Can you build a multi-million dollar business on social media alone? This week’s guests prove that when you build a tribe of loyal women, anything is possible. Amanda Kruse is the Founder of Discount Divas, a booming e-commerce business who figured out how to harness the power of social selling through Facebook groups, but she had a secret to help her scale. Her husband Brandon happened to be a talented startup founder who built a solution to a key problem Amanda, and numerous retailers have selling on social media. Enter Comment Sold.
These two live and demonstrate the spirit of Community Over Competition, and have a pretty unique story to share about how Amanda’s business took off, on it’s own, and Brandon helped solve a roadblock to scale. Then, began to share this method with others in the same space, selflessly.
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ABOUT BRANDON & AMANDA
Amanda is a former ER Nurse, turned fashion entrepreneur, who launched Discount Divas to find an affordable and convenient option to shopping for things she loved. Together, with a group of girlfriends who loved to shop, she launched the business from a Facebook group which quickly went viral. Amanda’s keen ability to buy smart and run an efficient business, has helped scale Discount Divas into a business model that few had seen before.
Brandon is a serial entrepreneur with a history of founding, operating and exiting successful businesses. Brandon started as a programmer at the age of 15 at a telecom company called Digium. He subsequently founded DialMaxx, which was acquired by magicJack (NASDAQ: CALL) a month before his 21st birthday. Brandon has since founded several other companies, including HuntsvilleWest – a startup incubator with 24 companies, Ploid.io – a human genome data storage platform, and more recently, CommentSold.
Together, this dynamic duo is changing the retail game.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Failures are where you learn the most.
- Just because it’s been done before, doesn’t mean it can’t be done different.
- Make buying easy and personal.
- Amanda hired her first employee before she quit her full time job.
- 100 superfans are more important than 10,000 followers.
- DO: keep money in the bank. DON’T: run money through the bank.
- Cash in isn’t the important metric, efficiency is.
- Store cash away when you have great margins.
SHOW NOTES
05:20 – Brandon’s background.
10:40 – The start of Discount Divas.
17:34 – One of Amanda’s biggest pieces of advice.
20:00 – Embracing #CommunityOverCompetition.
26:25 – Launching CommentSold.
27:50 – How Divas prices are so low.
35:05 – What successful stores on CommentSold have in common.
40:30 – Secret sauce to build electricity in your Facebook group.
47:05 – Leveraging your audience over multiple platforms.
52:55 – What it’s like working with your spouse.
Links to Brandon & Amanda’s favorite podcasts & books:
Amanda’s Favorite Podcast Episode: Sara Blakely on James Altucher’s Podcast.
Brandon Book: “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products” by Nir Eyal
Brandon Podcast: James Altucher
FOLLOW DISCOUNT DIVAS & COMMENT SOLD:
Discount Divas Boutique Hub Profile
Facebook Group
iPhone App
Comment Sold Boutique Hub Profile
Website
Facebook Page
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Original Air Date: March 6, 2018
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