This guy made one million dollars a month selling bed sheets online and the crazy part is he literally does it from bed I work from bed all the time actually this is definitely the office I flowed to Denver, Colorado to ask him exactly how he got started and the unconventional marketing strategy He uses to make millions of dollars a year I sponsored that I love and I sponsored that I watch before the money Colin worked three different full-time jobs But he couldn't keep any of them So he decided to start his own company and in the process found a special hack to make $284,000 in his first 30 days We got 450 customers at a hundred dollar AOV did $45,000 on day one and that snowballed into a $284,000 campaign in this video Colin shares his exact blueprints on how to build a million dollar per month brand How to name a million dollar per month brand and how to find and validate a million dollar business idea The easiest way to do it is to build up so they can really visualize and understand the company of their building I'm Pat walls and this is starter story Colin great to meet you in person after all these years So it's awesome to see the growth of starter story. Thank you man. Thank you for having me Tell me about yourself and what you built. I am founder and CEO of sheets and giggles and if you haven't heard of us We sell bed sheets. I incorporated the company October 2017 shipped our first box in October 2018 And then about 25 months later in November 2020 We had our first million dollar a month at about 1.2 million dollars in sales. So it was pretty meteoric at the beginning Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah. All right. Can you tell me a little bit more about your business and how it works? Sure So we're a direct-to-consumer brand we sell mostly through our website sheets giggles calm Which is Shopify back end and then we also sell on Amazon Amazon comm slash sheets We do about 90 10 or 80 20 Shopify versus Amazon in terms of sales We started in 2018 with just sheets comforters and duvet covers and pillowcases since then we've added throw blankets pillows crib sheets mattress protectors and all stuff and we actually launched a mattress in 20 late 2022 we started with five colors and five sizes and now we have seven sizes and 17 colors and hundreds of SKUs and Shipping hundred pound mattresses every day. So it's crazy. Yeah, all right Colin Tell me a little bit more about your backstory. How did you come to the point where you wanted to start your own company? I've been fired twice and I've been laid off once And it sucks every time no last week's pay have to buy back your laptop lose your healthcare I was like shit man like all my friends in New York working at banks like I can't believe I was just done with it I was I was super done working for other people I was so tired of having to take orders that I disagreed with and my friend gave a phone call it changed my life She said hey, we're doing a Kickstarter for my wearable tech idea that I have do you want to help with it? I said, yeah, sure I threw a launch party for her in Seattle that changed my life because the mentorship I got there is Completely life-changing for someone especially in their 20s Who's kind of directionless or or feels like they're directionless my best advice I can give people is do you think someone's gonna be a good mentor? Say you have an hour a week that I can maybe spend with you and buy a lunch every week and ask you questions And that's exactly what I did at three people that I bought lunch every week and I asked them as many questions as I could I've been working for myself for six and a half years and it's the best gift I've ever given myself How did you find the idea had you come up with the idea for sheets and giggles and why did you decide to build it? I after working in direct-to-consumer company and wearable technology I really wanted something that was a direct-to-consumer brand and I really wanted something that be proud of something that was in a big space They could carve my own niche in so I actually started to like write my business model before I knew what the product was for people Who are thinking about starting a business if you have a problem other people have that problem, too I think that logic is great I think it's fine the question is whether or not they're willing to pay for a solution to that problem And so I really encourage people to build a business model first that they really feel strongly about that makes sense for them Their skill set what they're best at in the world I think business model first product second or at least tweak your product to make sure it fits really well into the business model Yeah, yeah instead of finding a problem find what I call founder market fit Which is the business that fits the best within your existing skill sets and that's actually something we talk about on our Workshop that we run about how to find a million-dollar business idea Which you should join if you go to the link in the description We talk about how to look at your own skills and your own passions to identify a potential problem that you can solve That you can turn into a million-dollar business. It's really that simple I think that people think that they have to have some like door buster like Blisteringly intelligent novel never before seen idea to start a business and that's just not true if people ask themselves What am I best in the world at it's a great place to start for like what? Business they should start it. Yeah, that's what I always say too. Yeah, let's talk about that period of Trying to figure things out. Yeah, I had this idea for sheets and giggles How did you validate the idea the easiest way to do it is to build a brand identity map? That should be the first thing that everybody does actually is a brand identity map so they can really Visualize and understand the company of their building. It's also great like foundation for everything that follows So those are three things brand identity map financial model business model then take those three things or especially the financial model send it to people you respect and Say hey like does this make sense? Am I forgetting about a cost somewhere? Am I am I charging too much and if the people that you respect are like hey I look at your financial model and that makes sense Like I think you could you could do this once you get that first validation Then you move on to trying to validate with actual customers and my advice to everyone is to sell before you build You can sell a wireframe. You can sell an idea You can sell a sign-up form an email capture the simple steps are like build a tactile something that you can really promise them like a Like a you know sign up now and on May 1st when we launch you get the best price that you'll ever lock into for the best set of Sheets you'll ever have for us We were selling a set for $100 but if they signed up first they get them for 69 bucks and we ended up capturing 11,000 emails 46% email capture then you send them surveys. What colors do you want? How much would you pay for this you get them involved and if you get people feeling like they're building a product with you They become emotionally invested in it and they're if they're not gonna buy it They might share it with someone and be like check out this new product company launched. That's the ultimate validation Yeah, so yeah, then once you get those sales, you know people will pay for it. Yeah. Yeah, okay, so you have This validation. Yep, you have these people that are ready to buy they're ready to buy then you parlay that into Massive sales tell me about those moments and how you did that if you want to do a hundred thousand dollar campaign For example, you need 30% of your total that you want your goal on day one That's how the crowdfunding math works spikes plateaus little spike at the end You then need on day one thirty thousand dollars 300 customers at a hundred bucks. Where do you get those customers from you get them from an email list? You need ten thousand emails because an email list reasonably converts at about three percent two percent if you're doing something wrong Four percent if you're doing something right. I did the calculations. I was like, all right great We're gonna do a $70 price on day one one and a half units per order I assumed so about a hundred dollar AOV and I assumed that if our ten thousand person email list converted at three percent We get 300 customers thirty thousand dollars. We were on our way to a hundred thousand dollar campaign When that up happening is our email is converted at four and a half percent We got 450 customers at a hundred dollar AOV did forty five thousand dollars on day one and that snowballed into a $284,000 campaign and I attribute a lot of that to like the content that we were sending out It was so different than any email. They'd ever gotten yeah I'll advise us to any founder listening is I had a one-on-one connection with thousands of people I answered every single social media comment myself. I responded to every customer care email myself. I You know wrote every email. I wrote every word of copy on the website for years I can't recommend enough that founders take the time to engage with people Extremely personally on a granular level. Yeah. Yeah, so you launch you have this massive launch Then how do you get to one million a month? What's the special sauce of marketing things that work or like? I think everyone's you know works right Facebook Instagram Google Amazon ads all that has worked for years And it continues to work and then the ones that have worked that have surprised me have been the podcast channels I sponsored podcast that I love and I sponsor YouTube channels that I watch if you're the founder of your company And you love something you love a radio station. You have a podcast you love a youtuber All odds are the people who also like them are like you they're gonna resonate with your personality And a lot of your personality is gonna come out in your brand So it all lines up you have viewers of people who are like you who are gonna resonate with the brand That's like them that watch a channel that you speak the language of that you can make inside jokes for that you can write Compiling copy with that you can build a whole landing page in that brand voice It the conversion around that is insane versus every other page on our website and same with the content Make sure the content makes you laugh. Make sure the content is interesting to you betting is a crowded space and very boring How do you differentiate? Yeah, exactly. How do you differentiate your brand and why is it made it successful? I use my friends as models not just because they're cheaper which they are but also because I don't think that you can fake Friendship and chemistry and so I always try to get stuff like that bleeds off the screen That just feels like you're in the room with us and overall the the ideology is you can't be everything for everyone So make sure that you're like at least something for someone if you're not pissing like at least 20% of people off You're probably not doing it, right? For example one rule we have is we never iron the sheets The long and short of it is if it's been done before I don't want it. I don't want to do it Yeah, let's talk about how you came up with the name For sheets and giggles. How'd you come up with that? Well, so I have four rules to a good brand name It has to be spellable shareable and memorable. That's one rule spellable shareable and memorable rule number two It has to connote or denote what you do sheets and giggles We denote we do we sell bed sheets rule number three is that you have to have good SEO around it Try not to pick words or combinations of words where they find not you or worse a competitor And rule number four is that if you're gonna sell to Americans you got to have a calm because Americans don't buy from anything It's not a calm those are my four rules And if you have four for four you're a bullseye and if you're three for four go forward if you're two for four two and a half Nope, try again. That's so yeah, that very important question. Would you like to get in the bed with me? I? Don't know man. We've been in bed together for five years All right Interview from bed first time for everything. I love it. Let's talk about the most bed thing you can imagine What tools do you use for your business? So Shopify a big one? Of course Google Analytics Google AdWords? I love Rebuy for in-card upsells. I love after-sell for post-purchase upsells I really like Okendo for our reviews. So I use Okendo leaves a lot of Shopify That's tracking more for order tracking site GPT, which is a chatbot for with AI that you can train on your website I really like this kid that built this he's one a solopreneur. You should interview him actually have actually what you decide you Pt guy. Oh, he's so nice. He's in our community. Dude. He's super nice Okay, he's like some 20 year old kid like just like dude He really nailed it with that and I'm really happy for him It's like 50 bucks a month and it cut down our customer care tickets by like 30% It's also our best salesman because we tell the AI bot if you have a great conversation with people and it's able to judge If it's a good conversation offer them code AI for 10% off and it's one of our best little Discount codes that we use. Yeah, it's great pays for itself Yeah, and then I use a stock image for image creation as well as dolly use a little bit of chat GPT for for blank page problem Yeah, I really obsess over copies. So I try not to use chat GPT for like copy copy But as someone with ADHD like the blank page problem can be really overwhelming sometimes and so it's really nice to solve that problem Yeah, yeah, I usually just tear it up anyway, but yeah Let's talk about team. What does your team look like? Well, we have on a daily basis about 40 people who touch the business and that's everyone from logistics and warehousing to Amazon ad agencies to performance marketing agencies affiliate agencies full-time folks and marketing and Product and operations and customer care. We work with tons of folks I think my favorite people that are part of our team are the folks at mile-high workshop here in Denver It helps lower our local recidivism rates and our local homelessness rates And it's one of my favorite things that we do on our team is have those folks a part of it. Cool. Yeah Tell me about the day in the life of Colin day in the life of someone building multi-million dollar business from home I work from bed all the time actually. This is definitely the office But I think everyone can tell you four walls start closing in after a while when you're in the same space So I love working from the river. I go out there with Harvey my little Jack Russell I sit right in the water up to my chest and I put my laptop on the rock I set up hotspot and I just work from the river and I do that probably like three days a week in the summer Well, it is the best. It's the most healing Mental wellness thing that I can recommend from someone is to spend more time outdoors Look man, I'm I'm slacking. I'm sending emails and I'm on the phone whether I'm in the water I'm in my bed or I'm in the office, you know, so my job is mostly at this point Meetings coordination follow-ups analytics and reporting and then you know content creation as well Which really helps to get into a new environment to be more creative last question If you could sit on Colin's shoulder when you you know working that full-time job when you were laid off What advice would you give to him? What advice would you give someone like that? It's not fun shouldn't be glorified, but I would tell myself as a 25 26 27 year old kindness plus hard work plus intelligence Leads to good things and you're kind and smart So keep fucking working hard and eventually it'll it'll pay off. Stay with it. Yeah Thank you, man. Dude. Thank you for inviting me. This is super fun This is amazing the company you built. Thank you follow this advice and you will have a multi-million dollar Bed sheet you can lift this It's very easy. Don't don't anybody tell you different super super easy All right guys I hope you got some good nuggets from Colin's story that you can apply to your own business But if you're feeling a bit stuck and maybe you don't have an idea yet Or you just want to go deeper on how to actually make your first dollar. Well, I got something special for you I'm hosting a free workshop for all of our subscribers where I'll be sharing how I built a million dollar business on just two hours a day I'll walk you through exactly how to find your own million dollar business idea How to execute on it and how to make your first dollar from it It's all frameworks coming from personal experience because it's the exact path I took to build starter story and eventually quit my nine to five just a few months after I started So head to the first link in the description to save yourself a seat I hope to see you guys in there much love and I'll see you in the next one. Peace
