13 week framework to achieve your goals instead of a day planner. Because we're thinking people are going to invest more in their goals than they are with planning their day. There's nothing exciting about planning your day.
Brett:
A day planner is supper boring and it's been around forever and day planners are like the '90s.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah. And the thing about taking the time to create this experience is you can actually charge more when you do this. Same with the way Apple can charge more for their products, same way Starbucks can somehow charge $6 and look at you with a straight face for a coffee, that is because they're creating an experience with ... So I always tell people, if you can focus a little more in just taking some time with each area of this, you can charge more and that will far make up for the time you're putting in. So for example, with our discovery decks which we first started, they looked like a card deck, we charge 17.99 for them even though they cost us more than the upgraded decks. I personally knew the experience wasn't there. And when you get something and it feels like it's fun to open and it feels real, you are probably going to enjoy using it.
Cathryn Lavery:
Which means if you enjoy using it, you will use it. And it only works if you use it. So that was another thing around when you create products. If you create a product ... It's cheaper to do it this way, but it feels a little scratchy on you where it's not totally comfortable. You might be saving a little money, but people are not going to enjoy using your product. And so they will not use it nor will they recommend it. And whenever you create this experience, what people do is they talk to their friends about you. They share it on social media and it's just another piece of your marketing that you might not be considering, but it will really separate you from your competitors if they're not doing this.
Brett:
Yeah. And you mentioned Allbirds as an example, and I know mutual buddy, Ezra Firestone's a big Allbirds fan. And I don't own any Allbirds, but I have some friends that do and people save those boxes. People show other people those boxes because they're so unique and so cool as you open them and people post them on social media about the boxes. So are those boxes more expensive than a normal shoebox? Yeah, they are. But have they more than paid for themselves both in terms of the experience and just the joy they bring their customer? But then in terms of free media exposure and free word of mouth that has now increased substantially. So it's one of those things where we can think about, this doesn't matter, throw away the box. Well, not necessarily. Not if you do it the right way. So yeah, super powerful.
Cathryn Lavery:
There's a great blog post about conference T-shirts from someone with the same idea of if you could create a really comfortable, good looking T-shirt that people want to wear, then they won't throw it out after your conference. They won't ever wear it again, because it's not comfortable. They will constantly wear it because it's comfortable and it looks good on them. And so how much money are conference organizers leaving on the table by going for the cheapest option that people will leave in their little sling bags and never put on because they don't look good and they're not comfortable.
Brett:
Yeah. So I want to talk about two of the concepts here as we look at the reflective or the end stage of this three step customer experience. You talk about community challenges and I think this is something you specifically did with the BestSelf journal. Can you talk about community challenges and what those are and how you use them?
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah. So we actually stumbled on this by accident. I was trying to ... How do we incentivize people to create a habit around doing this product? I think a lot of times we sell a product one time, but how do we teach people to consume it so they need it again? And so we created this ... We called it a graduate challenge. I don't know why we came up with that name. I don't think it's very good, but that's what it was. And we basically were like, okay, every day if you complete your journal, you take a picture of it. You either share it in our private Facebook group or you put it on social. And if you do this for 30 days, we will give you a $10 gift card, which is really just a incentive for them to use. Where they're like, yeah, I get $10 for using the product I bought, it's amazing.
Cathryn Lavery:
And so what happened was people got into a habit of using it, they found success with it. And then a byproduct, which turned into a huge thing was that we had a ton of customer generated content, which was not what we started with but well, we realized we could pay a photographer and a handwriting specialist a bunch of money and they would take all these pretty pictures that look gorgeous. But did not convert at the same level as someone's shitty iPhone with the coffee halfway in the way and their journal's there. That did so much better on Facebook ads because people on Facebook are there to see their friends. They're not all marketers like us and so-
Brett:
People have that BS radar. It feels like something's been staged if it's been staged.
Cathryn Lavery:
Right. And then also what we realized is one of the objections that we had from customers was like, oh, this product is so nice, I feel bad writing it with my terrible handwriting. And so what we realized was we're showing them all these picture perfect pictures of people filling in their journal. And what they actually wanted to see was, hey, this journal is only for you and it can be as messy as you wanted to. So we actually took a bunch of the customer generated content of messy writing and it's...including mine. And just was like, hey, doesn't matter what it looks like, just matters that you use it.
Brett:
Yeah. I love that so much. So what's really cool about this community challenge you created is one, I do like the fact that you gave everyone a reward. Because I think there's some people who will participate if it's a drawing or a sweepstakes or something like that. And certainly those can work. I have lots of friends that run sweepstakes. I hate sweepstakes. I don't ever do sweepstakes. I think there's a large percentage of people that are like, I'm never going to win that. One out of a million, whatever. So you had it set up where everyone gets something if they complete this and you also knew-
Cathryn Lavery:
An it's not a ton either. Not everyone will do it 30 days in a row. And the ones that do, it's a gift card to your own store.
Brett:
They're going to buy again and you're going to benefit if they buy more and more journals. And so I think it's just a brilliant idea. I know lots of people that do reward people or try to incentivize people if you post a picture of you with the product or selfie or whatever, then you get this ... Actually you get into this draw. And I think it's brilliant especially for you understanding this client success piece. And I think this actually ties into both, the middle and the end. It's the client's success and it's a reflective piece of, hey, get into the product, just do it, build that habit and then share it. And it's going to be a beautiful combination there.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah, because it was helping us be successful by making sure that they were successful. So our incentives were aligned. It's the whole Charlie Munger show me the incentives, I'll show you the results. If you can align your incentives with your customers, that they are getting the best results, then that will come back to you.
Brett:
Love it. So I do want to ask you a little bit about the Shopify contest. Because I think there's something there, something interesting beyond just the cool story of meeting Tim Ferris and stuff like that. So I want to hear about that in just a second. But before we do, you'd listed some questions. And so this may be totally coming top of your mind or off your cuff a little bit, but what are some of the questions that you should ask or that product teams should ask when thinking about how to design a great customer experience?
Cathryn Lavery:
So again, I think you should split it up into the three parts. If you are ascending a physical product, what's something or some way you can build anticipation before your product arrives. So is it other people who've had success with your product, cool ways you could use the product. Here's 10 ways that you never thought that this would work, whatever. So basically building up anticipation before your product arrives so that when it gets there, they know exactly what to do. And then how do you want people to feel when they're buying it or opening it? Something that I think is very cool, Four Sigmatic, I noticed they did ... They used this mental model called Need to Complete, which is we need to tick stuff off. And so in their box, they have a three ... It's like a 1, 2, 3, and number one is open the box and it's already ticked off. And so a human brand just wants to complete things. And so if you can ..
Brett:
Especially once it started. If it's not started at all, it's not nearly as enticing as if it's already started a little bit. Now I want to go ahead and complete it.
Cathryn Lavery:
Exactly. That's why on forums on the internet, the start of the forum always goes way quicker. Because they're like, you've been doing this for three minutes but you're already 80% through. And you're like, okay, I'll finish it. So really thinking about that experience. And then can you tell a story through the packaging, through your emails, even things like ... It doesn't always have to be the product, it's how you make people feel. So I've seen really cool brands that add gifs to their emails because having gifs in your emails ... And just fun things like that will make your customers like you more or at least add some personality that isn't just like, hey, your stuff's in the mail.
Cathryn Lavery:
What does success look like? So what does the first 10 minutes, 10 hours with your product look like? Are there any questions that you could answer beforehand and get ahead of it? And then what are some fun ways you could drive engagement with using it? So whether it's having people take a photo with it, whether it's just what we did with the challenge and then the identity piece. So what does this product say about this person? And if this person is going to post it on social media, or if they are going to want to post it on social media, why would they post it? What would that say about them? Those are some ideas.
Brett:
So good. And I'll list those questions in the show notes. So if anybody's driving or running or on the treadmill and you didn't get that, I'll list those questions so you can copy those. But this has been fantastic. So I know we're just about out of time, but I'm curious, Cathryn, what was your experience like? Because you won not just one Shopify contest, you won two Shopify contests. The build a better business and Build a Bigger Business, was that ...?
Cathryn Lavery:
No. It's Build a Business and Build a Bigger Business. It was insane. I wish I could say I had the playbook on how you could do it too ... Actually one interesting thing that you might not know is how they came up with the idea for the Build a Business, which is exactly what we've been talking about. So Toby who started Shopify, he used to run a snowboarding shop and he just wanted to find an easier way to sell stuff online, which is how Shopify came about. So again, problem first. When he created Shopify, one of the early seed investors I believe or they were friends was Tim Ferris. And they were trying to come up with an idea of, okay, everyone's like, oh, I want to start a company or I want to start a business but they don't have the incentive to do so.
Cathryn Lavery:
And so they created the Build a Business competition, which involves all these prizes that you would never ... It's not like a money prize, it's like, hey, you're going to go ring the New York Stock Exchange bell and meet Tim Ferris and all these other people and do all this cool stuff. And to be honest, I remember in 2013 I think, my first Shopify store, I saw this contest and I was like, I would love to do this. Of course I entered, didn't get anywhere close to getting through to it.
Cathryn Lavery:
But it was just one of those, oh, that would be amazing goal. And it's funny because the day our Kickstarter ended, the next day, Shopify announced this new competition. So I was like, well, this is a sign. And what was funny is the two winners from the year before, which was Pavlock and Trunkster ... I'd actually backed both of those projects. And Trunkster had arrived the same day as the ... I was like, well, this is all just a sign that I should enter.
Brett:
I got to do it. I got to go for it.
Cathryn Lavery:
And so I took the promotional stuff, I'm like, okay, BestSelf's going to win and broke down what would a goal be that we could hit this? And from there ... I didn't actually think we would win but I was thinking, okay, well even if we don't win, if I do everything I can to build a successful business, that's also fine. And so we in the first year got selected for people's choice award, which there's basically four categories. And then the people's choice is one of the top sales, and then they have to get voted on. So there was four of us. Actually TUSHY was in there and Tecovas was in there.
Brett:
Shout out to Miki Agrawal, friend of mine. She's awesome.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah. Who actually came for one of the days at the child flight contest. We got to hang but then that became the thing. And so we end up winning, we got to ring the New York Stock Exchange bell. And it's funny because my parents are still in Belfast. So they barely know what I do. They just ... I work on the internet. And so whenever I'm ringing the Wall Street bell, they're like, well, whatever it is seems to be working.
Brett:
It's working, proud of you but understand it.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah. Tony Robbins, that was the first year he was involved and he invited all the winners to Business Mastery. And so when we went to Business Mastery, the Shopify group were there and they told us, "Oh, we're actually announcing the Build a Bigger Business. So basically you have to be over a million dollars a year and you have to show us that you've scaled, what's the multiples over the year. That's basically how it worked. So you had to be in business more than a year and you had to have certain revenue goals. And of course I entered it but that was one where it was ... I'd never even really considered that I was going to win it. And then whatever I get calls from Canada, it's always a good thing. I always answer, I never answer ... because ... It's Harley. Hey, you won and it's like, oh my God, this is amazing.
Cathryn Lavery:
So for that one, we got to do this once in a lifetime experience twice, which we rang the Wall Street bell again. And then we got to go to Fiji with Tony Robbins and Tim Ferris and Marie Forleo. And what was interesting about the two years back to back is when we were in the Gatsby Island or the Gatsby mansion along Long Island, it's so close to the city that people could come in and leave. And so the mentors would come in, they would be there for half the day or longer, and then they would leave again. And when we were in Fiji, they would ... Basically we're stuck on an island together.
Brett:
Captive audience, they're stuck on the island. Exactly.
Cathryn Lavery:
So we're all stuck there together. And so there's more of a peer system where you're just talking to people instead of it being so structured of like, this is your mentor time, this is the time you can talk to them sort of thing. So yeah, it was awesome. I love Shopify.
Brett:
Just amazing. Congrats to you, two once in a lifetime awards for the same company, same person in a really tight window. And so I think some really cool takeaways there is ... And you nailed it. And I think this was the right approach as you entered this is, hey, even if I don't win, I'm going to be doing the things that I need to do to be successful. I'm going to build a better business in the process, let's do it. It's also really interesting to me that this contest ties in to what you talked about with the three step product experience. It really hits on both the customer success ... The middle and the end, the reflective piece as well which is really cool. And just very curious, what was it like hanging out with Tim Ferris and Anthony Robbins? Was it as cool as people would imagine it to be, or what was that like?
Cathryn Lavery:
Oh, it was cool. Tim was writing his first book the first time we met. So he was I think a little stressed out with that. And then when we hung out with Fiji, he was way more chill and low key. So when we sat down with him, he was just like, you need to read this book and this book and this book and recommending all these books. And it's funny, there's a picture of us floating around on Google, that if you Google Tim Ferris's girlfriend, mine and his picture came up. My friend, out of the clear blue texted me that one day. I'm like, first of all, why are you Googling that? And then-
Brett:
Why are you Googling Tim Ferris's girlfriend? Weirdo.
Cathryn Lavery:
Tony Robbins is just in a league of his own as far as presence.
Brett:
He's a force of nature, that guy. It's great.
Cathryn Lavery:
First of all, he is huge.
Brett:
Massive.
Cathryn Lavery:
I'm small and his hand is probably the size of my head, if not bigger. So I've been to a bunch of his events. He's very, almost larger than life where it's a little intimidating because you're like, well, he's dealing with way bigger stuff than this. But he was really the one that got us thinking ... Because we hadn't at that point ... this whole product expansion but it was really like falling in love with your customer and not the product. And so took us on a whole other path of what we should be thinking about in more of a strategic thinking, not just like, okay, these products but really thinking, okay, what should you be doing to get to the next level?
Brett:
Love it. Cathryn, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks for doing this. If someone's listening and I hope you're listening and/or watching and you're thinking, man, I need to get some of these products if for no other reason than to just see what the product packaging is like and what the emails are like and what the experience is like to buy either the journal or the card deck or how to have better relationships, the conversation starters, things like that. Where can people go to buy some of your stuff, Cathryn?
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah. You can go to BestSelf B-E-S-T S-E-L-F.C-O So bestself.co. We have a bunch of stuff there, make great gifts. And you can just study the experience, just order every single product...exactly-
Brett:
Order two of all of it.
Cathryn Lavery:
Yeah.
Brett:
Exactly. That's awesome. Cathryn Lavery, ladies and gentlemen. Cathryn, thank you so much. This has wonderful. Thank you for the time and I thoroughly enjoyed this.
Cathryn Lavery:
Awesome. Thanks Brett.
Brett:
Awesome. And thank you for tuning in. We couldn't do this without you. And so we'd love to hear from you, what'd you think of this episode? Give us some feedback. Also smash that subscribe button, if you're enjoying what you're listening to and also give us a review on iTunes. One, it would make my day. Also, if you leave a comment, I will start looking at some of those comments and calling them out on shows. And if you share this show with others, I'll also start calling some of that out on the show as well. So with that, until next time, thank you for listening.
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