Welcome to the Community Call Podcast.
I am Melissa Travers, Director of Community here at BevNET & NOSH, with my co-hosts Jackie Brugliera and Mike Schneider.
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Well, let me tell you something.
I've got a little tin of my digestifs of choice.
These are the Paro candied.
So that's where those went.
So I was in the kitchen making myself a latte, and I saw this tin of the Paro candied fennel seeds, and I thought, oh, I need to have those.
So I did ask if I could snag them.
Sort of.
You were like, hey, I found these Paro candied fennel seeds in the kitchen.
I'm going to squirrel them for the podcast.
I left them there.
I left them there.
I meant to grab them.
These are my absolute, they're like many good and plenty.
So they're candied coated fennel.
And I feel like the first time I ever saw them was if you're at an Indian food restaurant, right at the entrance and exit, they have that little bowl, and it's like coriander seeds, sesame seeds, spices, but then they have these little candied coated fennel seeds in them.
They are so good.
These are way better than Good and Plenty.
I mean, these are what Good and Plenty can never hope to be.
So good.
Thank you for sending these, Umima.
Very much appreciate.
Sorry I left them laying around, but I think it was destiny.
Oh, they're just so delicious.
If I could eat an entire, I mean, can of those, I would.
And those are not for sale, though, right?
Those come free with a purchase?
I'm going to say yes.
Yeah, it looks like a little sample tin.
Because the way that you're both shoveling, it looks like that wouldn't last very long.
Yeah, no, you would need multiple tins.
It says you're gift free with, or your gift with every PARA order.
So well done on this, you my ma.
This is a delicious little treat.
Thank you.
Maybe they should make it a product.
I think they should make it a product.
And I feel like this is something that would fit really well in a specialty store.
You know, I don't know if they'd be able to move it as fast at, say, like a Whole Foods or a Sprouts or whatever, but I feel like that would fit in so well with a specialty store.
And it's something that I've certainly noticed around me popping up more and more these sort of like general stores, gift stores, they have a little bit of everything.
But I think these would do really well.
I mean, whether it's a good product or not, I'm not sure.
But there's one thing is for sure.
It's an extraordinary surprise and delight, you know, like to get this with your you know, to have you get more than you than you bought.
That's always nice.
So something like this where it just you taste it, you're like, for people like me who haven't had tasted fennel seeds before, didn't remember tasting them.
It's like, wow, that is that's amazing.
And on the back, it says they're good for digestion.
It sounds like they're good for bloating.
So you get the full experience.
You can eat a delicious meal.
You could have one of Paro's legume and bean mixes.
And then you could put a bunch of chili crisp on it.
And then you could freshen your breath and aid your digestion with candy coated fennel seeds.
I mean, it's so good to see, you know, founders from like, like Umayma from Pakistan and Eliza from People People, also from Pakistan, you know, bringing these foods into the specialty food community and hopefully into the, you know, beyond in a conventional as well.
Because like you said, I'm sure there's someplace where I'm sure somebody's like rolling their eyes going over there going, Oh, man, Melissa and Mike and Jackie don't know where to find these.
But but we've had them since we were kids.
So like, for us to have this as a new discovery, I think is is part wonderful part sad.
But but overall, I'm just so glad you sent these to us.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
As we were talking about where we had seen these, do you remember going to restaurants when you were a kid and having those bowls of the pastel mints by the cash register?
Sounds like somebody housed those.
Where did those go?
Why do you not get mints at restaurants anymore?
COVID?
Yeah, I think it's definitely a germ thing.
I don't know.
Or if you go to like an old school like steakhouse or like a local mom and pop restaurant, sometimes they'll still have mints.
And then you always just got to take a handful.
Yeah.
And I think there's another thing.
You know how if those get even the slightest bit moist, they get disgusting?
They disintegrate in your pocket.
The worst thing is, so my sister and I would like try to figure out who could get the biggest handful of those mints.
You shove them in your pocket.
You put your clothes in the laundry, and then you get them back with like sediment.
You have mint sediment lining your pocket.
Can we just call it sediment?
Sediment.
Sediment.
You know, maybe we should bring back the restaurant mints and brand them.
That part is still in development.
And one more thing about those mints, the pastel ones were good.
Those were good.
They were free.
They were good.
But my favorites were the ones that were white on the outside and then had a little bit of jelly on the inside.
It was like lemon jelly.
I think there is a licorice one.
Do you remember these?
I never had those.
Where were you eating?
Like, where did you find those?
In Melissa's world.
Believe me, nowhere fancy.
We probably paid what we weighed, but those were my favorites.
Yeah, anyway, well, I would love to see a renaissance of restaurant mints.
I'll see if I can work on that.
But as I mentioned a little bit earlier in the conversation, specialty stores, this is something I've seen popping up, Alison Roman, her first bloom specialty store opened in September in the Catskills.
Looks like a shelf and freezer stable, pantry staple place.
Of course, there's Sua Kitchen.
So Mike, you went to Jingao's Sua Kitchen.
Jackie and I are very envious of you.
I did.
And it was awesome.
Kind of a better for you Super 88.
Super 88s are like local Asian grocery.
And it was so great, and they had prepared foods, and you could get the kids raving about the matcha.
And I don't know, it was just a really well curated little spot that I hope does really well, and that leads to more.
I hope the same thing, and I also hope that I get to visit it maybe before Expo West, because we'll be heading out that way anyway.
Yeah, we got to make a trip together, Melissa, because I really want to go too.
Okay, this is on the map.
But you guys are going to go.
Wait, you're going to go from Anaheim to Hollywood.
Or do we go from the airport to Swa Kitchen to Anaheim?
Oh, wait, no, you're not.
We'll figure it out.
We'll figure the logistics out.
Well, certainly specialty stores are a great way for brands to gather a core audience.
Emerging brands who may have a specialty item that's a little bit higher priced, maybe it's a little bit more unique, seems to me like these kinds of places can attract the consumers that a brand could call its core.
Jackie, how about you on the West Coast?
Are you seeing these pop up the way that I'm seeing them pop up on the East Coast?
Yeah, but I don't think in the traditional way, because, for example, I have a wine shop that's right down the street from me.
And you wouldn't think that's a specialty shop for food brands, but it actually has the best selection of tinned seafood I've ever seen.
So does Marty's Lickers near us.
Marty's Lickers.
Marty's Lickers has tinned seafood now?
They've got all kinds of chocolates, specialty stuff.
There's a really cool juice shop that I've been going to.
It's called Rad Habits, and it's in South Park.
And that's actually where I found Glow Nuts originally, and that's also where I saw Shaman Ramen.
So whoever owns that little juice shop has the best selection of packaged food brands.
And I just think it's an awesome way, especially in that environment where people are looking for functional ingredients.
If you're a functional brand, you can test with a very specific audience before you maybe expand into other retailers.
This might be the most passionate I've ever seen Jackie before.
I mean, I've seen her passionate before, but this is something.
I think we should keep this conversation going as long as we possibly can.
But it's such a good example of why it makes sense for brands, especially when they're launching, because look, they've got Jackie talking like she's never talked before.
There's a couple other stores, too, that have popped up like the San Diego vegan market that's in San Diego.
So it's specifically just vegan products.
So if you're a vegan product and you really want to dive deep into that consumer base and test, you can go there.
Or there's a place that I went to called Cecil's Old Fashioned Meats.
So you would think it's just like a butcher, but they actually have some really great specialty products there, too, to complement their meats.
Jackie, aren't you a vegetarian?
Yeah, I go there for all the other things.
And I'm friends with meat eaters.
So I'll go.
You're open minded.
Yeah, we know about your black wing pencils.
I love...
So I fell in love with pencils maybe a couple of years ago.
And my morning ritual is I sharpen them.
I sharpen it.
Like, I put a nice sharp tip on it.
And then the first thing you write, the tip of it kind of breaks off.
And that's like cutting the ribbon to your day.
But they had my favorite pencils.
Melissa, we found out about this ritual.
Melissa walks in this morning with my very own black wing pencil.
And it is sharp as...
It is so sharp.
And it's the perfect pencil.
It's amazing.
And it also has, like when I was a kid, I used to chew the end of the pencil.
And so my eraser would go flat.
They already did this for you.
It's already flat.
So your eraser is the shape that you want it to be.
Yeah, it probably shouldn't be eating lead.
We were just talking about Fishwife.
Did you guys watch Shark Tank and watch Becca Milstein's strut onto the stage?
What a badass.
What a badass.
She owned that stage.
I only saw some clips, but man, she killed it.
She crushed it.
And if you haven't seen the episode yet, just go back to the part where she renegotiates the deal before your very eyes.
It's just awesome.
Well, Becca Milstein, you are certainly our hero.
Well done on that.
Can't wait to see you at Expo West.
Expo West, here we come.
In this episode of Community Call, I talked to another CPG hero of mine, Dan Oliver of Dan-O's Seasoning.
He talks about his wild social media success on TikTok, and he shares his recipe for the TikTok tactics that helps catapult his brand to success.
TikTok tactics.
TikTok tactics.
I know.
TikTok tactics.
TikTok tactics.
Thanks, guys.
Thank you so much.
So first of all, Dan, thanks so much for joining us on Community Call.
This is such a treat.
Thanks for having me, Melissa.
I'm happy to be here.
I love telling the story.
Excellent.
Well, let's start off by doing just that.
Please tell us the story of Dan-O's seasoning.
How did you start?
When did you start?
Why did you start?
Well, I started back in 2015, and I found myself bartending.
I was doing it for about five years, and I'd had enough of it.
I wanted to change my life.
I wanted to do something different, so I was thinking business ideas.
And here is this recipe that I had that I developed like 15 years ago.
I always loved to cook.
I had this recipe, and this one day, I brought in this chicken that I would make.
And there was one guy there.
It was 5 o'clock on a Monday.
This was January 2015.
I said, hey, you want to try this chicken?
He said, yeah, absolutely.
So I remember he took one bite, and he's like, this is the best chicken I've ever had.
And that right there to me was like, that's it.
There's my idea.
I've been thinking other ideas, and I had inventions and stuff like that.
But it was so simple.
It was like this seasoning product.
I had $8,000 saved up in my bank, and I was looking to do something.
And everything just made sense.
It was my aha moment.
And so right then and there, I remember going home and Googling, how am I going to start a business, and watching YouTube videos, or how you start a seasoning business, and reaching out to other companies.
And nobody really wanted to tell me their secrets, right?
So I just kind of had to figure things out.
And then I packaged the product in the later 2016.
So it took me a while to do it.
I actually started the business.
I like telling people how my first mistake was when I started my business in 2015.
And then at the end of the year, I found out I had to pay taxes on that business that I never sold anything.
So I've heard Mark Cuban say, go out there, start the business, and then figure out how to do the rest.
And so that's what I did, not knowing that.
And so once I got packaged in 2016, I got into a couple small stores, and I figured out what I needed to change about my packaging.
And so I spent another eight months and basically didn't sell any more product.
And then I did a repackaging.
And then come June 1st in 2017 is when I got my new packaging that looks very similar to what you see today.
And that's when I started going to little farmer's markets, flea markets.
When I say farmer's markets, more flea markets.
Flea markets, you got tens of thousands of people.
Farmer's markets are smaller.
And so I would go to these flea markets with tens of thousands of people.
And I remember my first one that I did, I wanted to sell a thousand bucks, right?
And I sold like $3,800.
And that's when I really knew that I was on to something.
I was like, people love this product.
And I had a really good way of explaining the product and building the value in the product, showing that this is all the salt and there's no sugar, and explaining how you can use it.
And I was just really good at being the salesman of my product.
And we'll flash forward here.
So I did that for like three years, 2017 to 2020, and then COVID hits.
And then that's where we start talking about TikTok.
So basically, I didn't know what was next for Dan-O's because I couldn't go out there and make the money the way that I knew how to make the money.
But I was on Amazon, and I had my own website.
I was doing about 100 bucks a day.
And I told myself, well, if I do 200 bucks a day, I can survive this COVID, whatever.
Nobody knew how long that was going to last.
And that's where I saw one of Gary V's posts.
And he was saying, if you're a company right now and a brand, and you got a product, you need to be on TikTok, TikTok, TikTok.
And I was like, that's what I got to do.
When COVID hit, I probably had 20,000 followers total between all platforms.
And now it's over 8 million.
And it's basically, I just started making videos.
So I'm sure you got some questions for me because I got tons of answers for you.
I've got some questions for you indeed.
Starting off with TikTok videos and just content in general, I don't know if this is something that comes naturally to you, but certainly I've heard from so many founders that it's not something they're necessarily comfortable with, and they don't even know how to get started.
How did you get started?
Is this something that you just sort of felt you took to very easily, or did it take some doing to feel comfortable?
Well, I had started making videos probably in 2018.
Nothing was like what you see today.
It was me, one guy, putting my phone up against a Coke bottle, or having some sort of contraption to hang on to it, and figuring out how to edit stuff.
Actually, Facebook was my biggest, at like 12,000 when COVID hit.
But I never really got traction.
Like even if I had a video that got 2,000 views, which would have been a lot, or maybe 10,000, it wouldn't move the needle.
I might, you know, average day to me, like I said, was like 100 bucks in sales.
So, I was trying to do 200 a day, and that's how I knew I needed to survive.
And so, go back to 2015, I wasn't even on social media.
I didn't have accounts.
I only started social media because I knew that's what I needed to do for my business, because I was passionate about this product.
And when I started turning the camera on, I got better and better and better.
And then eventually, I got in the furnace, like some daily, like news shows here locally.
And that was real nerve wracking in the beginning.
But now it's like turning the camera on, I'm good.
So I don't get nervous about it anymore.
Amazing.
Well, you definitely don't seem nervous at all for this.
So how did you realize that you were getting traction on TikTok?
Was there one big viral post or how did that show up?
There was.
Like I said, March 2020, it was March 8th that I was up in Detroit, Michigan.
And that's when I found out I had to basically go with my plan B, which was going to be social media.
And so it wasn't, I believe it was like March 17th.
So it was a little over a week that I was making some videos, maybe got a little discouraged.
I know I was hitting my 200 bucks a day mark, but it wasn't much more than that.
Well, there was one day that I think I remember it was like 12 o'clock at night or something.
And I was like, I want to make these crab cakes.
I was like, but I don't feel like filming it.
I was a little discouraged.
And I was like, you know what?
Let's just do it one handed.
So I'm recording with one hand and cooking with the other and flipping it and making the patties with one hand.
It wasn't even using my little contraption, the thing to hold the phone.
I was just doing it with my hand.
And so that video was a crab cake video that I used spicy Dan-O's in.
And it went, I wouldn't say it was like mega viral, but it was like a million views.
But all the comments were coming in and it was like, where's the old Bay?
What's Dan-O's?
Dan-O's is trash.
This guy doesn't know what he's doing.
That's not how you make a crab cake.
Everybody in Baltimore, Maryland hates you.
And everything was negative, right?
Like 90% of the comments were negative.
But I'm looking at my sales and it was like 700, 800 bucks.
And I was like, okay, you create this controversy, people are trying the product.
So that's what happened.
And I remember going into that post and going into all these negative comments and just commenting myself, you don't know T.
Dan-O, you don't know T.
Dan-O, you don't know T.
Dan-O.
I mean, I must have done it a thousand, two thousand times on that post, it seems like.
And what was cool from that point, my sales never went back to 200.
Like that was like 700 or 800 bucks that day.
The next day was a little better, a little better, a little better.
And it just kept going.
I kept making more content, just putting more fuel on the fire, trying to maybe make another controversial video about the crab cakes or something, keep that kind of going.
But what was cool, and this is what was really cool, is because I'm so passionate about my product and I have all the fun sayings like, Dan good, Dan-O might, you don't know until you Dan-O.
And so all this negativity that I was getting in the beginning, people were getting their products, they were receiving their orders, and they started to become fans and ambassadors.
And then people were commenting for me.
I didn't have to go in there and tell them you don't know until you Dan-O.
Other people were doing it for me and I was like, this is awesome.
Number one, because I don't have enough time to do the commenting anymore because I got 5,000 orders I need to get packaged.
And did you continue trying to find controversial topics in order to keep gaining a wider audience?
How did you build on that theme?
I mean, yes and no, there's certain ways to do it.
Like there was a jalapeno popper video that I made very early on in 2020.
I think it was like August, and it went super viral.
I think it had like 15 million views on TikTok.
And there was a couple of things that I said in there that just created engagement.
It wasn't necessarily a controversy, but if there's things you can do to create engagement, like what I did is I had these jalapenos and this little jalapeno like trade where like there's eight of them sitting, standing up.
And I took one and I said, just take this little thingy and go down and around and pull it out.
And it basically coars your jalapeno and it pulled right out.
And I said, huh, I don't even know where to tell you where to get one.
And that, that little device, that little peppercore had so many comments.
Well, then also if you went to Amazon, like the next week, you saw that that was like one of the number one selling products on Amazon.
And if anybody was buying Dan-O's, you know, it would say the little anybody that's buying this is buying this too.
So everybody was buying Dan-O's was buying this little jalapeno corp.
So it's not, it wasn't always about like creating a controversy, but somehow always in every video, I try to leave some sort of comment or something that's going to engage interaction, because that's how you get more views and make videos go viral is engaging the interaction.
Is there a way to sort of in a nutshell talk about the ways that you are creating that kind of engagement?
So for example, it sounds like you just sort of threw a question out to your audience, like, what is this core thing?
And that gave the audience a way to interact with you and like, and answer the question.
Is there some sort of mentality that you go into these with when you're trying to think about ways to get your audience to interact with you?
Yes.
You know, I'll tell you one, this is something I kind of hang my hat on, is I make so many recipes because we try and have new recipes every day.
Like today, I made four recipes, right?
I didn't start till 9.30 and then had to leave to come here to hop on this podcast with you.
So I only had about four hours and I made four recipes, which is pretty good.
We don't always get that many in in four hours.
There's a lot of multitasking.
But something I like to hang my hat on is I'm always honest about things.
So a lot of recipes that I make, I'm freestyling, basically just like throwing something together.
And most of the time, they turn out pretty awesome because I'm a good cook.
I know how to do things.
I've made enough mistakes in my life that I've figured most of the mistakes out.
But today, I made a $220 prime rib and I sous vide it.
Well, I only sous vide it for four hours.
Well, my camera guy was like, he was like, I'm reading right here on Google.
And he's like, you're supposed to sous vide those for like eight to 12 hours.
And I was like, well, we don't have that time.
I said, we're going to cut into it and just give an honest reaction.
And sure enough, I cut into it.
It was super raw.
I was like, well, sorry.
I was like, don't cook it for four hours.
You know what I mean?
So I'm just, I'm very honest about what I do in the kitchen.
And so I think that creates a lot of loyalty.
Also creates engagement too, because every time I mess something up, people were like, oh, I love how this guy, you know, he'll mess something up and he still shows it.
And it's like, well, we're not wasting three hours of our time to make something and not post it.
So we're just going to post it and tell you the truth.
That makes perfect sense.
And it also seems to align with the kind of content that we've all sort of heard works on TikTok.
It's not necessarily very well curated and planned out and orchestrated.
It seems to be that the more kind of raw and in the moment it is, the more successful it is.
So one thing you learned about your consumers is they have strong feelings about how to make a crab cake.
What else have you learned about your consumers through your TikTok success?
Oh, man, I've learned a lot about pricing.
I'm very sensitive with my product.
I wish everybody would try it.
So I'm very sensitive when I see the comments every day that everybody says Dan-O's is too expensive.
And it's like, well, we're not a large company.
We are a big company now, but we're not a huge manufacturer.
We're not McCormick.
So we can't do certain things that large manufacturers can.
So I guess learning about our consumers, my biggest thing is I want everyone to try and love Dan-O's, whether it's price, whether it's the flavor.
We also know that not everybody is good at cooking.
So somebody may buy Dan-O's, and they may use it and have an opinion of it that they don't like it.
But that irritates me because I'm like, gosh, how do I educate people that they don't really know how to cook right, or maybe they weren't using enough, or this or that or the other?
So really, what do we learn from our customers through TikTok is just by reading the comments, we're always trying to, you know, I always want to satisfy everybody.
I want everybody to love Dan-O's.
I want everybody to be happy with the price, be happy with the product, be happy with the content that we put out.
Is that at all, like, whether it's pricing or the reactions that folks have to different seasoning blends, that kind of thing, does that shape the way that you look at innovation, the way you do look at pricing?
Yeah, we have two recipes right now that are absolutely phenomenal, but they'll probably never be able to go into a store because the way the retail pricing structure works, these seasonings cost significantly more to make.
We're already expensive, but we can't all of a sudden have a product in the same size bottle that's $10.
So, you know, so there's certain products that we're going to come out with eventually that are just going to be like, hey, this is online, only because of the pricing factor.
And, you know, the one thing that we're never going to give up on is that's the quality of our product.
I mean, that's how I started the business.
That's how I explained to everybody.
That's how we're different.
That's how we differentiate ourselves.
We build the value on being a better product.
And so that's something that we just have to stay to our guns and, you know, hope everybody loves us for that.
It makes perfect sense to me.
How many followers and likes approximately do you have at this point on TikTok?
4.3 million, and it's getting ready to switch to 4.4 million, like probably in the next week.
I know we're like 10,000 away.
I think we're averaging like 1,500 to 2,000 a day.
But once you hit a viral video, then often sometimes it jumps.
And are those the metrics that you look at?
Is there, is there other stuff that you think is important?
No.
You know, we hire other influencers as well to promote our product.
And so the one thing that we do not really pay attention to is followers.
What we pay attention to is engagement, because that's what matters.
You know, I mean, I've seen people, I'm trying to think of the one guy off the top of my head.
He's only he doesn't even have a million followers, but he gets millions of views all the time, because he's got awesome content.
But he was kind of late to the TikTok game, like I know he didn't start his account till like last year.
So he kind of missed that opportunity for that explosive growth in the beginning that so many people had.
And you know, that's just here in the next two or three years, they'll probably be another app that will come out, you know, like Instagram was 2012.
And then TikTok was the big explosion in 2020.
Like what's going to be the one in 2026 or 2028?
There's going to be one.
And I guarantee you, me and my team will be one of the first ones on there, because we're always looking for that.
That's great advice.
You just mentioned an influencer that certainly you do well with.
Are you actively partnering with that influencer?
How do you work with this person and then maybe just influencers in general?
I'll be honest with you.
For me, it's best to not interact with any of the influencers, because I've already learned from back in the beginning, where basically I had friendships with them.
And now we're not friends, because we were paying the money, and then all of a sudden, our budgets and whatnot says we can't or we're going to switch to some other influencers.
And then they're hitting me up, and they're like, what's up with that, man?
And I'm like, dude, it's business.
It's not, they take it personal, and then people make videos that I'm not a good person.
And well, they just don't know how to run business sometimes.
You know what I mean?
And it's business decisions that have to be made.
So really, I stay out of the whole influencer thing because I want people to think of me as an awesome person and not as, you know, I'm making these decisions to give them money and take away their money.
And while we're sort of talking about influencer marketing, we've got a great question from Max Nepstad.
He says, great interview.
Have you experimented with UGC user-generated content at all?
I think what he's had user-generated content like as far as not paid, like somebody just using our product, like a bottle of Heinz ketchup or a bottle of Frank's Red Hot, like it's such a common product and such a household name that it just gets thrown into videos for free.
Yep, exactly.
So people doing the videos themselves, that kind of thing.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, two years ago, we didn't get much of that at all.
But now that we have become, you know, we're in 38,000 grocery stores now.
So it's almost like what grocery store are we not in?
So we have started to become, I don't want to say we're there or whatever.
We haven't crossed the finish line.
We're always just starting.
That's our motto.
But we have become this household product, so to speak, that you can find anywhere.
So we do get more people just randomly throwing the Dan-Os in there.
Like it's just nobody's expecting to get paid for it because it's just a common product.
You know what I mean?
It's kind of a cool thing to see.
And are you finding that the user generated content is similar to the stuff that you're putting out there on TikTok?
Or are you finding that folks are mixing it up and using the product?
Like, are they doing recipes or how are you seeing that show up?
I've seen it both ways.
We do a lot of, not just on TikTok, but our Dan-O's Fan-Os is on Facebook.
It's our community.
It's got 260, 270,000 followers now or members.
And that's cool.
I mean, there's Dan-O's Fan-Os, and like videos are going viral all the time in there.
And that's where I'll tell you the coolest thing about that.
Is it okay for me to talk about the Facebook Fan-Os?
Oh, yeah, please.
Absolutely.
Well, I'm going to tell you, this is the coolest thing about building a community on Facebook.
Is the fact that we've had several, I'm talking tons of tons of videos that had hundreds of thousands of views.
But we've had several that got millions of views.
There's one lady, her name is Sandy Combs.
Awesome southern lady.
She starts the video and she's like, Hi, I'm Sandy.
Welcome to my happy kitchen.
And she had this video that got like 4 million views.
So we flew her down to come make a video with me.
But what's so cool about the Fano's is these people are getting tons of views for making a recipe video in the Dan-O's Fano's Community.
Is the way if you go look at that same person, they may have taken that same video and posted it on their personal page and got nothing.
So what we're actually, we're almost like our own little app.
They know if they posted into Dan-O's Fano's Community, they're going to get seen, they're going to get likes, they're going to get comments.
We're giving people an opportunity to be seen in our own community, the Dan-O's Fano's.
You're giving folks an opportunity to get exposure by partnering with you and using your platforms.
Absolutely.
Totally.
Are you focusing mainly on content that centers around you cooking, like the, you know, like doing the sous vide, that kind of thing?
Is that typically the content strategy?
Do you mix it up a little bit?
What's the format usually?
So we'll go back to talking a little bit about TikTok, because we were having this conversation yesterday in one of our big meetings, because we're working with an outside company to start doing a little social media management for us.
So the TikTok, go back a year and a half ago, go back two years ago, and that you could still find some explosive growth on there to like grow your followers and stuff.
But then about a year and a half ago, all that kind of started to go away.
Everybody's views were really hard to get.
And that's where we kind of like said, they took away the...
I used to have access to the Dan-O seasoning to where I could get on there anytime and do like a reaction video, do whatever I wanted to do.
Be like, oh, look at this thing.
This is cool.
I figured y'all would like to see this.
Well, my content, my views were just kind of like always varying up and down is because I wasn't being consistent.
Well, so what we did is we took away access from Dan-O and we let the team management and we made nothing but recipes.
We didn't post anything but recipes on there for like a year.
And I promise you, it made a significant difference because there was people that we were neck and neck.
We were both at 2 million followers or 2.1.
We were like right there next to each other.
And now a year and a half later, we're at 4.3 and we look back at those people and they're still there.
Like they maybe have grown 100 or 200,000 followers as we grew 2 million, like times 10-dom.
And it's because we stuck to a strategy.
We said, all right, we're going to focus on videos and nothing but videos.
So now we're here.
Now we're here today.
And when the meeting we were having yesterday with the social media strategy team is like, all right, let's start doing some other things, maybe some Dan-O's reaction videos, maybe some Dan-O's duet videos, you know, me replying to like some comments and, you know, go in with a video to a reaction to a comment.
If you just keep doing the same thing forever, well, you're not going to grow.
So we grew with that one strategy.
Now it's time we're going to change up our strategy a little bit and see what works and see if we can't catch something.
But what we really want to do is, I guess, just say TikTok.
Everybody just knows Dan-O's for nothing but recipes.
Well, what if they can know us for something else and we can connect with them a different way?
But then they want to use the seasoning because Dan-O's is cool.
Do you think the consistency with the recipes?
Do you know why that worked?
Did it appeal to the discovery component with TikTok?
Is there some reason why doing the same thing over and over again?
Obviously, with different content worked?
I don't know.
I mean, we just stuck to it.
And I remember after the first month of it, I was talking to my partner and I was like, see, you're wrong.
I was like, it's not working.
He was like, just stay with it.
Just keep doing it.
We kept doing it.
And there was one point I was pumping out 15 videos a week, which is a lot.
Shooting four days a week and three or four videos a day, we were pumping them out.
This was back in June, July.
We had already made 400-something videos.
It was a crazy number.
But some of that was re-edited videos, too.
But just to have that many pieces of fresh content in a half a year was kind of crazy.
But that's what we are.
Am I an influencer?
Yes.
But a lot of people don't understand that Dan-O is my full-time job.
I get up and I go make videos all day long, unless I have a meeting or something.
If I don't have a meeting or a podcast like this or somewhere else I have to be, I'm making videos.
I'm pumping out content.
I'm working.
I'm building the brand.
I'm not just sitting around and make one video a week.
It's always constant.
You're a machine.
So when you're making these videos, what does production look like?
Do you always shoot in the same location?
What does the setup look like?
Do you try and keep it simple?
How do you approach that?
Well, when COVID hit back 2020 in March, that's when I basically came home from the show and I had a whole truck full of Dan-Os and all my gear, like my setup that I set my booth up with.
And I remember just sitting there in my living room and I was looking at the kitchen table, and I was like, you got to go.
So I took the kitchen table apart, put it in the basement, and I set up my little booth right there in my kitchen.
And I was like, this is now the Dan-O show.
So that's where it started, right there in my kitchen.
And of course, I've changed it up three or four times, but the set that you see in all my videos, that's my kitchen.
I basically turned it into my little set.
I even knocked the wall out of my kitchen.
And yeah, I got two refrigerators, my whole, where I used to package all my product.
I'll have to make a video of this one day.
But where I used to package all my product is now like a bunch of, it's almost like an industrial kitchen, like pots and pans everywhere and big racks to hold all the utensils and stuff that I have.
And do you do like lighting?
Do you do a whiteboard?
Do you do any of that stuff?
When I'm looking out at the camera, I have a cameraman, we don't just put it on a thing.
I have a guy that's always holding it.
I have a big thing up top, at the top of the ceiling that's got the time.
So whenever I drop something, I got a timer up there.
I'm like, all right, I'm going to let this cook sear for 60 seconds and then flip it.
Well, there's my timer that I'm always watching.
So I have my timer there, then I have a little whiteboard over to the left.
Sometimes I got two or three recipes going at the same time.
If I'm smoking a chicken, well, it takes three hours.
So I put the chicken on, then I'll come inside and I'll make my Parmesan crusted potato recipe.
Well, that might take me an hour to do it from start to finish.
So we'll do that.
So I'll have a little whiteboard that I'll write down.
When did this go on the smoker?
When did this go in the oven?
Because I've had times before where I got through your...
I can have something on the smoker, I can have something in a food dehydrator, something in the Instant Pot, something in the sous vide machine all at the same time, like it's happened before.
You're making me hungry.
You got to multitask and manage all that stuff.
I bet everybody eats pretty well at these shoots.
Yes.
There's usually three of us.
My cameraman, our editor, and our other guy that does a lot of short stories for social media.
He'll pop in and he'll be like, you want to do a short story of this?
And I'll be like, yeah.
And so we'll pop in.
If you see me going live, that's usually him being like, hey, let's go live with this, and we'll go live.
So we try and be very productive with everything that we do.
You know, get extra tidbits out of each little recipe.
That's a great point to be able to film content from multiple platforms in the same go, I'm sure is a great way to be efficient.
You mentioned you have a timer.
Have you noticed any sort of like, I don't know, algorithm tips, any things in terms of the length of the video?
That's fluctuated so many times.
You know, TikTok is the one that I follow that I watch the most.
You know, sometimes I say, like, I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for TikTok.
Well, I would have figured it out somehow, because there was nothing stopping me, right?
TikTok was just my opportunity that I was primed for.
I had everything ready to go, my website, my Amazon, I was making videos.
It was just like the opportunity was there.
So I took advantage of it.
So back in the beginning, when TikTok blew up, it was only 60 second videos.
And then they allowed three minute videos.
So it was kind of like, whatever they're pushing, because they went from 60 seconds to three minutes to now you can do 10 minutes.
Whenever they would introduce, like, hey, now you can do three minutes, like that first couple weeks of doing what they were now allowing, you would go viral if you had some good content.
It was going viral.
Same thing with the 10 minutes.
I remember as soon as 10 minutes was available, I was like, let's do it.
And we put a video that was out there, it was like nine minutes, and it went super viral.
And it's like, if that's what they're introducing, then that's what they want you to do.
They're not introducing something without a goal, right?
So they have a goal for people to use this.
So if their top creators are using it, you're probably going to get some extra love there, you would think.
And so anytime, I would say anytime any of those TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, if they say, hey, this is now available to our creators, try it, because it's probably going to work, because they have a goal there for it to make it work.
Any other little tips or tricks that you found, like a certain time of day to post tagging people?
Is there anything else that you found that particularly works in terms of engagement?
Let's go back to 2020 again, when TikTok was fresh and I was blowing up on there, I could post something at four o'clock in the morning and it could go viral, and it could move the needle on my sales and whatnot.
That's gone away.
I've tried it.
I even said, and I think it was like six months ago, we had a really cool video, and I was like, post that thing at midnight and let's just see what it does.
And it didn't do anything.
And something that you want to be careful of if you're a creator, the original content, the first time you post it, where do you want it to go?
That's your most important post.
So I'm a big fan of taking it to TikTok first.
If it's not TikTok, we go to Facebook.
Instagram, I'm like, never again.
We tried it for two weeks.
We paid every post to Instagram first before putting our original content there, before Facebook, before TikTok.
And it was like, we're just wasting opportunity with our original content.
So I'm a big fan of your original content.
Take it to your best platform.
So we like to take it to TikTok or Facebook.
Fascinating.
How are you turning all of the success that you're having on social media into sales?
Are you using the TikTok shop?
Are you having folks go right to your website?
How are you turning all of this into growing sales?
Right now, we're focusing a lot on our website.
I've looked at the last three days compared to last year's same three days, and we're up like 250% compared to last year, just on our website.
Now, that's because we've been putting a lot of work into it.
We're building out SEO, and we're getting ready to launch a brand new website with a whole recipe book in it, to where I think you can have your own customized recipe book within our website.
And it's just going to be really cool for our users on there.
We've probably invested $300,000, $400,000 into this new website with our developers developing this.
We want people to fall in love with me and what I do, because I do love what I do.
It's not fake, and it's real.
And so, we want people to connect and just fall in love with the seasoning, I guess, because you don't know until you're Dan-O, and once you try it and you start putting it on things, you soon will realize, you're like, wow, I see what he's talking about.
I read these comments all the time.
People were like, I was so skeptical and thought you were just a good salesman, and then I actually tried the product, and now I use it every day.
And it's like, how do we convey that to the whole world?
That's very likely what will happen.
Certainly, nothing you're doing comes across as fake at all, and it's no surprise that the public is falling in love with you and the seasonings.
I asked you a little bit earlier if this is something that you naturally felt comfortable with, and it sounds like it was sort of an easy transition.
Do you have any last words of advice for founders who are, they know they need to start doing this, but it's just a little tricky to take that leap and start, you know, putting stuff out there.
Any inspiring words of advice at all?
Absolutely, because I talk to people about this all the time, because a lot of people don't want to be on camera.
Guess what?
You don't.
I see tons of content out there that people make that you never even see the face of somebody.
Like, look at Tasty Foods.
They're one of the biggest content creators there are, and you never see a face.
It's like, okay, well, if you don't want to be on the camera and people to actually see you, figure out another way to do it.
You know, when I tell people what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur, because I barely graduated high school, I went, I tried to go to college, it wasn't for me, learn how to be resourceful.
Learn how to figure things out.
That's the most important thing you can do as any entrepreneur or founder.
Be resourceful, figure things out, because you don't want to be the guy on the camera or the girl on the camera.
Figure out a guy or a girl that wants to be on the camera or figure out a different way to do it.
But the number one way to grow your business right now is social media.
I joke around sometimes and say, like, man, I wish I would have known about social media before, you know, in 2017, then I wouldn't have had to work all those hard years.
But it was those years of hard work that makes you appreciate the things that we have now.
I wouldn't be where we're at if it wasn't for those years of hard work.
Dan Oliver, founder of Dan-O Seasoning, thank you so much for joining us today.
I feel like you gave us so much great information and certainly some inspiration as well for everybody out there.
That concludes another episode of the Community Call Podcast.
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