You’ll hear all about Battlbox’s golden goose content strategy and how a single YouTube creator (who started as a super fan) has become one of the most important Battlboxers on the team, generating 500K YouTube Subscribers and almost 200 million video views…
Transcript from video:
Intro
0:00 all these Facebook ads are ready to go it's like Friday five six o'clock we all
0:06 get a notification on our phone that an ad has been declined and another one
0:11 another one another one we jump in and look at it and our Facebook ad account has been canceled done dad you are
0:20 booted you are not allowed to advertise ever again you're gone at the time we
0:25 have battle box forum which was a Reddit style bulletin board so we Post in there hey anybody have any ideas the craziest
0:33 thing one of our customers Works a couple Cube rows over from the manual
0:40 team that did it he's like I'll just go over there and ask him or Okay and like
0:46 within a couple hours we were back
Welcome
0:55 hello and welcome to d2c podcast I'm Eric dick today we're running into the wild with Battlbox's John Roman John
1:02 joined Battlbox a monthly subscription for hand-picked outdoor gear shortly after they instruct product Market fit
1:09 gold and has helped propel them to high eight-figure revenues with an absolutely
1:14 scorching subscription LTV that approaches a thousand dollars per customer you'll hear all about
1:20 Battlbox's Golden Goose content strategy and how a single YouTube Creator who started as a super fan has
1:26 gone on to become one of the most important battle boxers on the team generating 500 000 YouTube subscribers
1:33 and almost 200 million video views to date and oh yeah also ultimately led to
1:38 a lucrative Netflix production that reads basically like a battle Box commercial you'll learn what it's like
1:45 to hitch a ride on the Netflix rocket and what their most important metric is completion rate and how it will
1:52 determine your Netflix fate I hope you enjoy it on with the show do you ever listen to the d2c podcast
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2:47 your ticket while they're still available John welcome to the d2c podcast start by
BattlBox Story
2:53 telling me the story of Battlbox and how you came to be involved with it sure Eric super excited to be here uh wow so
2:59 the battle box story so it starts in December 2014.
3:06 so I have a Christmas party every year um you know as you get older you have all these different circle of friends
3:12 that you've accumulated through the years and the purpose of the Christmas party is all of these friends through
3:19 the years everybody's invited and it's a great time uh one of from the the friend Circle
3:26 when when I was in college um a lot of people a lot of that group came one of the guys came his name was Daniel
3:34 um my previous business partner and just chatting with him on the back porch
3:40 him and another gentleman had a they were entrepreneurs they had a uh
3:47 design screen print business that so they had two locations both outside
3:52 universities um so the school fraternity authorities social groups intramural sports teams
4:00 would go to them for shirts logos caps hoodies Etc
4:06 um December is like historically dead during that time right everybody's left
4:11 left school uh so we were just chatting and he's an
4:16 idea guy chatting through some ideas um things he wanted to do he didn't want
4:22 to do what he was currently doing forever and it was a good conversation
4:28 um ended it and I I was doing this a lot of the time I still do this is when I have
4:33 a conversation like that I I typically give a couple of pieces of homework I don't call it homework it doesn't feel
4:39 like it's homework but I'm really putting the ball in someone else's Court to see how they react and how they
4:45 behave and it's you know it's like the it's almost like a first date right you want to really fill that person out gave
4:52 him some homework um didn't ever hear back from him on that
4:59 um maybe that was a a sign of later times but moving forward um we had that
5:06 conversation was a great conversation two months later I'm talking to another individual his business partner
5:13 in the in the current business um and catching up with him and hey
5:19 what's what's going on what's new and he's like uh Daniel came up with this idea uh called Battlbox it's gonna be a
5:26 monthly subscription of outdoor gear camping survivalists outdoorsmen
5:34 Adventure Etc and I said wow that sounds really cool
5:40 um for a multitude of reasons so my background and job of the time is uh
5:46 building B2B sales teams so I know subscription very well and I know how great it is for
5:53 forecasting and valuations and check so many boxes so I'm
5:58 instantly intrigued and I had had that conversation with Daniel two months prior and him saying hey I would like to
6:06 do something with you so I as soon as I get done with that conversation I put the phone call Daniel
6:11 said hey I want to be a part of this um we in the next week and a half two
6:17 weeks came to an agreement um where I was buying uh some Equity a
6:22 piece of the company and in turn um offering some you know limited
6:29 advisement role maybe five hours a month nothing of of a you know large scale and
6:36 I was completely um and it was in this one pager that we signed when the deal was done where I
6:42 was very transparent that I wanted to kind of road map what this was and what
6:48 our go-to Market strategy was going to be so that we could try to replicate it and stamp it out with other brands
6:55 um and in turn he would be receiving equity in those uh the same Equity that he was selling
7:00 me in in Battlbox and that's how we agreed to um a lower valuation was it pre-sales at
Presales
7:07 that point or had there been some sales there have been some sales um it was uh it was you know when the
7:13 when the ink dried from that it was maybe two and a half weeks past launch and there was there was already a
7:20 considerable amount of sales there was already I think 40 something thousand dollars in sales which is for for a
7:26 startup that isn't funded that's just making some Facebook ads that's that's actually pretty good
7:33 um so yeah so we were Off to the Races and we we saw some instant success that
7:40 first month we had about 200 um subscribers and uh which is a great
7:46 start uh but month two uh that March we had a thousand new and then that April
7:54 we had 1200 new and it just kept kept kept going so my five hours of of you know some
8:03 time of month quickly turned into you know 10 and then 15 then 20 then you
8:09 know then it was 10 a week and it just kept kept building and we continued to
8:14 see growth uh so Daniel and Patrick
8:20 um who were two of the four of us they had from the jump they were basically in it full time
8:25 um they instantly identified hey this in you know in a in a month is already
8:30 potentially producing more than we can make in the other business so they still had that business for a moment but the
8:37 focus was on Battlbox um we had another partner who um who who
8:42 was involved as well and uh so we kept going in 2016 early 2016 April in January I
8:51 had made a switch to a startup company um I left a a larger company for this
8:58 startup and uh it wasn't going as planned and uh it was
9:04 a few months in and I was looking at what our projected run rate was going to
9:10 be for Battlbox and it was going to be eight figures and if we if we kept the course and the growth that we were
9:15 seeing and no reason to believe we wouldn't um and then I was looking at the size of the company I just joined and
9:23 it was gonna be about about the same size by the end of the year and I have
9:29 some major equity in one and I have um promise of equity if there's an exit
9:35 in the other but if I left it's zero so I said Okay
9:40 um let's let's do this so spoke to them and spoke to the wife and in April 2016
9:47 so 14 months after launched I jumped in full time um
Growth
9:52 and the growth that you were seeing then that was back in the Heyday of meta ads was this mostly driven through through
9:58 Facebook ads yeah um naivety to you know we none of us had played in this world prior we all had
10:04 some some experience that that played to the success but we had none of us had
10:11 Direct experience in this and uh yeah we said we didn't know any better we were we were 99 of our traffic was
10:19 um Facebook ads and we were Kirk we were acquiring customers for less than five dollars each
10:26 um and and these are customers with an average order value over a hundred
10:32 um an LTV or what's your like the retention period is of months yeah yeah
10:37 typically around seven months um so we didn't know that then but we still
10:43 knew I mean five dollars is good but if if I knew what I knew now I would have maxed out every credit card
10:50 I would have borrowed from anybody that would give me a dollar and put it all in acquiring customers back then we didn't
10:56 know how good we had it um what were you seeing like what what like so one of the things I love about
Survival
11:02 Battlbox versus any other subscription program I've seen is it's literally it's like you you canceling your subscription
11:08 could be a matter of survival you know because it's not just like you're not getting just more smoothies or more of
11:13 one thing you're literally getting these essential pieces that you need in your kit if you're gonna be an outdoors
11:19 person right uh and so there's probably a real completist a completionist aspect to people who subscribe to this versus
11:25 maybe others but so with the same that's very true
11:31 but at the same time you look at that need want scale and unfortunately we're not as
11:39 you know over on the Need side is you know like some kind of food or or replenishable
11:46 um yeah men can convince themselves of that a lot of things in the outdoors world are necessary though
11:52 and it boils down to the number one reason of cancels is
11:57 um I'm having space space issues I have I have I have enough gear and we've also
12:03 done some testing and that also is what's checked when a significant other says enough's enough
Why BattlBox
12:10 uh this is why you need a battle box I was saying in the pre-interview you got to get the box that people can put all
12:15 their stuff in and then the wives will complain less it's a win-win so we we should after this we we need to talk
12:21 about that so I sent it to the team and we've had some conversations with them so it's interesting we did a giveaway for them uh a few months oh with Rooks
12:29 oh cool um so I I've had the emails forwarded to me to try to figure out where it was left off might pick your
12:35 brain a little bit on it fantastic oh nice so yeah so we continued to go go go
12:43 um all Facebook Facebook Facebook Facebook Facebook and um the only thing we're doing besides
12:49 Facebook part of our go-to Market strategy we were sending these boxes out to YouTubers
12:55 um for for reviews for content and uh keep going everything's great
13:01 loving it and uh we're going into Labor Day weekend um we have the most aggressive sale
13:07 we've ever had we're gonna do 20 off your first box um
13:13 I love that that's aggressive uh but at the time that was we weren't we we still
13:19 to this day we don't like to Discount um we we feel we don't need to because of the quality products but
13:26 all these Facebook ads are ready to go it's like Friday five six o'clock and we
13:33 all get a notification on our phone that an ad is has been declined or not
13:39 approved but over as we're already running and another one another one other one and we we jump in and look at
13:45 it and our Facebook ad account has been um canceled done dead you are booted you
13:54 are not allowed to advertise ever again you're gone um even back more so now but even back
14:01 then getting someone on the phone at Facebook um it's a little bit of a challenge to say the least yeah live chat I only I've
BattlBox Forum
14:07 always had success getting someone on live chat but it doesn't it does nothing get anywhere right so it's such a such a
14:13 challenge um we can't get anybody we're calling everybody we know emailing everybody we
14:19 know trying to find some kind of van at the time we have battlboxforum.com which was a Reddit
14:26 style bulletin board for for our customer base it's been since we migrated over it as a Facebook group now
14:33 um but at the time so we Post in there hey anybody have any ideas and the
14:38 craziest thing one of our customers is a Facebook employee and works
14:44 um a couple uh rooms or cube Rose over from the manual
14:50 team that that did it and uh we don't we don't have this
14:56 conversation find this out until like I think Monday or Tuesday so we've already lost out on on this big big sale we were
15:03 gonna have but he's like I'll just go over there and ask him Mark Okay and
15:08 like within a couple hours we were back up and running oh you never hear stories like that you
Facebook
15:13 never hear stories first of all I've never heard of someone's customer base being on the Facebook side of things but them them actually having that ability
15:19 to go literally through the wall or whatever of that appeal process to a fellow co-worker and said hey this brand
15:27 you've called Battlbox it says that you you killed them like they're not doing any of their following guidelines
15:34 um what was the reason what did they think was wrong so we not in advertisements not in
15:42 um not in the ads on the landing pages but the top tier
15:48 um Pro Plus includes includes a knife knives or weapons
15:53 um Facebook is an interesting thing because we're not and we weren't selling that we were selling the the non knife
16:01 products um but it's Facebook's an interesting world right Walmart and some large huge
16:07 Brands sell guns but they're not selling them in the ads it's in their catalog but that's not
16:15 what they're selling so it's allowed um but it's allowed because they're also spending you know probably seven figures
16:22 a month so it's a weird yeah where you're not promoting the
16:27 knife but it is in your catalog right so it's it's the same thing but we're also not spending a million dollars a month
16:34 um and you know all of a sudden certain restrictions and doors and problems I'm
16:40 sure are alleviated when you know you're giving them that much money I want to get into Facebook now versus
How BattlBox works right out of the gate
16:48 then but I'm just also curious just from someone who had a subscription program kind of work right out of the gate what
16:54 do you you know what do you attribute that to mainly what factors to to having it work right out of the gate do you
17:00 think you guys nailed sure so so with certainty it was it was a product Market fit
17:06 um so so when Daniel came up with the idea it was because he saw his uh at the
17:13 time girlfriend opening up a birch box and like he saw this excitement and experience she was going through and he
17:20 went online to find one because he wanted that experience and didn't see one and then saw the opportunity so with
17:26 certainly product Market fit um the other piece is is is content and
17:32 Community we hadn't fully figured out the content piece at at the initial
17:39 launch but we had figured out content indirectly via
17:45 YouTube and random people talking about it and it wasn't our content but it was
17:51 still a lot of content we were sending from month one 30 boxes out at least to
17:56 YouTubers that would do reviews the community piece we had from the jump so
18:01 we launched with this battle box forum where we were jumping in every day we were having conversations with our
18:08 customers we were truly building this community of of like-minded people that
18:15 that enjoy the great outdoors and that is
18:20 single-handedly it's the content in the community we got better with both but we
18:25 had the community very similar to what it is now off the Jump
How did your community change from Facebook to BattlBox
18:31 how did your your community change from into Facebook go because I I've heard people go different ways from from a
18:37 private Forum into Facebook and vice versa did you maintain the quality of the conversation moving to Facebook from
18:42 your private Forum yeah so that you're right you hear it on both
18:49 sides I spoke to a buddy literally last week that was that had just moved off
18:55 from from Facebook to an to another platform that's more like what we just described
19:00 um I I enjoy it I like it it's it's easier to moderate it's easier to make sure you're not missing things
19:06 notifications um there was a there is an app that was like a third-party app that we could use
19:14 for a bulletin board called I think tap something just it just wasn't the same
19:19 um the the features of of Facebook are good
19:25 um since we have such a focus on on video content now and and going live
19:31 Facebook offers that um I I like it I uh it it's
19:39 the the process of because you can only be in the group if you're um an active
19:45 subscriber so the the rules in place and the way we're managing it now is a lot easier to
19:52 implement and execute with Facebook um makes sense I'm a fan
19:57 nice how I'm curious too just on the success of the subscription program how much has gone into fine-tuning the order
How do you finetune the order of the products
20:05 of the products and the the products that people get because I imagine you you'll have a really people another reason for people bailing from the
20:11 subscription program would be like oh I already have the one that I'd get this month or I don't really I'm not interested in that one as much do you do
20:16 a lot of testing with the actual products you're offering yeah so so we do from from what we did in that
20:24 initial month or two to to now it's we built such such a process
20:30 um so like currently what the process is is so we have several funnels of product
20:37 potential product ideas um one funnel is our website we have on
20:43 our website you you want to be in battle box and it's a vendor submission form it
20:49 it kicks them what where they need to send samples to and then that enters the funnel at that point once the samples
20:55 arrive we have in the members only group uh form that any members only
21:03 um any customer can fill out and give suggestions and we'll have contests I think we had a contest last month we
21:10 were giving like 500 worth of free gear that we just wanted to give away to whoever submitted uh the most quantity
21:17 but it had to be quality submissions and product ideas so that's another funnel
21:22 we have an internal team um so so all employees have a form where if they come across a good idea
21:29 they can fill out the form and then when then we reach out and ask for samples and then we have a team that's job is
21:36 sourcing so we get all these all of these funnels we get product samples
21:41 samples go to four different places um at that point we have
21:47 um a call so we have an internal team um of of nine individuals varying ages
21:55 um demographics to make sure we're touching the entire base of what a typical battle Box customer is and we go
22:02 through an item and we we talked to the benefits of it and then we vote
22:08 um so nine people if more than one person says no it's out
22:14 interesting um and and just because you I see in the battle box you've got to Define number of products looks like 16 or 20 or so
How many products do you have
22:21 but I imagine you just continue finding new products all the time for people that stay on yeah but it's tough so we
22:28 um so it's so it's not so it's never a set amount of items with with certainty
22:34 there's there's a range of what we try to do um but we've we've done we're total
22:41 um in the biggest tier there were only uh six items because they were high
22:46 priced items high quality items for each it's it's not easy
22:52 um and so you know this this month we're sending out a um in the I believe it's
23:00 the pro tier so that the second from the top we're sending out a Zippo ax
23:06 as as the item um we actually sent that out uh
23:11 previously and it's one of the you know we don't do that very often but we send
23:16 it out five years ago so the the argument is you know we still
23:24 we still have a couple hundred customers that got it that they now have two but
23:30 it's been five years it's about the shelf life if you're using an ax you probably need a new one
23:36 yeah like if you're actually using it and if you've been around that long you're using the gear
23:43 um so at that point like that was one of the ones we had to talk through and make sure that that was that that made sense
23:49 to do but we came to the conclusion it's something we can repeat every five years
23:55 right now you're probably looking at conversions in Facebook or Google ads thinking why doesn't the data line up
24:01 with my actual sales why doesn't more spending bring more customers what ads are even working with North beams first
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24:27 listeners I wanted to chat about growth Now versus how it was in those heydays of 2015
Growth Strategy
24:33 2016. what does your what does your growth look like and what does your your growth strategy look like I imagine it's
24:39 a bit more diversificated than hitting the scale button on on Facebook yeah so our uh are what we got back on after we
24:48 got lucky and had a Facebook customer that helped us um at that point we said okay having all
24:55 these eggs in one basket is not smart so we instantly came up with a diversification idea oh you can
25:02 advertise on Google too probably should have known that um so we started testing other other
25:09 platforms seeing what works traditionally we don't want any single
25:14 lead source to be above uh a sixth of our business 16 you know 16.6 repeating
25:21 percent and it's not to say like right now Facebook we have some campaigns going
25:27 that are performing really really well so it's a little bit lopsided we just
25:32 don't want it to be in for any serious long period of time we when when that
25:39 starts to occur we have to find lead sources or figure out the ones we have and make them perform better
25:45 so that's that's a big thing uh A lot's changed too in in the sense that we're
25:52 every year for the last couple of years we've we've doubled down on content as being a big piece of the business but
25:58 back to the growth trajectory so we were going really really well we started to stall out in in 2018 and 2019. we just
26:08 were struggling to grow um we couldn't get as many customers as
26:14 we were just naturally treating each month so we were really just kind of um
26:19 you know not drowning but not Treading Water yeah just Treading Water
26:25 um and uh then 2020 game which um spoiler alert uh survival gear delivered
26:33 directly here to your door in a pandemic is is a recipe for success and so was
26:40 all the e-commerce in general right so so we saw this you know giant uplift
26:46 um start in the beginning of of 2020 and in March and it continued and um
26:52 at the same point we were so focused on content we had our big our big first
26:57 home run with content and I was a Netflix TV show so it was a Netflix original series called Southern survival
27:04 it's Global um any any country can search for
27:10 Battlbox or Southern survival and it comes up and that aired in July July 4th
27:15 weekend 2020. and that that was we thought we were seeing growth with the
27:21 pandemic this was just um unfathomable growth grow growth you
27:26 know as an example leading up to it we had elevated traffic on our site because
27:31 of the pandemic we're getting about 125 to 150 000 unique visitors in a month in
27:38 July when when that show premiered we had 1.2 million unique visitors which
27:44 was truth be told they did not perform and behave like a regular customer that we
27:51 were targeting precisely with ads they you know bought a lot of one-time products they didn't converted the same
27:57 percentage about half uh of the usual conversion rate but you do some quick
28:02 math it still was a major uplift and just for them to have to go to a different device and type in type
Brand Awareness
28:09 something in right it's not a direct action like on any other ads you think of that many people took the action so
28:15 how many people just became more aware of your brand and you know like it's crazy
28:21 um yeah so so that was a super Game Changer and and um it's funny what's become a boat how
28:28 did it how did that like how did that manifest so so we had um
28:33 so when we started off so so Brandon Curran um if you if anybody listen to this has seen a battle Box video he is
28:40 the bearded guy that is the face of Battlbox he's in 90 you know five percent of our content so the story of
28:48 Brandon's pretty cool so Brandon was a paying customer he was paying 100 at the
28:54 time 149.99 a month for the top tier and we had uh you know we're talking
29:01 about 2015 so and we didn't know not knowing any better we had a pre-purchase
29:06 survey um you know don't buy yet don't make the purchase first tell us how you how how
29:12 you came to find us um great for conversion rate I'm sure so we had this
29:18 there and it was The Usual Suspects um Facebook Instagram Google Etc but we did have the little other bad new kid
29:25 and type something in and um we started to get like
29:30 15 20 percent of all of our peop of our surveyors were
29:37 saying other and typing in current 1776 so we like we go to our spreadsheet of
29:45 people were sending comp boxes to and he's not on there we do a quick YouTube search and we come across this guy and
29:52 we're like where's he getting this box from do a little bit of Recon find out his name is Brandon Curran we look him
29:58 up in our customer database and he's a paying customer so we're like okay well we need
30:04 to keep watching this and the next month it's the same thing but it's like a higher percentage it's like 25 percent
30:09 are saying this so we're like Okay um we're gonna reach out to him hey Brandon
30:15 dude we love what you're doing um we're gonna comp your box from here
30:20 on out box is free don't worry about it but in turn please keep doing these reviews
30:26 um and of course he's he's uh he has passion he loves this product that's why he was buying it 150 is a lot of money
30:33 and um continues to do it few months go by and
30:38 like it's continuing we're continuing to grow and he's continuing to pull his Lion's Share
30:44 and uh we reach out to him and we're like hey man um we want to give you 500 a month but
30:49 like you have to keep doing these videos every month like we can't miss but we'll give you 500 and a free box
30:54 he's like yeah so so brand of the time is a uh career professional HVAC guy
31:01 he's been doing it for 20 something years that's his career and um he had been on um some some hunting
31:08 shows um before but his his passion his hobby was doing these reviews and doing other
31:15 content in his YouTube channel he was trying to grow it was it was a side hustle and um
31:21 after the 500 conversation that went on for a few months the next conversation was this is kind of crazy but do you
31:28 want to you know um talk to your wife and your three kids and um move from North Carolina Down to
31:35 Georgia and go full-time BattleBots um and we went back and forth and
31:42 he got to do what he loves every day which is which is pretty cool and how he
31:48 started just as a paying customer is is phenomenal too so he came full time as
31:53 soon as he came full-time content content content um and that that was that was the reason
32:00 so they reached out to us and said um you know we're watching your videos
32:05 and this is shortly after we were just he was full-time and we were just pushing out as much content as possible
32:11 and they said we have some money uh from History Channel to shoot a Sizzle reel
32:18 which is the thing that comes before a pilot where you try to get the money then for the pilot to then get money for
32:25 a season and we wanted this is the idea this is the concept they came down for
32:30 four or five days shot it um History Channel then sat on it for
32:36 about six months came back and told us no just not a fit we don't want to do it
32:42 um so we're super super sad and like you know demoralized that okay maybe
32:48 this isn't gonna happen and uh High Noon entertainment through the studio that um that produced it for us they uh right we
32:55 have a we have a meeting with Discovery next week ooh sounds like this could be a show on Discovery Discovery sits on it
33:02 for like six or seven months and uh finally come back and they say no okay I guess this is just not happening
33:09 and um in in early 2019 in January 2019
33:16 um we had just in the previous month heard the know about discovery they're like we have a meeting we have
33:22 two meetings set for January one is with Walmart's streaming service which
33:28 I don't even know what it's called and I don't think anybody does I don't remember but it doesn't sound like it was a hit
33:34 um and Netflix and uh we're excited about both they have the meeting with
33:40 Netflix and they basically come back and they're like Netflix Netflix wants to do it
33:46 um up until then they were shopping this Sizzle reel to get a money
33:52 to shoot a pilot Netflix doesn't play that game Netflix is like yeah we'll do a season
33:57 and we want the right of first refusal on the next seven
34:03 um so that that's how they made us first of all I didn't know Walmart had a streaming
Working with Walmart
34:09 service Voodoo okay interesting I don't know if it still
34:14 exists at just the way Netflix came into the industry like a bull in a china shop right and that's a good example of how
34:20 they do it they sort of skip on the formalities a little bit um what was it like like what what are
34:25 you like working with Walmart like get what is it like working with a behemoth like Walmart like did you were you able
34:31 to get good data on how many streams you were getting so on with Netflix with Netflix story yeah yeah so um Netflix
34:38 working with them is not enjoyable so they viewed us as Talent
34:46 um and they didn't care that we were a business they didn't care that we needed to forecast when how many how much
34:53 product do we need like what is this going to be shown to like not fun to work with in fact
34:59 um so I wasn't on the TV show four of us were um they would then they would send an
35:05 email Netflix would to those four and uh and Daniel was one of them and say hey
35:11 we're gonna have a call Friday at 12 o'clock Daniel would reply back and like loot me in Loop
35:18 um Richard our our CFO and Patrick or CEO and be like hey I'm I'm bringing in
35:23 I'm copying in leadership so that they can attend too and Netflix would reply back and remove us and say no it's not
35:32 how this works like Daniel would have to like have us like secretly like on like
35:37 speakerphone listening to the phone calls because they wouldn't talk to us um and they and they viewed us just as
35:43 Talent it's just they don't they don't care that we're a business and how does
How does the Rocket Ship work
35:49 it work with the obviously when it launches you get the Lion's Share but I imagine you're still getting trailing
35:56 attention and trailing traffic from it yeah so it's it's still there right it's a Netflix original so it's theirs
36:03 um so it's not going anywhere um knock on wood but it's still uh it's
36:09 funny the the rule of no um lead Source being greater than 16
36:15 um or a sixth it is still every month about I'd say on a good month 16 on a
36:21 bad month 12 between 12 and 16 of our new customers still
36:27 um come come from that did they take the second the second Group of Seven episodes
Seven Seasons
36:34 Seven Seasons um Seven Seasons oh seven seasons oh geez yeah like they wanted to
36:39 if it was gonna be a success they were gonna have it for its entire lifespan
36:44 um no so they they never officially told us no um so Netflix cares about this metric
36:52 called completion rate which um they view as it's defined as
36:58 um a user and this is a metric for their original their content um
37:03 completion is watching 90 or greater of of a of a first season or a season of a
37:12 Netflix series um we have eight episodes so that would
37:17 mean you would have to you know obviously go somewhat into the eighth episode which you're not gonna
37:22 you're not gonna watch the first step and start the eighth and not finish it right so it's basically watching the
37:28 entire thing so what they view is Success um is
37:34 greater than 25 percent completion so if 10 million
37:40 people watch our show 2.5 million need to watch the
37:45 entire thing if you're above 25 percent green light second season rinse repeat
37:53 keep doing it right if you're below 20 it's
37:58 um it's not a fit they they missed the mark somehow right if they shouldn't have produced the content
38:04 um if you're between 20 and 25 it you're kind of like in a a Netflix
38:10 Purgatory if you will um they haven't told us no they haven't told us yes this like keeping us around
38:18 maybe you know over there um not even acknowledging us but if they
38:24 need some outdoor content you know they're going to look at the people that are in that Purgatory that check that
38:29 box and it's a lot easier to grab from there than Source new um so we're in that weird stat status
38:37 for it I don't think we'll have I think there's a strong possibility we'll have another series
38:43 um I don't think it'll be with Netflix interesting um okay so if I were to give you fifty
Building the Community
38:50 thousand dollars to be used in your marketing for the growth of Battlbox and you have to use it in q1 of 2023 how
38:57 would you uh how would you deploy those funds building the community
39:02 so very non-non-traditional right I would do some sort of
39:08 um Community activity probably giving some of it away in prizes
39:13 um maybe taking people to a location a select amount of customers
39:18 um but all of this would be great for the community it would also make great content
Outdoor Festival
39:24 yeah an outdoor Festival like a big Camp you just go rent out like a huge like Yosemite or something yeah with some
39:30 cool activities and some cool ways to you know connect and bond and and and
39:36 build build camaraderie with each other and half of it on the event half of it
BattlBox in 2023
39:42 on the content about the event that you can put through it all your channels yeah what channel are you most excited about
39:47 in 2023 um so it's interesting so
39:53 in 2022 we started off really Bull on
39:58 tick tock and we still are um Tick Tock is you know it's which I
40:04 think our largest Channel at this point with like subscriber follower I think we have 800 and something thousand on there
40:11 um well we what we realized in um probably the middle part not even the
40:20 middle part early of last year when uh meta and and alphabet Google and
40:26 Facebook and Instagram all realize that hey tick tock's kind of eating our lunch a little bit so they all put
40:34 um you know they all made changes to their algorithm where this short uh
40:40 vertical content is treated way better than it necessarily maybe would have
40:45 been regularly um and we saw that we saw it and we still see it most with YouTube YouTube
40:51 Shorts YouTube treats that shorts content
40:56 um it just it's a it's a shot of steroids uh in the algorithm and it gets
41:02 way more eyeballs than traditional long form does right I could post a horrible
41:08 short form video and it could easily get a few hundred or even a thousand views while I could do an actual decent long
41:14 form and if I don't have a reach already and a subscriber base it might not get any views
41:21 um so so so YouTube shorts honestly um I think they're building on it I
41:26 think they're they're getting better um I still think tick tock's algorithm
41:31 from a consumer experience is still there's no competition
41:37 it is the best algorithm that there is right now I agree like it's it's I used
The best algorithm
41:43 to say this before and it's still true that like any other live video algorithm skirts along the surface but tick tock
41:50 goes to like all the things I'm interested in for better for worse and so there's a lot weirder stuff yeah and
41:56 so fast exactly like it knows so quickly of what to like we could both open up
42:01 our tick tocks and compare them and they would be night and day different and not that we're different but just it
42:08 knows exactly what I want to see and exactly what you want to see yeah whereas reels and shorts it's still yeah
42:14 it's a lot more of General still I think there'd be a lot more overlap in our feeds there right yeah we would have
42:20 overlap for sure super super interesting are you noticing a a relation between this is something
Shorts vs LTV
42:26 we've invested a lot in shorts and we're getting thousands of views on them versus hundreds on the YouTube podcast
42:32 um and but but we haven't really been able to correlate shorts into longer form video views yet uh it's shorts are
42:39 going up but it doesn't necessarily mean that longer form video views are going up it's kind of its own thing it's it's it's its own thing
42:46 um there's not there's not much of a correlation we'll we'll try um so we will do some testing where
42:53 we'll put in the shorts you know a small little um graphic uh uh make sure to subscribe
43:01 um with a you know a little animated piece and and we'll do that which which does convert US more subscribers because
43:09 a lot of people just like it's it's crazy like 97 of our
43:14 people watching and even higher sometimes aren't subscribers so
43:20 we're trying to get it in the sense that we're trying to get them to subscribe so
43:26 that they'll get the notifications of our longer form content yeah makes sense nice John thanks for
43:32 coming on the d2c podcast today I think we should we better stay in touch I want to see how uh how you guys continue to
43:37 growth battlblocks where might be overlapping in Las Vegas in uh in March so be fun too fun to see you and I'm
43:44 gonna earn an invite to that Christmas party one of these years dude you're already invited come on foreign
43:54 thanks so much for listening to today's episode if you're not a subscriber to our newsletter you can do that right now
44:00 at direct to Consumer all one word dot Co I'm Eric Dick and this has been the
44:05 d2c podcast we'll see you next time
