He launched Feastables For MrBeast | Nik Sharma

we just launched David Beckham's new Wellness brand on Monday all the way to Brands like a Jolie or febles we're helping with the website it's their content their messaging their media buying customer acquisition strategy in this episode of emerging founders of manab I got a chance to interview Nik Sharma he's the founder and CEO of Sharma Brands they're building the biggest DDC agency in the world Nick is widely known as the DDC guy he has worked with really big Brands like febles eight Le Taco Bell rare Beauty and they've helped launch and scale a lot of these companies over the last few years Nick gave me step-by-step advice on what should be an ideal launch strategy for someone who wants to launch a DC brand today I had a really good time talking to Nick I hope you enjoyed this [Music] episode how are you doing Nick today I'm good brother thank you for having me you're a very interesting person you got your start really early and then I noticed like how many different you've done and it's kind of incredible like I found out you're like still in your 20s so what made you want to start that early I was just kind of in the world already I would say like when I was in high school I started doing social media for celebrities and that's how I got into the world of marketing and social media and understanding content and clickthrough rates and then after high school I joined this adte company that I first interned for and then took a full-time job at so I skipped College got to the atte company and that's where I learned everything around paid advertising and copywriting and AD creative and so it all kind of just kept compounding you know everything that I did was sort of an evolution based on the thing I did prior so as a result you know I started with Organic social then I understood the world of paid media and programmatic advertising and then I joined a beverage company and and built and grew their e-commerce business that's where I learned everything e-commerce and then I joined an agency and that's where I learned the agency side of the business and now sha Brands feels like a combination of everything yeah you know I as an Indian I have to ask how was it working with pranka chobra it was cool that was back when was in high school it was very unique cuz you know I was mainly focused on the organic social side so everything I did was really focused around content around understanding how do we get more eyeballs and yeah it's cool it didn't you know like when you work with celebrities a lot of times you work directly with their teams so it doesn't feel like you're working on a thing and even then even when you have a huge celebrity you're still in the framework of okay this is a product that people consume and so you think about it through that lens of this person is a brand and they've got marketing they've got content they've got distribution they've got the product they put out whether it's a song or a movie you sort of think of it that way so a little bit context for the audience Nick started an agency called Sharma PRS and they do all kinds of things from PRS but my impression is this is like the modernday Mad Men kind of Studio where you're cooking up slogans ads websites everything so how would you describe Sharma Brands cuz you do so much I would say Sharma Brands is like a modern day consulting firm for brands that focuses on the customer acquisition funnel so a lot of times Brands will usually come to us in three different stages one is you know pre-launch so for example we just launched David Beckham's new Wellness brand on Monday all the way to Brands like a Jolie or febles or you know whatever it may be it's like we're buying customer acquisition strategy middle bucket is brands that are usually scaling they're doing anywhere from 30 to 500 million in revenue on e-commerce they're looking to come to us to help optimize better customer acquisition better customer retention figuring out new audiences to go after trying to find new offers to go tap into and then the third bucket is companies that are you know massive they generally need like Project based work maybe it's they need a batch of creative to drive installs maybe it's they need presentation or a deck strategy deck on how they're going to sell more of a specific product globally and sometimes maybe it's just like going in and and spending time with their board helping them learn new things or understand how this world of e-commerce really works so it's kind of all over the place but our main focus is really the customer acquisition for brands that are really just looking to scale online and sometimes that also means customer acquisition offline but done through online channels ideally what should be like a launch strategy or like a launch budget or what do you recommend people to start because a lot of people just start and then they fail and then it just like fizzled out so let's say for example I want to do a new mouthwash that will appeal to Jen Z what would be some advice I think there's a lot of ways to do it one way I've seen work successfully time time and time again is you know one you have to make sure the product has something that sets itself apart so let's say this mouthwash has something that no other mouthwash has whether it's around taste or freshness or the actual ingredients inside it or the benefits of what it does does for your gums whatever it may be you know one of the main questions every consumer is asking as they make a purchase is how is this different than anything else that I can buy today in the same product set or category set and if you can't answer that question with something that is jawdropping or makes somebody turn their head then you know you're going to lose that customer to whatever else already has trust and brand trust and brand awareness and all those other things and then one strategy that worked extremely well probably would work well for this too is brands are basically shipping their products to maybe anywhere from 1 to 4 5,000 creators prior to launch giving them taste or a test of the product they use it they post content about it they post as an affiliate probably more ideally on Tik Tok cuz it's the easiest place to get traction and then that becomes sort of the awareness you go to market with and then you start to tweak and understand what works what doesn't work messaging wise creative wise maybe in the shopping experience maybe in how you're speaking about the product or what benefits you're putting forward and then from there you can start to figure out your flywheel it might be that you can rely on just the Affiliates and the organic exceeding model for your first couple million bucks of Revenue maybe your first 5 or 10 and then from there you kick on the paid engine and start using paid to acquire customers it might be that hey we launch with 1,000 or500 creators and then we immediately you know as soon as we start to see it working we jump on the paid flywheel and start to get that funnel to work that's probably how I would start and then you know usually depending on how that goes you can decide which way to go heavier on paid heavier on content maybe you try advertorials maybe you focus on affiliate broadly outside of just Tik Tok anyone listening to this episode so they are a brand and they decide to work with charma Brands is there like a minimum requirements you guys look for in a brand to qualify to work with you guys yeah totally we typically look for brands that are doing at least 15 to 20 million in sales and looking to grow sometimes it's smaller sometimes it's larger it kind of depends if they're smaller then they usually have a pretty clear directive to become a category leader and then if they're larger of course then you know we can get a lot more tactical on the performance side but our whole thing is if you're at least that size or if you're at least spending a couple hundred thousand bucks a month in advertising then it makes sense for us to go and get our hands dirty and try to get as Hands-On and and like tactical as possible and is this like a retainer business model or you guys also like take equity in the companies that you're scaling in my opinion I I would say the equity part would be like much more rewarding yeah we do some like not every brand is is the one we'll take on for Equity but we definitely have some Brands we've taken for Equity or taken a percentage of our Billings as Equity or another thing we'll do is like sometimes if they're raising money then we might invest alongside our engagement of working with them there's also been Brands where like we'll invest and then and then they end up coming back to say hey wait a second you guys invested why don't you guys do our website or why don't you go ahead and do this for us so all different ways to do it I would say in majority of cases we don't take Equity because that also requires us to hopefully ensure that this company is going to be run really well and and has a good Financial outcome on the other side but yeah there's definitely been instances yeah it reminds me of Tim Ferris when he took like advisory shares for Uber and like he had to do some work in return this is a question about personal branding and for anyone trying to run ads on their personal brand like for example not a brand but I want to grow my personal brand and then scale that and eventually launch a product on that brand what advice would you give because I you have been a master at this and you grow your Twitter like so well and in my opinion Twitter followers are worth like 10 or 100 times more than an Instagram follower what was like the inflection point of growing your Twitter like can you give me some advice for that yeah honestly there was no goal with it when I joined a company called hint waterer I would just take whatever would do well that I would run and I'd put it out on the internet and as a result every time I would do it I would get dm'd by a couple of other people saying you know we're trying to do this or we're doing this or hey how' you do this or hey we tried this and it worked really well I want to grab coffee and I just started meeting a lot of cool people and then I was like wait this is a hack I don't have to go to these stupid networking events I can just post what works on the internet and then those people find me like the coolest people will find me so that's kind of how I just did it and then it just grew organically I think when I started doing it I probably had like 15,000 followers on Twitter and then you know just started really focusing on all things sort of direct consumer e-commerce media buying Performance Marketing and it just grew from there but there was there there still is no intent behind any of it I mean if you I I probably haven't tweeted in a long time now cuz I've just been so busy but there's no like schedule there's no goals there's no numbers that are trying to be hit it's just like something works I'm going to post about it and hopefully I'll meet cool people from it I think think when you try to over engineer it it becomes really bad and really corny you become the thread guy yeah exactly you become like the thread guy who's kind of just got the viral fluff stuff but nothing that is uh of true tactical value awesome I just want to ask like how do you devote your time because you seem to be doing like a lot of things writing the newsletter being active on Twitter like speaking at events running the company you have another startup like there's like so much I mean even like thinking about it gives me anxiety like how do you manage all that yeah it sounds like a lot more than it actually is so most of my day from the time I wake up to the time I sleep is focused on charma Brands talking to new brands working with our existing clients building the team working with our team internally all that kind of stuff when I go to the bathroom when I walk to the bathroom and take a piss that's when I'm on Twitter on Saturdays you know I'll wake up and try to find 3 4 hours that's when I do the newsletter and then usually at some point during the week I record a podcast episode and that takes me maybe 60 to 90 minutes to prep for and then another 45 minutes to record so typically like my day is scheduled between 8:00 or 9:00 a.m. to usually like 9:00 or 10 p.m. and then RSE who's my assistant he will decide like basically what I'm doing every 30 minutes like he will literally say in my calendar Nick wakes up at this time Nick gets ready here Nick travels to office Nick works on this list of tasks then jumps on these calls then there's this list of tasks to work on and then you have this meeting and then you work on these three tasks in the last 30 minutes he'll call me if he knows that there's an open a blank spot on my calendar or if he doesn't see that I'm responding to something or whatever or he hasn't heard from me he'll call me he's like hey what are you doing this is what you need to do right now so a lot of it is like kind of having the team around me that helps me make sure I'm working on what I should be working on but you know Sharma Brands is also a team of probably 40 50 plus people so there's a lot that's kind of always going on or or sometimes it's like I can add a little bit of input to something that can give the team maybe two or three people a whole thing to go execute that's oh my God your your VA is incredible by the way I had a chat with him I was like this guy's a machine yeah wow I'm really stoked to hear that you guys are already 40 50 plus a team I'm honestly rooting for you guys to be like one of the biggest ad agencies in the world you guys have for sure found your Niche and like mastered it and one thing I love about everything you do is the design and I noticed like the design is like on point I don't know who the design team is behind the scenes but they're incredible so anyone listening to this having a shitty liic makes care of Shara brand if your if your brand is doing 15 to 20 million minimum Revenue because they can really level up your landing page and take your rant to the next level thank you so much for coming on the show Nick I really appreciate your time hopefully we can do another like recap episode in a year or two to see where where you guys are at would love to do that awesome thank you Nick thank you