Hello and welcome back to the podcast. This week we have a really special episode. As I interview Kyle Stanger, the founder of Fashion Awareness Brand. Boys get sad too. I have to admit, I had actual goosebumps listening to Kyle tell his story. I've rarely spoken to an entrepreneur with such passion for his mission and his story shows how passion trump's nearly everything else when it comes to achieving.

So listening to hear how Kyle grew, Boys get sad too to a hundred K months without a plan, any financial backing, and having recently dropped out of school all before he turned 25, his huge success can be put down to his pure passion for his cause. A laserlike focus on his community of customers and a natural ability with social media, although he plays it down a lot, coupled with limitless energy and focus.

In this heartwarming episode, we cover how following Gary Vanner, Chuck's $1 80 Instagram strategy helped Kyle grow his Instagram to 60 K followers. Why having a mission you truly believe in is the most powerful motivator. What's working now and paid or paid in organic social advertising and creative, why leaning into your founder story as a winning strategy in 2022, and Kyle's advice for staying on top of your mental health when starting and running a business.

So my first question to you really is for the audience that don't know who you are and haven't heard about your amazing brand and mission, do you wanna tell us how you got here and what's been happening lately and, the story of your brand?

I am the founder and creative director of the brand Boys Get sad too, so boys get sad too.

It is a fashion awareness brand. Raising awareness for male mental health through the medium or fashion, um, with thought provoking designs. Uh, I started it in the upstairs bedroom, uh, that I yeah, grew up in, um, at my parents' house. Uh, I grew up supporting my father who had anxiety and clinical depression.

Um, Mental health was always a huge part of my life. Uh, I kind of hit 18, 19 years old myself, Um, dropped outta school. I got like reasonable results, but like, just was super hard on myself. Um, And didn't see the point in carrying on cause I was just so miserable. Um, and yeah, then kind of went on a bit of like a self discovery period for maybe like twoish years.

Ended up going to counseling cuz I realized that much like my father, I was probably always gonna suffer in some way and needed to give my like mental health constant attention. Um, and then sadly, um, a few sort of not very nice situations happened. Um, Close. Well, a friend of mine when I was, um, younger and sadly committed suicide and, um, I just found myself saying all the time, I wish there was more I could do.

I wish there was something I could have done. I wish I could have helped. I said, said it to my dad. Loads, obviously supported him loads but still couldn't really solve the problem. Um, and just decided that I had a lot of spare time on my hands, um, and I was gonna try and do something. So I started Boys Get Sad Too, basically.

How's it gone since then? Like what have been the. The big wins and how did it go from an idea in, in a back bedroom to where it is today?

I definitely couldn't do it again. That, that's for sure. , Um, I didn't know. I feel same about my business.

I didn't know what I was doing at the time. I was. Building a community. Before people were like saying, Oh, you should build communities. Like, and I didn't realize what I was doing at the time. I didn't realize all the stuff that I was doing and how that was gonna compound into making a business at the time.

Cause it was never a business. I never started it as a business. It was something that went out on my Facebook. Something that I thought would help me raise a little bit of money for charity and something that I thought was gonna keep me like a bit busy. Um, and it did for like eight to 12 months, two t-shirts a week max.

They were probably getting shipped out. Do you know what I mean? Within a week, Like there was very little work. There was no customer service to do. Um, it was mostly just like friends, family, people I knew, or like occasionally I'd post something like a Facebook group and someone random would buy. The initial product was.

The boys get sad T-shirt. Was it? So yeah, it was a t-shirt. Um, I actually was like doodling in a, in a notepad, uh, while I was having counseling. So when I'd come up with the concept of like doing something to help, I thought, well, jumping clothes, get people together, communities together. I was always like big into fashion.

Um, you spent all my money as like, do you want me a teenager or like clothes? So I was. That kind of made sense to me to do something that I felt passionate about. Yeah. And something that I enjoyed.

And I, I used to say, well, when I first started it was, I used to say like, when you go out to, I. The pub and you see someone in a football top, the same team as you, you naturally feel like you just have an affinity to talk to them despite you've never met them before. Yeah, they could be double your age.

Um, can barely speak. It's like band t-shirts as well, isn't it? Like music band, tshirts related band T-shirts. And any kind of t-shirt that displays any kind of affinity to a group normally can bring people together despite having maybe very little in common other than that one thing.

Yeah. Um, that kind of was like, why can't I like recreate that? And I remember actually being in McDonald's and chatting to someone in a football top, like around that time and kind of then had a conversation with my mom and she was like, You always have these ideas, but you never do anything with them.

and I. You A and C. So I, yeah, just, I basically like did it and I was just en basically just enjoying it. And I remember, uh, kind of ended up dropping into it a bit and started like looking at like people like Gary Vaynerchuck and like talking, like talking about like filming content and posting on social.

So I started posting on social media, um, and started. following people and messaging them and telling them about like what we were doing. And I'm talking like 12 months, no marketing spend. Did not take a penny for myself. Yes. But by the end of it was like, I was like crazed. I would be on the toilet messaging people in the bar of messaging people you couldn't, like I just went like Mia.

Basically six months. Yeah. And was just, just dedicated to BA and it wasn't like dedicated to starting a business. It was just dedicated to doing this thing. Cause people were coming back to me and being like, This is amazing. I love this so much. Like could you do a white t-shirt? And we're talking like, I had like a stack of 20 T-shirts in my bedroom.

Like we're not talking nothing. Like, Oh my God, you're gonna make a big business from this. It was just like, this is amazing and purely passion mission. . I just, I got a message from someone and they were like, I'm in Mexico. Maybe we had like two or 3000 followers at this point. I'm from Mexico. I've just seen your brand.

This is unbelievable. It's made me realize that like I'm not as alone as I thought I was. Mm-hmm. like way to go like, but like I remember having that message and being like, Oh my word, like this is resonating connection.

That like one it can have to people and two that I have via social media is actually crazy. I remember thinking to myself, people, people often will feel like you can't. You can't make a difference as one person. And I felt like that. But it was moments like that where I was like, Wow, I'm actually making a difference despite I'm not a medical professional, despite I'm not giving people counseling sessions or do you know what I mean?

I know I'm doing something. Um, and then lockdown came, and then it just like further like, wow. Basically like poked the beast of me, like just being like a red rag to a ball. I was just, I just, I just wouldn't, I just wouldn't stop.

And then before I knew it, like people were like, Yo, you need to get an accountant. Like this is, I got a little bit of hand, like, and I was like, What do you mean an accountant? Like keeping you all on this little spreadsheet in, in the pages. Like, but yeah. Yeah. So, um, history for the, for the people that are starting out or the people that are maybe not as good as, or like social media.

You clearly are. Can you break down like what you were doing? But it was Instagram, was it that you were mostly growing on? Yeah, so it was Instagram and to be honest, it wasn't natural at all.

I, I really, I uh, I bought a whiteboard and I put a whiteboard up in my bedroom and I wrote on it like my marketing technique and I'd, I'd like researched basically like how. To market a product. Yeah. For free, essentially. Yeah. Um, and one of the ones I always remember was, uh, a method that Gary Vaynerchuck has, which is, equals it like the 180 cents,

and it's basically like leaving your 2 cents on a 180 posts or whatever it is per day, a per day. And like that compounding over time. I bought clickers off Amazon, little hand clickers. Wow. And I used to sit there and like click out the, the comments and click out the likes and, and like make sure I was hitting like, And some days I'd be like, Okay, if Instagram hadn't blocked me from commenting, I would do more and more and more and more just to like, Chat to people.

It wasn't like, it wasn't just like, Oh, do you know? You get them kind of cringy ones on, on your Instagram. Like the one thing that I'd say to people is, if you want to do that, it has to be something you're passionate about because it isn't good enough to just poke, copy and paste. Yeah. It isn't good enough to just copy and paste on it like I would.

Search a hashtag, look at the posts, like try and think of something meaningful. If that took two minutes to think of something and type it out because it was a paragraph, then that's what it would be. So, do you know what I mean? It isn't just like copying and pasting something 180 times. It's like 180 meaningful, like interactions with people and that, you know.

Managed to kind of get some, some form of traction. In the beginning, I didn't even really know, like, I'm not good at social media at all. Like, um, That's interesting. Yeah. You haven't though, I mean, you clearly Yeah. Well, yeah. You've made yourself be. Yeah. Yeah. But we never had any, But maybe it wasn't a thing that you were into before.

Yeah. Well, we never had like a big blow up moment. I mean, never went viral as such, if you know what I mean? Yeah. We, we just compounded over. Um, Yeah. Yeah. I always think in my head like to be like good at social media, you've probably gotta be pumping like really good numbers. But that's probably me just being a bit like the defeatist.

It depends who you're comparing yourself to. Cuz you've got what, like 60,000 ish followers now? Yeah. 60 something. Yeah. I mean that's incredible. So, um, okay, so you were, you were commenting all over the place and a genuine, authentic way you were posting regularly. Was reels around at this point? No, I guess not. No. This is like two, 2018, so we are. Coming on to the like back end of like prime.

Well, we were probably out of the prime INTA growth stage. We were probably just tailing on the back end of like, everything was about to like get real, real hard, which obviously has like, I wouldn't wanna be someone selling a business now unless you're like looking at like real high aov um, products. Um, yeah.

Oh yeah. I would be, I would, I would be very like, skeptical was, if you could repeat what I did, then now yeah. I think it would be even harder. And it was hard back then. I mean, I was like, I was, I was wor working at the time, but working like one day a week and making enough money for, for like the week to get by living at home on my parents and took that, like, that's what it took.

Like my girlfriend was like, Let's move out. Like Vienna was like, I can't. If I want to do this, I can't, cause at least needs to take all the time and it's taking five, six days of my week to, to make this like yeah. Move And, um, I can't have another job if I wanna do that, but I have to sacrifice the fact that like, do you know what I mean?

I was constantly that asking my parents to borrow money and like Yeah. Not paying any rent and like, you know what I mean? Yeah. Doing all stuff. . And so now you've got 60,000 followers and you are also. as you, you're generating sales from more than just organic, but what would, what would be the proportion that's coming from organic versus paid at this point?

We are very lucky, very fortunate, um, to be in a situation where our product carries so far and we've got like a real.

Core customer base that, I mean, keep coming back time and time again. Yeah. Which is, Which is, and I guess that comes down to that purpose and that mission. Really understanding your, you naturally understand your customer because I guess, yeah, you've been through all this yourself, with your family. Yeah.

Yeah. The advice I always give to brands is like, talk to your customers, Interview them. Yeah. Understand them, especially if they're not you, you know?

When did you start doing paid advertising for the brand? Okay, so, um, someone actually reached out to me, and was like, Oh, have you not done anything on, um, like paid? And I was like, I have, I've run through campaigns myself. They spent 20 quid and I'm talking. Mean for like almost two years, we'd have like a thousand pounds in a bank account. Like there was no money to try like test stuff when 20 we'd spent it and we didn't get an order.

I like was like, ah, turn it off. And um, there was like a weekend, it was like mental health awareness weekend or I don't know, something like that. And um, he like set me up a campaign. Switched it on and it was like ping, ping, ping, ping for like, And looking back when it was, What day was this?

This is key. Was it in the middle of the pandemic still? No, no, this is like before the pandemic, I think.

At the time I remember being like, my mom was like, What? How? Like, we're still in my parents' house at this point. Before we knew it, the whole house had been taken over.

Like we scaled like. Well, I say we scaled like, like it was a plan. It wasn't, I just kept on going, Oh, okay, we'll just put a little bit more budget to it. Oh, we'll just put a little bit more budget to it and it just like, just, just ripped off basically. Um, and I was just like over the moon because the number one thing for me when we started, I had a, a, a free business coach.

She was like, What's the number one thing for you? And it was to get to an office, to like have an office space and obviously, I knew that like the more like revenue we were making, the more likely, and at this point I still haven't paid myself a penny.

Like I still haven't taken anything. Um, so we are like two years deep now. Um, I'm like working on the side, putting everything back into the business. Every single penny we made went back into the business. Yeah. Um, and um, yeah, I went and saw an office space. I was like a bit scared. I left it for like two or three months.

My parents then were like, this is like, this is like, this is ridiculous. You can't, you can't do this anymore. Like, we love you, but like this is our home . Yeah. It's not. So we're talking boxes everywhere. Everywhere. Everything everywhere. All over the house. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, Yeah. It was like we'd taken pieces of furniture down to put like racking into the conservatory and like the bedrooms we'd taken like pieces of furniture down to.

Store stuff on like Yeah, it was crazy. I remember the conversation with my dad being like, I'm really proud of you for what you've done, but like, I can't keep having like landslides of t-shirts falling on me while I'm watching tv. Cause I used to like pack them and then put them on the back of the, so in like stacks.

So yeah, back then. And then, um, yeah, I took the first office, um, and then kind of had a commitment then I've gotta make this work. Yeah. I've gotta like try and scale paid social. Um, I, And at this point, was it still just you like doing everything in the business or did you, have you drafted in friends to help or, So yeah, my mom was helping me basically with everything.

My girlfriend was also helping me. My mom basically became full. And we got our first office in the November, and I think we paid a first paycheck in the march, if I remember rightly. Um, and I paid my mom the first month. Um, I think was like minimum, whatever the minimum wage was like. I paid myself for the first time as well, which would've been like April time, whatever. So we were like fully in it together. . Basically just, just, just having, just basically having fun, like if you know what I mean, and just enjoying it.

Yeah. It was like, I remember I used to come home from the office at 12 o'clock at night, like having like packed parcels, neck label, done all this stuff and used to sit on the over, and my parents would be like, You're like working too hard. And I'd be like, I'm not working hard enough. Like this is so much fun.

I can't wait to get back to the office in the morning. I'd be like going to the office at 6:00 AM getting home at 12 and being buzzing to go back the next day. Just because it was like the best thing that had ever happened. Like, you know, like I'd worked so hard with no expectation to ever get there. So once I got there, I was like, it.

It was like, yeah. Just, it just affirmed for me everything that I knew, like one that I thought I knew, like, you can't do it if you, you are not passionate about it. And like the money is so, money is so irrelevant. It's, yeah, It means very, very, very, very little. Like I, I would much rather if you could do it, go back to there now and enjoy what it was like then, then be where we are right now.

Cause it was just so much better. Being smaller, everything feeling new, like having way less to like stress and worry about and just like being like boy with a couple t-shirts, trying to like talk to people like is way funner than like trying to run a business and hiring and doing all that stuff. Yeah.

So where are you now in terms of number of team? What are the looking for. There's three of us core, and then we've got like a couple freelancers, marketing email, socials, Um, well there, yeah, like agencies. Um, so like seven, seven of us. But I wear all the hats still, which is, Yeah.

Um, so, and I see you are still doing reels, you're still doing a lot of the social media. Yeah. Is that behind the scenes as well? Is it you or are you kind of doing stuff and handing it off to people or how does that work? Uh, still a lot of, still a lot of it's me, still a lot of it's me. Yeah. One because it's my baby, and two because, uh, just like my area.

Expertise. Expertise. And it's a founder. It's a founder live brand, isn't it? It's, your story was caught to the whole thing. Yeah. For a while. It wasn't for, for the beginning. I, it was never like Kyle starting this brand, or I'm Kyle and I'm doing this. It was literally just, this is the brand. And it was after so many conversations with say people like yourself where they were like me, you need to be telling people about like why you did this.

So I started. Pushing my personality more to the forefront on like, there's so many great brands that do it as well. Like Ben Francis at Jim Shark, Grace Beverly at Tyler.

Um, , Steven Bartlett, the social chain,

I mean, the differences with me, I am really running around like a headless chicken all the time. But yeah, . But yeah, it's so interesting, isn't it? Yeah. I think, I mean, it's the advice I give to all of our brands really. Unless there's a really strong reason not to where like maybe the owner bought the brand off an original founder and it doesn't really fit.

That it fit the audience. I think the founder story is so key in this day and age, and I think as the recession kind of starts to be more of a problem, hopefully it won't be, but if it does, people will want to keep buying from people. They wanna support independent brands, they wanna support a story. They don't wanna just buy from the corporation.

So it's a benefit you can lean into for. Yeah. Um, okay, so you started running ads and they worked really well straight away. Straight off the bat. Yeah. And then, uh, what happened from there with the paid advertising journey? I'm really always intrigued.

No, we were, we were booming for like a year. I was kind of more obsessed with anything was like the amount of orders going out and like where are we sending them?

Like I was very like eager to push into different markets and we pushed into the EU quite early on and we pushed into the states really early on. Um, and. Have like tried to cement them because I was like, I, it was the message that I needed to get the message out there. So like my key metric was always like, how many orders are we sending out?

And like, we bought in cheaper products. Um, because I wanted to, to give more option to like, okay, if we can, you know what I mean? If we're selling a badge and it's just one badge, but we can sell a hundred of them, like we can send out another hundred orders, which is the potential for like another hundred conversations, if you know what I mean.

Yeah. Um, so I wasn't really looking at things like AOV it was just kind of like, check making the brand that worked, obviously now in, in current climate, things are a lot harder.

Okay, so you started, you launched your ads and you were, you kind of started scaling it, and then we we're, Whereabouts are we in the timeline now?

We're in the pandemic, fully in the pandemic or. Um, yeah. Yeah, so we were just basically scaling in the pandemic essentially. Um, I was like going to the office early, coming home late at night, packing parcels, um, and just kind of just rinsing and repeating that for like a long time basically. Yeah. For that.

And at what point, what point did you stop packing parcels and have, and be able to give that to someone else? Oh, I, I'm still, I'm still, I don't pack parcels every day, but I still have to, Yeah. I'm still very much still get involved in the logistics flow. I've had like quite a lot of opportunity for investment.

But, um, for now it's just basically like, I kind of wanted to bootstrap it the whole time myself because I don't, didn't really want someone coming in and telling me that this is how we had to do it, or, Oh, we can't do that, or we can't do this, because that kind of was never the, it was never the point.

I was kind of like, don't really ever want to be in that situation where I'm going to someone asking for something to keep my business alive. And because my father's a teacher and, um, was made redundant three times. Um, and he taught, teaches engineering. Probably the reason that he had quite bad depression, but I knew that I had to do something in the very beginning on my own two feet because every time he tried to help young people like who needed it the government would snatch away the funding and he would be made redundant. And I was like, I'm not being caught in that situation again where someone else has the power to pull the rug from underneath me. Yeah. Like I mean, if the market pulls the rug from underneath me, cool, then that's how it is.

But for me, I was like, wanna do this and say, um, I'm, I'm, I'm helping people because I'm helping people and I don't need anyone else to like, unlock the doors for me. Yeah. Which is it.

That's amazing. So you've done all of this fully bootstrap with no, um, no investment at all at this stage. and no plans to do that.

No plans to get Well, I think, I think if the right opportunity came up, uh, rather than like a vc, maybe like a growth partner, I think for sure it'd be something that I'd, I'd sit down and have the conversation about. Yeah. That someone who shares the vision and wants to drive it in the right direction.

Rather than just like a VC being like, Okay, we think this kid's gonna do well. Like, let's give him some money and then like try and like get more back at later date and like, we'll, we'll hold him accountable for everything he's doing, but we're not gonna give him much. What I mean you, the flavor of the month when they give you the cash and then two years down the line then not replied to your emails.

So, what surprised you most about growing and running an e eCom store? Because you started, you know, like you said in your bedroom and you were selling a few things here and there, like, and now you've got a fully fledged eCommerce business.

It's a lot harder than you could ever, ever imagine. . It surprised me what felt, although it was like really, really hard. It also felt like when the, the, the round like blew up essentially overnight.

We are talking weeks. Like you can be from like nothing to like needing office space, needing to hire people, needing like logistics help like within weeks.

Um, yeah. And that was the one thing that surprised me. That like it just happened so quickly I kind of points thought maybe 18 months in, like, how long can I keep doing this without being able to like even take like a hundred, a hundred pound for myself a week

What specifically do you think is hard about eCommerce that you hadn't, that you hadn't thought All the other stuff.

Running the business, coming up with the ideas is great. Sorting, payroll, talking to your, and, um, I know like I don't really have any like, work issues, but like doing work con like employment contracts and stuff. It's not fun.

What has been, why do you think you've been successful though? I wanted to be successful, but it was never my intention to make it like create a business.

So I wasn't trying too hard to start a eCommerce brand, you know what I mean? I didn't really know what econ was like. Yeah. So it was just all I could do was product, if you know what I mean. Yeah. So you were fully focused on the product maybe. Yeah. Now I'm thinking about it like the only thing I focused on was the product and my connection to my customers and, and building the community and the whoever I was talking to, I know I said customers, but like wasn't even like they were customers.

It was just like building a community. And like hearing the response and going, Okay, cool, they like this, so we'll do it like this, or they like that, so we'll try this, or whatever. Yeah. Rather than like trying to worry about. Conversion rate on that, if you know what I mean. Yeah. Just focusing on that.

Totally. Yeah. It's so interesting cuz you are doing what a lot of, I advise, our clients to do, which is be on the ground, live and breathe your customer, you know, really focus on the product and what they want, what they love about the product. And then the marketing messages that come from that.

Talking to you. I can hear it just, it would be coming out of you naturally. You're not being super analytical. But you are talking to your customers all day long and so you know what they're gonna love. Yeah.

I think it's definitely major play for brands now. I think like long time goal for me, I'd love to be able to like go into other brands and kind of like bring them more of that. What would just bring more of that? Cause I just don't think that's how people think right now.

Looking at all the, the data and like trying to squeeze like percents out of stuff and like missing the core point of like, what makes a, what makes a great brand is like different to what makes a good brand. And I, I, yeah, I think you can be a great brand and not a very good business. Yeah. You know, you can look at, you can, I look at businesses all the time and I'm like, that's a great brand.

Yeah. So even though like it sounds like you hate all that business stuff and the analytical stuff, you must be doing a bit of it in order to be continuing to be successful.

Yeah, I do all the time. .

So how have you learned that stuff and like, have you had any mentors? What, what, what places have you gone to learn that, that stuff and get better at it? I've had some, uh, some people, um, I think because of the nature of boys get side too, I'm very fortunate of like, people have came and helped me, offered me support.

Simon, uh, Backhouse CEO of Ever Press, um, had us do, um, some stuff with FCI when he was at FCI and like wow. He kinda like took me under his wing and was. Teaching me bits and pieces I wouldn't be here now if it wasn't for the people along the way that have kind of been like, Oh, you don't understand this.

Like, my knowledge now is quite like, quite like, quite extensive. I could probably. Go and work at marketing agency. Start my marketing agency .

I also have a good understanding of creative. Like I've, I've made hundreds of creatives now

I'm sure the audience would love to hear what you see, what, what's working well and paid creative now for ads.

What, what kind of format and stuff and working. Anything. Anything that looks super rough. We've gone back to, we were kind of at the stage when Instagram was amazing that you didn't realize it was an ad. Then everyone started doing hashtag ad and everyone turned off from Instagram.

Yeah. Yeah. And influencers now the like, cost for. services is normally super, super overpriced. I feel like paid social's gotten the same way of like, you could do an ad and it looked cool and it looked really nice and I've shot some like stuff that I would say it was like quite.

Nicely put together. And it's tanked like elevated. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's tagged, paid for studios, did like, done studio shots with a cinematographer with an amazing, what they call like red camera. Paid like, I mean, a lot of money for it. And then like the best video we've had is me with my phone, um, packing an order.

With, with with me editing on TikTok, with TikTok, edit, um, and TikTok free sound. And like, that's been like one that's just like consistently performed for ages and I've done like amazing studio shots of product and they just, Yeah, they just don't do,

Creative to me is, I always say this, but creative is the battleground.

Like that is, The brands that are managing to succeed and paid social are the ones that are innovating like you are and testing all sorts of different things. You did the right thing though to test elevated creative as well because it does work sometimes amazingly well. And there's a lot of chat in my industry about, you know, elevated versus u GC style creative and like which one works and actually people are.

You know, sometimes the elevated creative really does work super well. And, and, and, and it's an asset for your brand too. So if you use those assets in other places, and when people see your brand, you know, on the website and they can see that there's been, you know, that it's more than just a guy in his back bedroom now.

I know a lot of our listeners will be really keen to hear from you as a Gen Z entrepreneur.

Like, what about TikTok? How's that been going for you? Have you guys been doing organic TikTok, TikTok ads? What have you found? What have you learned if you are. We've been doing both. Um, so we've been doing, um, started off with TikTok Organic, had an absolute banger on my like third video. That did like 250,000 views and absolutely swamped, um, the site.

How did you do that? Can you break it down? It was at complete, it was a complete accident. I did the voiceover for a TV character when I was like five years old. Um, I just did a video saying like, I did the voiceover for this character and now I run this brand. And um, I think it was massively because the elephant is purple in Winnie the Poo, the character I played.

Yeah. And. And I said, this pink elephant. And he got, I have lots of comments being like, No way did you play that character. And he also got lots of comments being like, What are you going on about the elephant's purple, pink. So I think that obviously helped. I've noticed that's one thing, like if anyone wants a little, um, Kyle Stanger.

Quick tip on TikTok. If you can do something that outrages your, um, audience in a good way, um, grants some debate or discussion. Yeah, we, we had one before and it wasn't even outrage, it was just what size do you recommend for this? And I recommended a size and everyone was commenting in being like, that's the wrong size to recommend.

And then loads of people will comment in back saying, Hang on a minute. It's his brand.

The comments just went crazy and because the comments went crazy, the post went like crazy and it was a silly thing of like, Maybe like 10, 15 people debating on like whether the size I had like recommended on the sizing guide was correct

We've been running, um, on TikTok as well. Um, everything goes Spark Ad though, so, um, and that's kind of new. We brought that in the last two, two months. I kind of think like if we're gonna be here in 10 years time and you're not investing in TikTok now, um, and you plan on being a business in 10 years time, then you are missing out majorly because yeah.

That's now at the moment, the road who's not buying, uh, the, the hoodie or the t-shirt or not buying the supplement or whatever will remember you in 10 years time if you're still around. Um, Yeah. Versus not investing because you are seeing a better, um, increased. But I think, yeah, if you are a business now you're, you're a business owner, you should be having a little bit of something on every.

And TikTok are definitely a good one to have. There's lots of opportunities as well that we are looking into, which is like, Working out how you can work with influencers on TikTok and get some working like organically through those guys.

Um, not even like running paid spot, but like paying, you know what I mean? Almost like a CPM per view that they get on a post related to your product or whatever. Interesting. Yeah. There seems like there's lots of legs. Legs for it. Like people are up for it and interested cuz they haven't really got that.

They haven't got that Instagram influencer thing down yet. I don't think TikTok influencers are still finding their feet on how they monetize their platform. Yeah. The doesn't pay for all the time. So brands are a bit like, even for us, we're a bit like, Whoa, whoa. Some of the numbers you guys are saying and sometimes your views and one tenth of what they should be.

Yeah. And we get shafted paying, I don't know, a thousand pound for a post that only. 10,000 views because some of your videos do then the algorithm, we are relying on the algorithm playing ball on whatever you put out. Right. And it doesn't always, And I notices a branded content, it doesn't like a lot of the time.

Yeah. But if you, it doesn't negotiate something that, like you are, you are almost like paying a CPM to the influence are for it. I That's a good place to start. Yeah. I mean it motivates them then to create content, not just for the sake of it, but actually create content that's so good that it does get the views. So they're like, cuz they know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And influence is gonna know what's actually gonna.

Rather than just what you tell, play them up front and there's no like obligation on view, whatever. It's irrelevant for them how well it does, right? Yeah. That's why like, um, affiliates is so cool.

Has influencer marketing been a big part of what you guys have been doing budget wise?

No. At the beginning it was, um, didn't, we've never spent a penny on an influencer, um, it's only ever been people that followed us, or in the beginning I used to just like email DM message hundreds and hundreds of people and like send them out free stuff.

And then they would like, maybe occasionally post, but it wasn't really like a, it wasn't, wasn't a big strategy, if you know what I mean.

But yeah, it definitely helped. It definitely helped us at the start, like, yeah. , which I mean we would like get a post by a hundred thousand follower person who was on like reality TV and you'd notice a couple hundred people come to the site and they were probably the first things where we started to get really good traction.

A couple like love island influences and stuff like posted about us and like nothing crazy. You get like a few hundred pounds worth of sales on the site and maybe like start to build the following 15, 20. Yeah. But we started to like gain some traction from like influencers like saying about. It's been squeezed so hard now.

I think, like, it's really hard to get like big, We, we've spoken to influencers of size and been like, Hey, they'd be amazing to like, work with them and like probably really help us get to the next level, but like, do the money's crazy.

Yeah. Um, do you have any advice for entrepreneurs? Cause I, I always. You know, becoming an entrepreneur is enough to trigger someone getting anxiety because it's so anxiety inducing and you are someone who, did you suffer yourself from anxiety .

] when I, um, was like 17 or later, maybe like 19, when I left school, I went to, um, the doctors I think instead at the time that my, the, the depression, the level was what they class as, low mood. But my anxiety was medicat. I've always been a big worrier.

I can be really, I can be really stressed out, like not eating well. Like that's one of the biggest things for me when business gets like rocky and stuff.

Find it really hard to eat, find it really hard to like, have good like relationships with my family

So what's your advice for someone who is anxiously minded running a business? How do you kind of balance going after your dreams and not burning out and not looking after your wellbeing?

Okay. So I'll definitely go and have some counseling if you can, if you can get it on like your national health service or if you need to, maybe like, I dunno if you can get it as maybe expense it on the business if you can afford it. Yeah. And, and, um, go and have a weekly, uh, session. Maybe like even a coach.

I've seen some people have coaches and find them quite helpful. Yeah. Just for time to offload. Um, I feel like as a founder you don't really get that a. Like even when I talk to like people at work about issues, they might ask me what's wrong and why I'm stressed, but like it doesn't ever feel like when you are talking to work people, like you're really offloading.

So when you go speak to a counselor and they just listen and you can kind of tell them whatever you need, that's obviously a massive one. And then just like avoiding all those things that are gonna be like negatively affecting like your like mental capacity, like, Regularly checking your phone for like, Whatever's come in regularly checking your phone for emails.

Like, I dunno if you're like outreaching and you're like constantly checking for replies or you are like constantly checking your numbers all the time to make sure everything's okay. Yeah, Like it's a sure way to end up. In a, in a situation where the good, the good days are like too high and the bad days are too, like, too low.

So, um, I would avoid, I know some people that like do you know what I mean running huge stores and they're still like working with their Shopify, Ping, ping, ping all the day, all day. Like, and it's just not, you're gonna end up like, Well, you just get, you just, it's too much, It's too much for your brain all the time to be like receiving all that data.

So, yeah. Yeah, try and, um, essentially try and unplug and take some time on the weekend for yourself and like, yeah, it's kind of like, okay to hit a three month wind and be like smashing out for three month and then being like, Oh, I'm a bit like tired. I need to just take a step back, go on holiday,

I tried to put my laptop off on the weekend, which I do quite successfully now because I turn it off and I put it somewhere else and I like turn the Shopify, I've got the Shopify application turn off all the time now, like, Yeah.

Um, and I normally switch my emails off just because it's just too, like it's just too much. You can't do it all the time. Yeah, it's just too much. As much as you'd like to do it all the time. And I used to do it all the time. Once you start getting to like scaling a business and it, it being more than just like, I mean, you just, yeah.

You just can't, It's just, it's just impossible.

I speak to so many people that say the same thing of like, of being a founder's amazing, but it's also like really lonely and stuff. And I don't feel lonely because I've got an amazing team around me and it's my family. You know, Like my mom was my first hire. My sister-in-law does customer service. Like, so for me it's like a total blessing that we get to. Do it all together and like, do you know, that's like super important to me.

Just take some time, be yourself, you know, you can't do it all. And um, yeah.

Well it's been so amazing chatting with you. Where can other listeners find you? What's the best place to kind of follow you yeah, So if you wanna, um, check out Boys get sad too, you can go to www.boysgetsadtoo.com.

Um, or on, um, Instagram it's, uh, @boysgetsadtoostudio. Uh, TikTok, I think it's just @boysgetsadtoo.

Well I will link all of those in the show notes so people can follow, follow along and follow your journey. And thank you so much. It's been such a cool such a cool discussion really much.

Thank you so much.