Building an Influencer Agency from the Ground Up w/Taylor Lagace of Kynship

[00:00:00] Taylor Holiday: all right, we are back with another episode of the E-Commerce Playbook podcast. I am grabbing the host seat once again to interview a very special guest who shares my namesake and has also shared many intimate moments with me over the course of the last five, six years, and I'm excited to share a little bit about that story.

We're gonna wrap about cost caps, we're gonna wrap about influencer content. We're gonna get deep and tactical and wide and philosophical all at the same time. I'm excited to welcome today Taylor Lagace from Kynship Welcome

[00:00:35] Taylor Legace: Man, come on. CTc ever goes down and burns. You got a place here at Kynship to just announce on calls?

[00:00:42] Taylor Holiday: Just like what is your stupid Otter AI thing that always shows up to your meetings ahead of you.

[00:00:46] Taylor Legace: I don't put it in there anymore, but yeah, I'm exactly right.

[00:00:49] Taylor Holiday: So TL, welcome man. It's good to have you on the pod. I can't believe it's been this long since you ha that or since you haven't been here. I didn't realize that we hadn't done this

[00:00:57] Taylor Legace: It is just taking about four years of building trust up to be able to let you get me to have

[00:01:02] Taylor Holiday: That's right. That's the roadmap. So for all of you people emailing me, asking if your CEO can be on the pod four years, that's all it takes. Put in

[00:01:09] Taylor Legace: four, years of trust built after I worked for the man. So yeah,

[00:01:14] Taylor Holiday: So I

[00:01:14] Taylor Legace: trust he had in me while I worked for the man.

[00:01:16] Taylor Holiday: So first, tell everybody who you are. I know you've got a big Twitter following, but let's assume they don't know. So let's tell 'em who are you and what do you do, and then we'll give a little context to our shared story. First,

[00:01:25] Taylor Legace: That was Taylor's way to ask if I would promote this after the fact. Okay, sure. Yeah. I'm Taylor Lagace, co CEO alongside my partner Cody Wittick. At Kynishp. We're an influencer marketing a agency as well as paid social agency prior to launching Kynship. And that's what I probably we're gonna jump into.

We were actually seed funded. By Common Thread Collective and Taylor Holiday here. And I was working under him as his entrepreneur apprentice, quote unquote, which is just a glorified way of saying I was his assistant, but with some extra perks. And, I got to get in some nice rooms where I got to learn a lot.

For sure.

[00:01:56] Taylor Holiday: Yeah, so TL and I go back a long time six, six or so years, probably now, right? So Jordan Palmer, my co-founder. And TL were knew each other through the sports agency you worked at, right? Is that how we initially got in

[00:02:09] Taylor Legace: So Jordan Palmer was a, how do I say this without, like lowkey he, he was a client at our, so we, I worked at NFL Marketing Agency Athletes. First Carson Palmer was client, Jordan Palmer was a client sourcing deals like think Aaron Rodgers, time State Farm. So Jordan Palmer, that's how I got to get to know him.

Uh, And then he obviously worked at Common Thread Collective, which led to the transition.

[00:02:33] Taylor Holiday: So TL finishes up his collegiate career as a football player, is looking to make his way into the professional world. He's working at a marketing agency. Yeah, that go Bruins. And somehow gets in touch with Jordan and we convince him to come over. Cuz at the time CTC was thinking about launching influencer marketing and we had always done some form of influencer marketing at CTC just because mainly Jordan's connections into that world.

And a lot of the work that we did at QALO um, it over into it, but TL was gonna come and help build our influencer department. And then at the same time as we were doing that, it was sort of like fledgling, kind of working, kind of not, I don't know how you would describe it, tl, but I forget exactly how did we make the transition to decide to do the entrepreneurial apprentice thing?

Do you even remember? I like, I'm trying to think about how we made that sort of transition.

[00:03:19] Taylor Legace: to be honest. Peter was transitioning out and I reached out to I shot you a text. I said, Ooh, if there's any position that I would want to be able to step into, it'd be that, just the access that I would have, the learning opportunity, all the above.

[00:03:33] Taylor Holiday: So this, yeah, it's probably worth reflecting on. So I, about, early on I created this role, I would get a lot of feedback from my partners that I needed an assistant and I

[00:03:42] Taylor Legace: Worst, worst assistant probably of all time. We're just gonna preface that and I

[00:03:46] Taylor Holiday: Yeah, this is, well, this is the funny part, right? So I hated the idea of an assistant. I didn't feel like I needed somebody to, manage my emails or calendars.

But I did feel like, okay, maybe there could be this mutual exchange where I would take somebody who has entrepreneurial ambition, bring them into my sphere, and then allow them to sort of be in every space that I'm in and in exchange for helping me manage my schedule. Now, the tension with this is that the people that generally over-index on administrative, Tend to not be the most entrepreneurial.

Sometimes these are generalizations. There's obviously exceptions, and then vice versa, the people who are highly entrepreneurial don't always have the best administrative skills. So I had a series of entrepreneurial apprentices, so Peter Hassan, who's now a, one of the executive business development leaders at ctc and our board member tl and then a woman by the name of PCI Modi, and all of them are these amazing humans, but that were, none of them were good assistants at all, including tl might have been.

[00:04:40] Taylor Legace: I would probably say I would for sure the worst. And for all those who would ever contact Kynship, don't worry. Administrative tasks are all

dedicat 

[00:04:48] Taylor Holiday: But the point was that um, TL got to be in every room that I was in, every meeting that I was in, from partner offsites to, executive meetings, to sales calls, whatever, and just soak up uh, and interact together. 

 So what was obvious about TL from the beginning was though that he was an idea guy. Like, so one of the things he did do really well as an entrepreneurial apprentice is he was always sort of processing the information and coming up with new things that we could try.

Now, in that role, that wasn't exactly necessarily what I needed at that moment. I needed more to like handle the things we were doing. But this dude would write and write notebooks, ideas, all sorts of things, and it was clear that like vision direction. He had a thought about where he wanted to go.

And so being able to spend time together and cultivate that was where at the end of this the, the idea of the entrepreneurial apprentice thing was that it was a one year termed role. It would end and you had to go out. You were getting pushed out of the nest, into a role at CTC or beyond.

[00:05:40] Taylor Legace: and yeah, that was it. And I was in that role for four months and

[00:05:44] Taylor Holiday: Yeah. And your, yours got cut a little shorter.

[00:05:47] Taylor Legace: couldn't get rid of me quicker. I'm just gonna say that it's because I had, you wanted to send me off

[00:05:51] Taylor Holiday: exactly.

[00:05:51] Taylor Legace: but it was probably because I was just doing a really bad job.

[00:05:54] Taylor Holiday: but at the time, like there was, there's three guys that I had spent a lot of time with over the course of early career. So one of them was your partner now, Cody Whittick whose brother Travis and I went to high school together and Cody worked at QALO running all the influencer marketing and.

So I had, I knew him was close with him, had a similar sense of ambition and potential as you. And then Reed Naliboff who now works at Solo Stove, was your other initial partner at somebody that I had hired at QALO, was one of our first marketing employees, and these were. were all three guys that reminded me of me at that same position, which is that someone gave me Josh, namely, and the Power Balance crew gave me an opportunity with no resume, specifically no experience to come in and be involved very intimately in a setting that gave me a huge platform to build my career.

And so I, for me, it made total sense that the three of you should. And could put to your sort of powers together to launch something. And so I remember we all sort of sat, I sat down with each of you individually and was like, Hey, cuz you guys didn't really know each other that well at the time.

Right. Like, how well did you know Cody at the time 

[00:06:54] Taylor Legace: I played ball with Reed and uh, r i p, those Monday night basketball CTCs Basketball Gym. Those were the best. So I knew Reed from that and you get to know someone pretty well when playing basketball with 'em over the course of time. And then I met with Cody, once or twice for lunch.

But yeah, hardly. At all. You were definitely the common thread.

[00:07:12] Taylor Holiday: Yeah. Yeah. So I remember sitting with each of you and being like, okay, I think the three of you should do something. I think you should launch it. And here's what I'm willing to do is like, we're, we will, we'll sort of fund your guys' first few months of salary and everything for a partnership in ki in what you wanna do.

And. , just gonna give you a blank slate. We'll give you an office, we'll give you space, and I'll give you, some runway to go solve the problem. And the three of you put your heads together and came up with what is now Kynship. There was a lot of sort of machinations of it along the way, but at the end of the day, I was really just betting that the three of you putting your heads together, and then eventually just you and Cody as Reed moved on.

We're gonna solve the problem because that's what I watched you exhibit. It wasn't that you had this specific vision for some business plan. It was that like, I believe that if I put you two together, gave you opportunity in space, you would take it, run with it, and that's what you've done with kinship in a really cool way.

[00:07:59] Taylor Legace: Yeah, come on. And I appreciate the opportunity. I'll always be grateful that's, hope I'm always able to show that.

[00:08:05] Taylor Holiday: Yeah, the reason I start with this story is cuz uh, recently, and one of the promptings for this is that uh, Kynship actually bought CTC back out of their equity position which I think is a really cool, sort of testament to the story, which is one, it's a great return on our investment that we made in them.

They sort of honored the investment that we made early on in betting on them, and now they get to take it and make it their own as we sort of support them and cheer from the sidelines. But I'm curious, TL, as you reflect on this journey, what do you think you've learned the most in your first three years as starting an agency, building a business about sort of what it takes to succeed?

If you were speaking to early stage agency folks out there, what do you think you learned the most over your first two years of getting to this point now where you're sort of independent off and running?

[00:08:48] Taylor Legace: Failure. Biggest thing for sure. You think about like, we had three months of runway right after that, three months of runway. Unless you were like this pipeline for us, which you guys did provide some clients in the beginning, right? But after that, you're on your own. I'm not gonna say you guys didn't provide us any clients.

I'm not gonna say that …

But we were very much so on our own after that in order to make it happen. And with that comes sales and with that comes client, different op, putting together different package offerings. There was a lot of misses, a lot of nos, a lot of fails in that first year, without a doubt.

Cuz like th was saying there, there wasn't a. business plan, Hey, this is the strategy. Like we had strategies, right, that were going after and things that we believed in and, principles and values and whatnot that we think could be effective. But at the end of the day, there was a lot of failure, a lot of rejection, a lot of nos figuring it out.

And I would say getting comfortable with that and continue to go and press forward is definitely a huge one. I'm curious to hear your experience with that too. What was 

[00:09:52] Taylor Holiday: it, I think there's something really interesting that I learned. So we did this model with a few different companies in my time throughout. We did this initially with Left Brain Logistics at QALO, where we sort of partnered to create our own three pl and sort of vertically integrate with a separate business that we launched out of.

Being our supplier. So we did that with Left Brain Logistics. We did this with you all at Kynship. We did this with TMYD A service that we created at ctc. And when I reflect back on the main differences of why I think you guys have created, let's just call it escape velocity, where you're sort of, you're succeeding beyond the sphere of us as a customer, is that we weren't a customer.

Is that both? Both L B L and T M Y D? The problem was, There was so much connection CTC or QALO as the primary source of the revenue that it almost prohibits you from doing exactly what you described, which is forcing you to go solve and sell and get the, get something else. And it's almost like we're too important early on as too much of your revenue.

And that's really actually prohibitive to that evolutionary thing that you described, which is you gotta go survive and you gotta go sell.

[00:10:54] Taylor Legace: for sure. And . I was bitter, I would say at certain not, not really. Not, Not really. But I was bitter at certain points. Cause I remember we would have conversations that first year and I'd be like, th what the heck, man? Like why aren't you see, throw some clients here? And you would say it's not, it's not in your, it's not to your benefit.

For me just to go force our teams and our internal employees to work with your company. If you wanna work with them, get on a call, sell them, and don't even use the excuse that, CTC is an equity holder in our company and we're a partner of your business. So anytime influencer comes up, you need to send 'em our way, this and that.

No, go survive, go sell, go make it happen. So that for sure uh, I would say another thing is for sure finances, understanding the unit economics of your service offerings understand profit margin and how well you're able to do that at scale. That's something you definitely ingrain. , understand your calendar.

I always loved that. That's the first thing you wrote on the whiteboard, right? What was it? One more time where you find inner peace? It one, it with your values.

[00:11:50] Taylor Holiday: Yeah. Inner piece is when your calendar aligns to your values,

[00:11:53] Taylor Legace: I would say that's still like, I mean you think about someone that's not good at administrative tasks, your calendar is such a like it every season it changes too, but getting efficient with your time to be able to put your head on the pillow at night saying, yeah, I did everything that, I was what I was supposed to do and we're.

I can maximize the value of that time. Cause I don't have a boss, I don't have th saying, Hey, entrepreneur apprentice, go do this today. And, complete these tasks. You gotta allocate your resources and time accordingly. And then just culture, company culture at Common Thread was. I didn't think it existed before going into it.

I came from a world ath, I worked at Athletes First with Jordan Palmer, right prior to Common Thread Collective. That's like N F L Marketing Agency World. Bunch of guys, honestly playing in the mud out for themselves, very individualistic, just not a thriving company culture. Th said something pretty profound to me at one point that has definitely stuck with me at this time.

But the more that. From an objective standpoint it doesn't really make sense and it seems counter-cultural, I would say, but the more he invested resources, time, money, all the above into the employees, just time and time again, even though more cash is going out, the business would grow and the culture would thrive.

And it was just pretty cool to be a part of that. I've definitely taken that as a massive takeaway in what I try to create at Kynship too.

[00:13:12] Taylor Holiday: Yeah, you guys have done a great job. I see. See all the same early stage energy that I remember back in those days at CTC, inside of what you guys are doing now. So it's cool to watch and. Those evolutionary skills of selling are so critical to survival. It forces you to deal with the car cold reality of the market, right?

Like that, that somebody has to take their money outta their pocket and give it to you and be satisfied with it. And that's a high bar. And so I think as much as you can face that, refine the product, face it, refine the product, face it, refine the product, the better you get. And so that's the next thing I wanna ask then.

So, what has been the evolution of the product in terms of influencer marketing is a really broad. You guys entered this with some, I would say, values-oriented ideas about what you wanted to be in the marketplace, right? And I think that that's really important. It matters. It can help to sort of differentiate and assign purpose to your work.

But how has what you guys actually do evolve then? What is the product that you think is most compelling? Now,

[00:14:06] Taylor Legace: You ready for a little bit of a word vomit. I guess let's start from the beginning too. Like when I just mind dumping on the windows of C T C back in the day with a marker. I mean, again, the world I came from was Aaron Rodgers x's State Farm. Right. That's where I was from. Prior to ctc, finding an athlete, paying them buco bucks Aaron Rodgers to post a Twitter post one liner was 50k Just like what the, so you all the re all the retained clients, the repeat purchasers at that agency were the Proctor and Gambles of the world. People that just had a bucket to throw money at. Roi, like direct ROI wasn't something that they were really looking at. It was top of the funnel awareness, again, filling a bucket.

Anybody that was a DTC brand between 5 million and 50 million. were taking a risk by doing this. And the people at the agency were always saying too don't sell them on roi. You're selling them on stardom. Of course Aaron Rodgers is gonna give you a lift in performance, this, that, and otherwise.

But I'll say outside of the Proctor and Gambles of the world, those DTC brands, 5 million to 50 million, no repeat purchasers, and they were livid at you and you just felt like scum. So that's what led to I like, I was fascinated when I transitioned to CTC because everything. Was ROI driven. Everything had a tangible metric associated with a target KPI all the above.

Uh, They really prided themselves on that. And so at CTC it was like, I don't think macro's the move, right? You need to do your due diligence. We need to go micro to macro, right? Spread the net wide. Get as many micros. Figure out who works best before you make this hundred K investment into some macro influencer to become the face of your brand.

Like we've made an analogy like going after a macro influencer right of the way is like walking to a bar drunk and throwing a bullseye at the dart horse. Like, you should just not do that. There's a time and place for sure. We're not saying never do macros, but work your way up to. So that's kind of like the first step of like learnings in this influencer space.

And I would say micro influencers, I would take 10 micros over one macro any day of the week. Just greater reach, greater engagement, greater conversion rate, more niche of an audience to align your brand with on a profile or basis. And then that's just one 10th of the cost. And then you easily get usage rights to that content to repurpose in a paid media.

Or a macro influencer could very easily charge you $10,000 to use that content. that's no better than a customer content piece of content for 30 days. Just kind of ridiculous. Then from there, just realizing the power of creative. That can be generated from influencers, right? This is content that's native to the feed.

These are professional content creators. These are people that have proven to understand the algorithm on the organic side of things. So let's put that to the test. Let's repurpose this in the paid media. And then, to be honest, what was really intriguing to me was CTC offered a studio shoot. Uh, And then there's, all these other studio shoots out there, right?

That typically studio shoot, you'd see at least cost 15 K for a decent amount of assets. and what I found was when seating influencer. We're able to get 60 to 90 unique assets for the cost of sending out a hundred products that from a cost effective standpoint. Now, are you gonna get the really well curated, in studio shot content?

No. But these are professional content creators at the end of the day. And seating lended itself to a very cost effective route into acquiring creative, as well as getting you some organic distribution. So we didn't go into what seating is, but that has become the strategy in working with micro influencers to begin with For sure.

[00:17:44] Taylor Holiday: So I think there's something really interesting that depending on how someone enters into our world, the primary operating driver for how they make decisions is very different. So, What I've noticed is if people enter in through, like they went to design school, right? As the entry point into marketing, the primary value for every decision making hierarchy is like an aesthetic question, right?

It's a question of look and feel. And it's not, this isn't about right or wrong, it's just the point of the asset, right? Whereas for you, you came from, this world where you had a very negative sense of the amount, the value created off the money. You had this negative, you used the word, it made you feel scummy.

Right? So 

[00:18:27] Taylor Legace: and not only that, though, it was incredibly inauthentic. Is so inauthentic. These players that had never heard of this brand that are literally doing an Instagram post at that time where the copy was literally copied and pasted it to them, written by a brand marketing director given it to them.

Then there's like grammatical errors on accident or something or they posted like the thing that was a part of the email that wasn't, was being included in the post. It was it's just so fraudulent 

[00:18:53] Taylor Holiday: you. see this like, yeah. So you see this. Masquerade occurring, and then all of a sudden you see like, oh wait, there's this other way to sort of obligate yourself to actually create value for your partner to drive value in excess of the cost you're charging them. And that all of a sudden feels rewarding, right?

It's like, oh, this is a positive experience for the brand and me. So now all of a sudden you're anchored into this primary driver of all of your decisions is value. It has to work right above all else. That's the hierarch principle that drives your decision making. So for you now, it's funny because you've actually found yourself almost into a creative strategist role, which is you are s, you're sourcing creative, and you're deploying it in paid media.

but you will fight tooth and nail for the premise that like the only rule is it has to work. There is no actual aesthetic principle. There is no, brand obligation, like those premises are subjective opinions held by individuals and like the outcome is sort of determined by the market. And so there's like this way in which that is the thing that rules all.

And so it gives you a, I think, a unique voice in the creative world. , I'm sure it's one that you run into some resistance on quite a bit from the aesthetic point of view. So let's talk a little bit about how you think about what you just described. Source 60 to 90 pieces of content. Maybe some of it isn't on brand, maybe some of it isn't using the right language.

Like what would you tell a brand, or let's say you're managing your own brand, how do you handle that standard? Or is there one at all for you? Or is it just let it run and the market decides? honest, Be

[00:20:22] Taylor Legace: Oh, Oh man. You know me. I'm say, this isn't Twitter, or I'm just being loving to everybody. Let me, let's just backtrack a little bit just to communicate what seating is. Cause I feel like bypassed that completely. So, every month we're typically identifying and reaching out to 500 influencers, all 500.

Again, a messages along the lines of, Hey, th. I would never say this to you, but hey, th we think you create great content. We think you'd love our product. We think we would love to send it to you. No strings attached. And what we mean by that is we have no expectation whatsoever of you to post. Just send me your address, we'll get this right out to you.

So we are leading. By giving, not asking, very relational, very like counter cultural to the typical transactional model. Pay for post model. So we're not saying we want you to post, here's your creative brief, here's your talking points, here's the scenes we want you to capture. We're leaving it to them. And just by the numbers, typically 100 opt receive product outta every a hundred products that you send out.

30 influencers end up posting 60 to 90 assets. That's where those numbers come from. So now there's no creative. , right? So what type of content are you getting? Are there gonna be those cookie cutter videos that hit all the talking points and capture those scenes and it's everything that you dreamt about some.

Sure. But a majority of the creative is gonna be their genuine, authentic interaction with the product that you're sending them. That's not gonna be what you dreamt of every time. Now, I would say, You called me the creative strategist. We're very much so leaning into these influencers as like the creative marketing

[00:21:52] Taylor Holiday: Well, that's a, that is a creative strategy. That is a

[00:21:55] Taylor Legace: For sure. For sure. I just don't want to, I wanna give the credit where credit is due. That said, you might not love. All of their creative strategies at the end of the day. But again, it is their raw, authentic, genuine interaction with the product. And that is something to value here. Something that's BS bleeds right through the screen.

People aren't stupid, even though they're mindlessly scrolling. They can see through that stuff. I would say. It is only to your detriment if you did not launch everything at the end of the day. By choosing, by allowing your human decision making into the picture and choosing not to launch a piece of creative saying, and we run into this all the time.

I have these conversations all the time. They'll look at these 69 unique assets, pick. 15 to 20 and say, oh, we know these, remaining 50 to 60 assets aren't worth running. We know they're not gonna work. This is not, this isn't something that is going to capture attention. It's not going to get something to convert and say, okay, great.

That's your theory. Let's put that theory to the test though because we can hedge your bet. And the only way you miss out on opportunity is if you don't launch it in the first place and give it the opportunity to find success. How. Cost caps, of course, you're gonna set a target cpa. It's only gonna spend money if it beats that target cpa.

And if it's not going to allow Facebook to make the decision instead of you, Facebook's not gonna put money behind it if it's not gonna work. At the end of the day, you're not wasting any money, no harm, no foul. But by not launching it in the first place, that's the only way you miss out on opportunity here.

And I can't tell you how many ads, ugly ads, whatever you want to call, They have scaled out accounts. Now I'm super over-indexed on Twitter, on showcasing those scenarios. It doesn't happen every time, but I will say outta the 60 to nine unique assets that we launch from each month's seating, I've never personally been right in choosing which one is going to end up being the top performer.

And you can call me a terrible, out account strategist, whatever, but.

[00:23:53] Taylor Holiday: call you honest. I think that's the difference. I think it's good. I, so think there is this there's this method that I think for a number of brands where you have to decide, I think what's your leverage point is, what do I mean by this? If my point is brand aesthetic, meaning that, Whether it's me individually as the creative director of the brand or the product designer or the brand owner, I so uniquely understand what appeals to the customer that I'm describing, such that my opinion of the visual aesthetic of this brand.

And there are these people that are that talented. They know this thing is the primary value proposition of the thing, then be precious. Okay. But what I think that most brands do is that's not actually . What makes them unique and valuable. And so then they gate keep access for content through a subjective lens that isn't actually connected to the primary value.

And that's when you actually cause yourself problems. And so if that's not your primary value proposition, if you ask yourself right now, am I a brand that the primary value is an aesthetic, then I think you need to be very liberal about the, what you allow through as the voice of who you are. people speaking about the experience of your product in a way that is true to them.

And I think that most brands should fall into that category. Not the other one, but people treat it the other way.

[00:25:15] Taylor Legace: Yeah. And that's just so counter to what people say they want outta U G C, raw, genuine, authentic interactions with their product.

[00:25:24] Taylor Holiday: But we know that's a lie,

[00:25:25] Taylor Legace: No, without a doubt. That's why we have these conversations. 

[00:25:28] Taylor Holiday: So, I think that's a good segueway too, cuz like, so my thing and you and I, so I put out the, recently the U g C bullshit meter and sort of, this index of things that I think are sort of like literally like from a total scam and legal liability to like what I would call above the line.

And you and I traded some notes ahead of this time because it's in some ways a shot at your world. In terms of what does it actually mean to be authentic? What does it actually mean? be genuine. You're using these words, but you're also sort of in the business of paying people to say things.

Now you would argue that you don't pay people. Now I would just, I would argue that free things is a payment in whether we sort of. Quantify it or not if you paid people in cars, they would literally have to claim that on their tax forms. So it's like at some point the dollars actually are consequential enough or there's an implied opportunity for incentive in a way that does possibly create a question of what does it mean to be authentic.

But,

[00:26:25] Taylor Legace: I

[00:26:25] Taylor Holiday: I'm curious like how do 

[00:26:26] Taylor LegLegace:ace Ask your question. Ask your question. How do you want.

[00:26:28] Taylor Holiday: So, so my question is like, how do you, as someone who came from this world, right, that you said it's inauthentic and scammy. You built a brand on a principle of we want to build real relationship and authenticity. Like how do you see the product as it currently sit, and where is your line on where it becomes something other than that?

Or is it just, if it works, it's fair game. It doesn't matter if it's an actor paid or anybody. Like what is your line for what it means to build U G C? That's legitimate.

[00:26:59] Taylor Legace: Yeah. Well in the way that we're doing it, and I'm curious to hear 2 cents on this too, the way that we're doing it, building out an influencer marketing program at scale, as authentically as we're able to and as genuine as we're able to, we're doing it. We're doing it. Seating is exactly that from a cold outbound standpoint and building out.

Your program with influencers who are not already customers. I would say, and we can talk about that as well, there's a way definitely to, sweep up that low-hanging fruit with customers that are also influencers. That's your most genuine right, most authentic base and core group of people that you should be onboarding.

But after that, after you sweep up that lowing in fruit seeding is without a doubt the most genuine, authentic way to go about um, building that out at scale. Because again, yes, okay. You kind of called out two things. we're seating product to influencers, right? No strings attached. So they do receive a form of payment in this sort of product, but it's not product for post.

So it's not a transaction in that manner. We're just sending to 'em. No strings attached. No expectation of them to do whatsoever that's being communicated. So they don't need to do anything. So it's not product for post. They can do it of their own free. If they generally love the product. Now, there's also, of course, you called it out, a potential incentive in their mind if they're thinking about this strategically on their side of things, oh, this brand's interested in potentially working with me.

If I throw them a lo and post about 'em free of cost here, maybe they'll come back and wanna work with me in a more, legit way that offers payment. I'll call that out and acknowledge it. But I will say, if you follow the influencer sphere at all, and just kind of their collective movement as a unit They are so anti given brands, free posts.

[00:28:47] Taylor Holiday: They should be

[00:28:49] Taylor Legace: so, so I'm just calling it out like I think it's more so to do with, they genuinely appreciated how that like relationship was initiated over it being in them thinking about the incentive at play to work with the brand long.

[00:29:04] Taylor Holiday: Well, but do you think if they knew that you spent a hundred thousand dollars on that asset and made $300,000, they would feel the same way.

[00:29:11] Taylor Legace: Of course not.

[00:29:13] Taylor Holiday: So,

[00:29:13] Taylor Legace: But that's without taking the consideration, the hundreds, thousands of assets that get launched all the time

[00:29:20] Taylor Holiday: Right. And do 

[00:29:21] Taylor Legace: don't, then they do nothing. So they need full context though.

[00:29:24] Taylor Holiday: But, they also, but you're creating this scenario where, You are playing the lottery game, wh by which you only reap the reward at in that scenario. Right? I like, I think you're right that, like, again, I, if we go back to my meter, I put you above the line. Like I, I think it is much closer to the most authentic thing.

But I think something you and I have been talking about, and I think this is a good parlay, is this idea of CGC customer generated content. This idea of what I think U G C was supposed to be from the start. Like when we, when U G

[00:29:55] Taylor Legace: it's in the word.

[00:29:56] Taylor Holiday: Right, like this is the thing that we've gotta actually sort of hold up a mirror to ourselves as an industry and go like, we took a thing U G C, which begins with the idea of a user, someone who is using the product, sharing a story about it to their social audience, independent of any relationship with the brand.

That's what this began as. Right now, as marketers, we co-opted. And turned it into a thing that we could leverage for our own benefit. We have a way of doing that we all participate in various forms, but if we go back to why it worked and what is the power of it when it's real, that people sharing stories.

You and I used to use this phrase all the time, the two most powerful influences on purchase decisions are price and a recommendation from somebody You. and so that recommendation from somebody you trust is what you're attempting to create with U G C, an influencer speaking to their audience about something that they had a genuine experience with.

any part of that equation becomes fake, there is damage and consequence to that somewhere along the spectrum, either to the influence to their or from the brand to theirs, like somewhere along the line, maybe they'll never discover it. Maybe it won't happen the first time, but it will break it somewhere along the.

[00:31:11] Taylor Legace: For sure. For sure. And so, yeah, customers is something that we're definitely trying to sweep up first and foremost. And again, th and I have been chatting about this. It just comes down to does the brand care about organic distribution and influencer marketing program? or is it all about creative to supplement paid media, or is it a mixture of both?

And that will determine, what you do from there. But th sourcing and customer generated content. Yeah, I mean, these subscription type brands, it's easy just to offer a free month subscription in exchange for, a 1530 second review. You can stack a ton of just genuine, authentic testimonials and different types of creative put together one to two top performing ads as inspo for them to work off of.

Cause at the end of the day, the counter to this is like, is it gonna be really that good of creative at the end of the day 

[00:31:58] Taylor Holiday: maybe 

[00:31:58] Taylor Legace: but it's gonna be. Super authentic, super genuine. These are people that are actually genuine adopters of your product, so much so that they buy it on a monthly basis, so going after your highest ltv, customers sourcing creative for 'em, and offering that free month subscription or something along those lines.

It's very

powerful 

[00:32:16] Taylor Holiday: and so, you and I have talked about building this product and I think you guys are doing this work and we're hoped hoping to. Have something in the market that's really effective about this. Cause I think that gets back to what U G C was supposed to be and powerful. And the reality is that for a lot of brands, there are so many people that are creators now that the overlap of their 500,000 person customer file and people who are already creators, they're, they exist.

There are people inside of your database right now who are both customers and creators. And the overlap of those things is, I think going after it and finding and then compensating them for it. This was thing that I would say is that I would actually pay your customers to become creators on your behalf, to build that army of people who feel connected, appreciated, and valued, commiserate with the value they're offering you.

And if you do that, and I think the brands that sort of engage in that, are the ones that are gonna build a community of continued deep support. Because what I always say is like, you don't want this to be the only time they talk about. Right it like that. That's really the key to this, is that we wanna make it so that the thing they say on video, they say a hundred times a week.

And if they say that thing a hundred times a week, the power is actually real and is going to amplify over time versus if that's the only time they say it.

[00:33:30] Taylor Legace: For sure. Yeah. And there's a way to get them to do this organically as well, right. It's just whatever you want to do. I would just go to your. Right highest LTV customers or all customers. I'm a fan of just doing it with all customers and it's so simple to give them to one, one or two things.

Here's a Dropbox request folder. Submit your piece of content in exchange for, again, that one month free subscription. Or, Hey, here's your code to post on social media. And then you can use a social listening tool like Mighty Scout or archive, and they can collect all that content in real time. And then all of it can be repurposed and paid and via.

So again, it just depends what you want the. And the paid or just content for the paid, but very powerful low hanging fruit there to sweep up.

[00:34:12] Taylor Holiday: Let's do something. So are you game to try something out with me? For the general public here, sir.

[00:34:17] Taylor Legace: Come on.

[00:34:18] Taylor Holiday: Okay. If you're a brand and you have more than 10,000 customers in your file, Okay. I think that's a pretty low hanging fruit. If you send a group, DM to TL and I both have dms open and you're game to let us do two things.

Here's the rule, okay? One, we get to source content from your creators or from your customers. Okay? Two, we get to run it in the ad account exactly how we desire, set it up with cost. caps Three, we get to publicly document every step of the process. Okay? We will do it for you. We will run the campaign for you if you let us do all three of those things in entirety and see if it works and see if we can validate the premise and outperform your existing prospecting in some way.

because I think that this is, to me, I think the most interesting sort of ongoing source. of Creative that doesn't sort of currently get talked about enough, cuz there's so much nonsense happening on the UGC side. And I think that we want to sort of inject back into the world a little bit of honesty and truth if we can to make something cool.

So if you're down, DM us and we'll evaluate the brands and then we'll pick one and tl let's do a, let's do a public a little public

[00:35:27] Taylor Legace: I love it. Yeah. Yeah. So, so 10,000 customers just to regurgitate 10,000 customers. We're gonna do we're gonna send out an email to all 10,000 customers. We're gonna say, Hey, and thanks for being such a loyal customer. Would love, here's a way that you can support us in exchange for one month free subscription, or whatever it is.

Please send us a 15s to 30s video. Here's two of our top recent top performing ads, blah, blah, blah. Outta the 10,000 customers, let's say 1% comes back, a hundred testimonials right there. Boom. We edit it, we reformat it, we caption it, we're gonna look at it. We're not gonna, we're gonna make sure these testimonials

[00:36:04] Taylor Holiday: Barely. Barely. This is for free. We're not gonna put in a

[00:36:07] Taylor Legace: We're not gonna make sure they're like cussing about you, butchering you. Oh, these guys paid me to do this for a free month. Haha. We're gonna make sure that's not none of that nonsense, but we are launching all of it against the cost cap and get as much delivery as we possibly can. Get as much volume as we can.

Add efficiency

[00:36:24] Taylor Holiday: Every step of the way from the campaign. Well, we might 

[00:36:27] Taylor Legace: free.

[00:36:27] Taylor Holiday: Twitch, stream it live,

[00:36:29] Taylor Legace: For free.

[00:36:30] Taylor Holiday: yeah. One We'll, one campaign, we'll launch one campaign to prove

[00:36:33] Taylor Legace: we're gonna have a lot of e.

[00:36:35] Taylor Holiday: Let's, I wanna see it. We'll pick the best brand and we'll pick somebody. Cuz I, I think that like the every step of this documented in a public facing way that people understand would be really useful.

So I'm game, I want to, I wanna assign our name to cgc. I want to, CTC loves cgc, right? And let's go ki make it happen. I want to get some honesty back into this premise. And I'd love to do it alongside you guys. So let's even though we're not equity partners anymore, let's run it

[00:37:00] Taylor Legace: Yeah, these guys are working with us more now that we're actually separate from their business. It's unbelievable.

[00:37:04] Taylor Holiday: It making you earn it, you know, it's less, less entitlement now, so it's good.

[00:37:08] Taylor Legace: That's right.

[00:37:09] Taylor Holiday: Where can people follow you, man? Where are they gonna get ahold of you?

[00:37:11] Taylor Legace: @TaylorLegace, your favorite Taylor on Twitter. And then kynship.co and then my partner is Cody on Twitter as well. Constantly putting out content to try to provide you as much value as possible.

[00:37:23] Taylor Holiday: You guys are doing a great job, man. You guys are doing a good thing out in the world, and there's a really, I love seeing the stuff from the create, Try Create guys from the Purdy and Fig, like you've got some really cool things going on. So, uh, check, check out TL and Cody over at Kynship and getting those dms to see who, which brand we're gonna run this CGC funnel for.

[00:37:41] Taylor Legace: I'm excited man. Thanks for having me. 

[00:37:43] Taylor Holiday: Take care.

Thanks again for joining us on the E-Commerce Playbook podcast. Please remember to rate and review, if you're watching on YouTube, like and subscribe. Always really helpful to us. Until then, happy scaling.