w/ Connor Hance, Enhance Pickleball
"Our number one best-selling product… it’s called the Dink Master."
Enhance Pickleball's Connor Hance shares his incredible journey from college tennis player to the leading content creator and entrepreneur in the fast-growing world of pickleball.
🎯 Episode Highlights:
👤 About Connor Hance:
Connor Hance, a former D1 tennis player for UCLA, stumbled into the world of pickleball during the pandemic. What started as a casual interest quickly turned into a thriving business. Today, Connor is known as the #1 content creator in the pickleball community, with his brand Enhance Pickleball dominating both on Amazon and across social media platforms. From his early days taping pickleball courts at his parents’ tennis facility to launching a successful line of pickleball products, Connor’s story is one of passion, perseverance, and smart content strategy.
Kurt Elster
This episode is brought to you in part by Omnisend. Yes, that Omnisend. Alright, Shopfire friends. Are you ready to take your e-comm game to the next level? Then you've gotta check out Omnisend. the go-to tool for supercharging your Shopify store. With OmniSend, you'll be launching pre-built e-com automations in no time. segmenting customers based on their shopping behavior, and even trying out SMS or push notifications, all from the same powerful platform. And that's not all, over 100,000 e-com brands trust OmniSend to drive sales and build stronger customer relationships. Whether you're sending quick to create, highly relevant emails, or targeted texts, OmniSend makes it easier than ever to connect with your audience and convert them into loyal customers. Don't miss out on transforming your Shopify store with Omnisend. Check out we even have a link. It's in the show notes. Your dotomisen. com slash unofficial Shopify podcast. Omnisend. Hey you guys remember Pickleball? Of course you do. Pickleball was like this ridiculous trend during the pandemic. Only it wasn't a fad. Actually I just looked it up on Google Trends. And it it's what you want to see. It doesn't hockey stick on the on the chart, so you know it it's potentially not a fad, but instead it's just slow and steady upward movement. Yes, pickleball somehow uh survived that. It is an ongoing thing. People are more interested in now than you know 2022 when you probably last thought about it when it was top of mind. And so today we have with us someone who claims to be the number one pickleball content creator, who also has a uh a brand, a a Shopify business about pickleball. uh and was a a tennis, a professional uh athlete, I believe. Well, either way, we'll find out. We're joined by Connor Hance from Enhance Pickleball is going to tell us how uh he he cracked the code with viral video content in this space. So Connor, welcome. How are you doing?
Connor Hance
Good. How are you? Thanks so much for having me on the show.
Kurt Elster
Happy to have you here. Okay, Connor. Uh well, I'm sure I got some things wrong. Tell me tell me who is Connor Hans? What's in Hans pickleball? Were you were a professional tennis player?
Connor Hance
So I was a college D1 tennis player. I could probably say that I was a professional, but I was a college player. We're splitting hairs, but I'll I'll accept that. But uh yeah, I was like I was a true college player, so I played D one for UCLA. Growing up, uh played tennis my whole life. My parents, their job was they actually ran a tennis facility. So big part of my upgrading was just, you know, being at the courts, playing, going to tournaments, all that good stuff. And yeah, that brought me to UCLA where I played college.
Kurt Elster
And so from there, how do you end up involved with pickleball? When do you first pick up the the pickleball racket?
Connor Hance
Yeah, so it was 2020 and COVID hit and I had never so it believe it or not, I had never actually heard of what pickleball was. Um and then you started seeing people posting about it and it seemed like Like overnight it was everywhere. And a lot of tennis players were the early adopters. So I think I can't remember. Like I think it was 20, 20, probably November. Me and my friends were all just uh in our, you know, college apartment and we decided to go give it a try. And a lot of us still to this day that went that day play like all the time still. So A lot of tennis players adopted it and yeah, I've sort of just been playing ever since.
Kurt Elster
Hmm. The but from playing it, you know, for being a D one tennis player to playing pickleball. three, four years ago, at what point does this become a business?
Connor Hance
Yeah. So when I graduated, I didn't get a job right out of school. So I went back to my parents' tennis facility that they ran. And I told them that it would be a good business move for them to start, you know, doing pickleball as well. Because you can put pickleball lines on a tennis court very easily. So I actually they don't know anything about pickleball my parents and they didn't really care about it. So I was like, why don't I, you know, put the lines down and start, you know, teaching people because I knew that there was a demand for for people to learn. So my first job out of college was actually I was the head pickleball pro at my parents' uh tennis facility. Um and I literally taped down line. So I like got like masking tape and and that people people wanted to play. There just wasn't enough courts in the beginning. So um yeah, I I started teaching lessons and that was it it became a full-time job.
Kurt Elster
And so your your head trainer, instructor, pickleball professional at this um at your your family's tennis facility. I'm still not at online store business yet. How do we get to enhance pickleball?
Connor Hance
Yeah, so meanwhile I'm learning how to, you know, do Amazon FBA and I had become really interested in e-commerce during college. Me and one of my roommates, my senior year. had become very interested and we started this I started listening to your show. I started I I I made a weighted iMask product that I was selling Amazon FBA. It was it was doing horrible but I learned essentially how to get started. So as I'm coaching all these people, meanwhile I'm trying to do this iMass business and and failing miserably, but I I start, you know, people have they always have questions, what paddle should I get? You know, how can I practice when I'm at home? So the light bulbs start going off and I realized products for pickable are actually pretty easy to manufacture. And there was a light bulb moment where I was like, hmm, I think if I tried a business where I, you know, have a background that is involved in ragged sports and I th I thought everything would be easier. And yeah, it turns out I was right. So I I I started off, you know, launching some products on Amazon for pickleball. And they were pretty, pretty immediately successful. So this is prior to any content or anything. Um prior to even the name Enhanced Pickleball, I just had my Amazon seller account and got some products going and they worked right off the bat. Because I think there's just a huge demand. There was so much demand for Pickleball when it first started going. And there just wasn't enough supply. So things worked out pretty well for me in the beginning there.
Kurt Elster
And What were the initial products that you started with? You said like, hey, these are easier to manufacture, at least seemingly uh easier to manufacture than a weighted eye mask.
Connor Hance
Yeah, exactly. So the first product that I made was actually tape to make the lines on the tennis court. So I had to do that myself and I realized that there was no good tape to do it. So I essentially just took a tape that was for outdoor for marking, you know, like parking spaces outdoors and I made the name for it on Amazon. pickleball court marking tape and immediately we were selling like over a thousand dollars a day uh like right off the bat. Yeah so it was like it was like just I got really kind of lucky with that product Um, and it died off a lot because people started to actually build real quartz. But in that initial phase, it was super successful. I also started making weights for the side of the paddle, which we still sell today. Um, and those were pretty successful too. So it's it's it's really helpful to weight your paddle if it gives you more power and stability. So a lot of people needed that and there just wasn't anyone making it. So there's a lot of products to now every now there's like so many brands making pickleball products. But back then those two products like there was no option.
Kurt Elster
You had the experience with Amazon from the the sleep mask. You were doing uh pickleball training as a job. And so the you had that light bulb. Is this the light bulb moment? Is this the aha moment when you realized that pickleball could be more than a hobby?
Connor Hance
Yeah, like the first so exactly like the first product was more of like let me just see if this works. I didn't really have much faith that I could, you know, go and like make a you know big business out of this. But then once it started selling, I realized, okay, like I can definitely do this full time. I made an L L C and then I mean I created the name Enhanced Pickleball. So that by the time I made my second product, the business was going and like I was full force into it and you know, had the idea that I could make it my full-time thing. So yeah, it it it was sort of like I needed that proof of concept to really um dive into it fully. Um and then yeah, so I stu so once it started going, I stopped applying for jobs and it was I was you know balls to the wall.
Kurt Elster
And once the I just opened up enhancepickleball dot com. And I love there's like just a lovely simple looped video that just shows you the product in action. Tell me what enhanced pickleball, your brand, uh what it sells today.
Connor Hance
Yeah, so our number one best-selling product. So we started off mainly within the training aid. So I wanted to go into a blue ocean to start. So, within golf, within tennis, there's a huge market for training aids. So, we decided at a certain point after the success of our first two products that we were going to get into training aids and educational content. So that sort of became the initial brand for the first two years. Now we sell paddles as well. So we have a paddle that we sell and we're we're just kind of just moving into being like a more normal pickleball brand where we sell everything. But up to this point, most of our success has been from training aids. And our best seller is called the Dinkmaster. So that's probably what you're looking at at our site.
Kurt Elster
Yes, it was the Dinkmaster, which is a fabulous, memorable name
Connor Hance
Exactly, yeah. So in pickleball, there's a shot you hit called the dink where you're hitting it really slowly just over the net. So the dinkmaster is a rebounder board where you can practice that shot at home. um and aim for targets and sort of practice on your own. So the way that I describe it to people is that it's it's essentially the putting green for pickleball. So it gives you a way to play your favorite sport at home while also getting some practice. But I think the main reason people buy it is so that they can just play pickleball when they're alone at home. And, you know, they're they're just obsessed. There's a lot of people that are obsessed with pickleball, so they just love, you know, buying little things like that for it.
Kurt Elster
So when do you start uh like once you've got the Amazon business going and you're like starting to make these products and you see the success Then we move when do you start the Shopify store? How long has this been going?
Connor Hance
Yeah, so we were mainly Amazon for the first six months. So we started like January 2022. Until I want to say June, we were selling 95% on Amazon. In June, I called up my buddy that I had been doing e-commerce stuff with at UCLA. And that's when I had the idea to sort of go into training aids and videos. And he knew how to edit videos and I didn't. So I thought we'd be a good team. He's also very like good with graphic design. There's a lot of skills he had that I didn't have. So I called him up and I decided that we should go into videos and at the same time we started videos, we also uh started driving a lot of traffic to Shopify. So That's sort of when that part of the business opened up. And right when we opened that up, it became a bigger portion of our sales. So ever since then, mainly DTC. Uh we sell on Amazon still, but Shopify's been most of our revenue since that point.
Kurt Elster
But the real magic here is in your content creation. Like if I go, your YouTube channel has 300 videos, 100 million views, and 192,000 subscribers. And it's not like it's just. YouTubers, the the success, a similar thing happens on Instagram as well, where you've got a hundred thousand subscribers or something crazy. What is the when do you start doing the the content marketing with this video editor?
Connor Hance
From the get-go, we decided we were gonna do YouTube. That was the first platform that we wanted to try. I just I I saw that other people were having some success. There was like one other person making videos for pickable And I knew that if I was to make organic content and I put my products in it, I would have no CPA. So I thought, why not try? And I we actually initially didn't start off with educational content. We started experimenting, but I I we we I knew educational content would be something to test. And from from the right off the bat, when we tried educational content, people loved it. And I knew how to coach just because I had been coaching for over a year at that point. So yeah, we we we we we essentially started the content to market our products. But it wasn't like just marketing our products. We made it educational and I knew that a lot of people were learning the game. And yeah, I mean from right off the bat, we were getting, you know, not on YouTube, it it was a it was definitely a momentum thing. Um, but we were getting thousands of views on our videos from the start. And then we started doing short form as well, where we saw success on Instagram. TikTok didn't get successful, I would say, till later. But Instagram we were having some success. And yeah, we just ran with it and you know started trying to seed our products in the videos. And at this point, we had never run a Facebook ad. So With organic content alone in the rest of 2022, by the end in during Q4, we were doing uh over six figures a month in our in our revenue. So it was a really great way to get started.
Kurt Elster
And that's with no paid advertising. This is just content strategy.
Connor Hance
Yeah, we had never run a Facebook ad before.
Kurt Elster
Are you paying to promote the content like on YouTube? You your videos get a lot more views when you give YouTube, you know, several hundred dollars to show them to people.
Connor Hance
No, we we were fully organic. We never paid for for any views or anything on YouTube.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, like these videos get engagement. Oh my gosh, you're so good at coaching. Like they're just they're thrilled. It feels like immediately you would have started to see success with it.
Connor Hance
Yeah, so I think what what made us success was that with our videos Uh in the beginning, I was mainly focused on just growing an audience. I wasn't only focused on selling. So most of our energy was going into, you know, getting subscribers. getting followers and building up momentum. And the way that we were doing that is just by creating like content that was gonna help people improve. You know, aside from all the like gimmicky things you can do in videos to get more engagement. We were primarily focused on how is this video gonna like help someone so that when they go play, they get immediately better and they come back and watch our next video.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, there's no BS in here. There's no just like halfway through you're like, hey, by the way, order some you know, tobacco some snuff and you know, in the beginning it's like you you wouldn't believe this pickleball nearly killed me and then well of course the answer is no. Like the none of the the YouTube clickbait nonsense is occurring here. It is straightforward tutorial content in which you are Well, at least the ones I clicked through, you're coaching someone in a way that felt like, oh, we're also the viewer being coached here. Like the person you're coaching becomes the audience surrogate.
Connor Hance
Exactly, yeah.
Kurt Elster
It's no nonsense, but then it's also like it's well produced, it looks good.
Connor Hance
Yeah, and we tried in the beginning more educational content. Or sorry, more entertaining content. And this is actually what go just work better. And I think for us, I mean for for some markets it might be better to go with the more, you know, entertaining clickbaity content. But with pickleball, our average the average age reviewer is fifty to sixty. So I don't think that they're they don't have that same thing. They want to learn. Yeah. They want to learn. They don't want any BS. They just wanna click on the video and get better. Um and we we we found that out through testing, right? In the beginning we thought we were gonna be doing like vlogging, like we're, you know, Gen Z. We we want that's the kind of content we like. But through testing and trial and error, we realized that People really like just to learn and they like, you know, the no BS style of content, which, you know, has worked well for us for multiple years now.
Kurt Elster
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Connor Hance
Yeah, that's actually funny you ask. I was I was I've always had a crazy fear of public speaking. Oh my. Um so when we started, it was super uncomfortable for me. Even if I was just filming myself alone in a room, I was like very uncomfortable. I had to learn how to speak properly so that it sounded good on camera. And even today, it's still I get a little bit nervous sometimes if there's like other people that aren't usually in the video. But I think like anything, you get used to it, you know? you get comfortable, you get better at talking on camera. You even get better at coming up with things to say on the fly for before I was sort of a little afraid that I wouldn't be able to think of something good. But now it seems like I I've just gotten more practice. So whatever somebody says that they're like not, you know, meant to be on camera, I just tell them just go make a hundred videos and you're gonna feel a lot better about it. Because it's all just practice.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, everything is a skill. The I mean I've shared this on the show before, but the first podcast interview I ever did where I was the guest And just before this we ever did this show, I was drunk. Like I it was like eleven o'clock in the morning, I think, and I took like a shot of whiskey because I was that terrified. Right? Of public speech. We've all been there. Turns out it's like it's actually not that big a deal. It's just, you know, having a conversation with someone. Yeah, there's you don't see the listeners, right? Uh but when you think of it as public speaking, it becomes frightening. Sometimes like if I think too hard about what we're doing here, I'm like, uh, why oh my god. Quite horrifying.
Connor Hance
You just have to learn how to like exact you just need to get used to it and like not make it such a big deal. And it's actually pretty easy to talk about this kind of stuff.
Kurt Elster
Well, it's stuff that you're passionate about, which I think is the big difference, but Do you think you have a framework or just even a sense of what works, an approach for making content that goes viral?
Connor Hance
100%.
Kurt Elster
Walk me through it. Like how how does that work? What is this process?
Connor Hance
It starts off with the type of brand that you have, the type of product that you're trying to sell. So I mean if you're a creator that's not trying to sell something. That you still need to take the same approach, but there's a it's a little more complex when you're also trying to sell a product. So The way that I source content. So in the beginning, you might be able to make a video just by getting lucky that gets a lot of views. You probably have an idea of what makes a video go viral, whether it be super funny, super engaging, or something, you know, ridiculous happens in the video. And you can go viral like that if you just if you think of an idea. The problem is there's a huge momentum piece to to having an Instagram account, to having a TikTok account. So to be able to go viral consistently you need to have some sort of framework or some sort of system for getting viral ideas. So what I do is I essentially go on a content hunt every week. I go through the, you know, I go through my niche on TikTok. I go through nearby niches on TikTok. And I essentially sift through other people's videos to where I can get ideas. So I don't steal their ideas. I essentially use other people's videos to find trends that I can hop on, to find good hooks, to find, you know, topics that I haven't thought of before. And what I do is I make, let's say, 20 pieces of content. I just write them in Google Doc. And after that I go through them and I say, okay, which of these 20 videos has the most evidence that it will one, get views, and two, make me sales? So it's it's a very, you know, the approach to it is very data-driven. And It's not like I'm just thinking of random videos every day that I that I go and write, right? So I think that's that's step one to creating content that consistently gets views. is you need to be data driven and you need to have a good system for generating ideas. So even if you're a super creative person, I don't personally believe that you can just think of viral videos over and over again. without having some sort of external input. You know what I'm saying? So that's the way I think about it. And I can go deeper too in terms of what I'm thinking about throughout that process. Well that's that's the base.
Kurt Elster
What I like about this is how consistent it is with what we've heard from other people. I mean, the in the last two years we interviewed um Disney Dan is this very successful YouTube channel and ended up appearing on a history channel show about Disney World because of it. And hit that with I was like, how do you come up with these consistently amazing videos? And he's like, well, I spend a month watching other people's videos. And that's, you know, based like you quickly identify like this is something that will resonate with people that uh that all and resonates with you as a creator. Like it's gotta have that overlap. Right. Um, you know, if sud if you were trying to make videos about like logarithmic algebra, yeah, it probably wouldn't be quite the same when you know you're not passionate about it. Um I don't know, maybe you love algebra. Are there any tools you use or is it straight up just like you're searching hashtags on TikTok?
Connor Hance
Seeah, so that's actually funny you ask. I I wish there was a tool that I could y find for TikTok or and and for short form content that was good for sourcing But it's honestly pretty easy to just look up, for me I'll look up pickleball and then I'll see the top videos in the last, you know, you can filter actually that for like the most like videos of the last month. On on YouTube, there's actually a tool called View Stats that Mr. Beats made, and that's been insanely uh helpful for finding like good thumbnail and title ideas. True. So what's the name of that one? View stats. It's really good for YouTube. Um with YouTube, like in terms of copying titles and thumbnails or getting ideas, I think it's more important even than on short form. So Mr. Beast made that tool and like I think every creator is using it now just for idea generation and title generation. It's just it's a really it's really helpful. I wish there was something like that for TikTok, but It's I think the TikTok research process, short form research process is a little simpler. So you can you can just do it on the app and that's what I've seen most people doing.
Kurt Elster
That makes sense. And so that's you do that on you're using view stats on YouTube, which a little more directed. TikTok, we're just cruising through it, looking for ideas. Um And then is there like, do you have a threshold? Do you have, is there like a rule of thumb you use where you're like, all right, if it's got over X, you know, KPIs, likes, views, comments, whatever, like that's what I pay attention to.
Connor Hance
Exactly. So you want to get something that probably has more than, you know, a thousand likes. You don't want to copy something that doesn't isn't actually getting exposure. You might like the video, but you want something that's going to get exposure for you. So what I do is I'll search I actually generally look in other niches because I feel like I don't want to copy someone within my own niche or like, you know what I mean? I don't want to steal someone's idea that, you know, is making a very similar style of content to me. So what I'll do is I'll look up golf. That's probably my favorite one to look at. I'll just type in golf or golf tips in the TikTok search bar and You can filter it to the most liked videos of the last month. So most likes, most uses, there's a direct correlation there. So And then I just start scrolling. So not every video is going to be something that I want to, you know, emulate, but maybe the third video I see is, you know, a trend where a guy is, you know, doing something like A a very popular trend lately has been videos where people it they it's like a video of someone, you know, falling off their bike and then the person pops up Like doing a somersault and then they start talking about golf and it's like a very engaging hook.
Kurt Elster
So I'm not copying it's just it's just a visual false premise.
Connor Hance
L Exactly, exactly. It's so dumb, but it's it they're they're going viral all over the place. So that's something that we I saw a golf guy doing that and he gave a golf tip. So I got the idea to do that and give a pickleball tip. So I'm not copying his video. I'm just getting an idea of what made his video get used and how I can make that happen on my channel. So you can do that and you can scroll for as long as you want and you'll and what I do is I just keep I write down everything that I see and I try to write down how I would do a video based on that. So Like I said, I'll probably write down 20, 30 videos. And then at the end of that session, the content hunting session, I go back to my Google Doc and I start eliminating the ones that I don't think are gonna be on brand or that I don't think are gonna, you know, apply to my channel as well. So then you end up with just a few that are going to work very well if you do things that way.
Kurt Elster
The and then how often do you repeat this process?
Connor Hance
So generally we do I do that about once a week. So we film probably once every one or two weeks. And if we you know if we're on a one-week cadence, we'll make probably five videos. And two weeks we'll make 10 videos. So we don't post every single day on short form, but I'd say like almost every single day. But we take breaks from time to time if we have, you know, a lot of other stuff to work on. Uh but what's cool is we only spend about one day a week doing this. So it's not like a huge time constraint for us. You know, if we usually do it on Monday. So I'll Sunday night spend an hour doing the the content hunting and then Monday morning we'll go make all the videos. Doesn't take very long and then by Monday at lunch we're done for the week.
Kurt Elster
All right, so let's talk about the videos themselves. Once we've got the idea, we've identified the topic, the you know, you you mentioned a hook. Um yeah, that that false premise hook. What that's how the video starts. How do you craft hooks that capture intent attention? What are you looking for? Or is it just like there's certain trends you gotta follow
Connor Hance
Exactly. So the way that I think of hooks, so there's two types of hooks. There's visual hooks and there's text or like copywriting sort of hooks that you'd see on like a magazine or something. So I try now to get my hooks from trends or from, you know, other creators. A lot of time the hook i in the topic are essentially you know, the same thing. Like for instance that, you know, the jump cut hook where you get, you know, you fall off your bike. That's it's the hook is tied into the topic of the video. But a lot of the time you can also do what I would call a copywriting hook where you'd write a headline. Put it at the top of the video, and it's also the first thing that you'd say. So you don't necessarily have to, you know, get that idea from somewhere else But what I think what's really important to keep in mind is that you have to have something in the first three seconds of your video that's going to grab people's attention. For us, it's very unlikely that it's going to get that much exposure because the what's a very important metric on short form is the thumb stop rate. So that's how many people stayed for more than three seconds. So Whenever you're making any video, you have to be thinking what's going to stop people from scrolling. So it could be a visual hook or it could be a copywriting hook. Or it could be both. So a lot of time I try to do both. For example, I'll say these are the three best pickable serves that you need to have in your game. And while I'm saying that, it'll show me hitting some sort of trick serve or something that's going to grab people's attention. So you combine the two together. But what's important is that you're doing something that stops them. And the other thing though, like I said, the topic is tied to the hook. So the topic of your video needs to be something that people actually care about or that they want to learn or that they're gonna, you know, think is funny. If you're talking about something, even if it's within your niche, if it's not something that people want to know, They're gonna leave the video because people's attention spans are really short now. They need to one, you need to grab their attention, but you also need to keep their attention with a topic that they actually want to hear about. So you can get ideas for that from from other creators as well. Or I mean if you're an expert in your field you probably know some of the stuff that people want to know.
Kurt Elster
Well, once you've got that hook figured out, and like we've nailed that three seconds, and there's some testing, but you know, largely we're gonna leverage what we can find working for other people. What about the structure of the video? You know, like we got past those first three seconds. How long is the video? Is it, you know, is there any structure in it to try and maintain um the viewership, the retention rate?
Connor Hance
Exactly, exactly. So a lot of people I've seen when they're newer creators, they they veer towards talking head videos where it's just you talking right at the camera. But what I'm seeing on short form is that a lot of the videos that are doing well are in that format. That's not to say you can't succeed with the talking head video, but what I would do, I would look within your niche and within other people's niche. or other niches and see what styles are working for them. So for us, a lot of the videos that do well are text on the screen with nar narration. So The video that you're seeing is me hitting a bunch of different shots. You're seeing text on the screen, which is pretty much subtitles, and I'm talking in the background. So we found that out just by seeing other people do that, and we gave it a test, and it worked for us. So you need to be when you're when you're doing your content hunt, you should tie the topics that you find or the hooks that you find. You should tie them in with the style of video. So maybe it's Narration, maybe there's no talking, it's only text on screen, maybe it's pictures, right? Or it could be talking head, but you need to keep in that in mind You also should keep the length of the video in mud. So the length of the video is probably the most underrated aspect of getting views. Depending on your niche or depending on what you're saying, or in depending on the specific video, a a specific length is going to be best for our style of content. We've noticed that if we ever make anything over 30 seconds, usually not always, it'll do worse. So we've determined that we like to make videos that are around 20 seconds. So that's probably something that you'll get from testing videos on your own channel or your own, you know, account. Or you'll you'll see other creators doing it. But it's really important that you keep the length of the video in mind and that you don't, you know, put anything unnecessary in there. Because you can make a one minute video go viral and a lot of people are trying to make one minute videos on TikTok and Instagram. But it's a lot harder to make the entire one minute video engaging than to make a 20-second video engaging. So look at what other people are doing, but you also need to keep in mind that the algorithm definitely favors the shorter videos.
Kurt Elster
So the okay. Which we figured, but and the other problem is these things change over time This episode is sponsored in part by Clever Ific. How many times have you had to deal with the headache of a customer needing to change their order after it's been placed? Isn't it a hassle to manually adjust order details like shipping addresses or Hant sizes. Well what if I told you that those days could be over? That's where Cleverific comes in. With Cleverific, you can empower your customers to make their own changes Through a self-service portal, or make it easier for your team to handle those complex adjustments directly from the back end. Peter Manning, New York. Th cut their order support queries by a staggering ninety-nine percent after integrating Cleverific. And they're not alone. Cleverific is designed to reduce customer support tickets, ship orders faster, and even reduce returns and lost packages. Listeners of this show get fifty percent off Clever Effect's PROPLAN, dropping your cost to just forty-nine dollars a month with full access to all of their features. Just go to clever effect. com slash unofficial and use the promo code podcast fifty at checkout to claim your discount. Streamline your operations with Cleverific, dramatically cut down on customer support inquiries, expedite shipping, and minimize returns. Cleverific. com slash unofficial. Within your content, how are you balancing education and like actually selling the product, right? You gotta pitch it. You gotta have product placement. What's the trick here? Because that seems to be It's not that it's not successful, but it could it's a turn-off versus, you know, content that's purely entertaining or educational.
Connor Hance
Yeah, so what you need to keep in mind is that people When they're scrolling when you're scrolling on TikTok, the last thing you're thinking is, oh, I want to really be sold a product right now. You're not you don't you don't want to be sold a product.
Kurt Elster
So I just I would love to have a hard sell right now.
Connor Hance
I really want to be exactly people when when somebody sees an ad on TikTok, it's like someone coming to knock on your door to sell you pest control. You know, your first reaction is to swipe off immediately. So there's an art to making a video that sells a product that also is engaging and doesn't make someone want to leave. So the way that I think about this, and there's there are many schools of thought. I'd say most brands, their TikTok account, every single video is talking about their product, and every video is maybe maybe they're trying to be funny talking about the product, but I view this in there's four different styles of videos that you can have in relation to your product. So the first is an ad. So a video where you're talking about your product the whole time. The second is a video where you're giving some sort of some external benefit, but you mention your product. So for me that would be I give a pickable tip and then I mention that my product can help with this pickable tip. So it's I'm giving a a tip that's not related to my product. But I'm also talking about my product. The third type of video is you're giving some, you know, benefit, but you're not talking about your product. You're just using your product. So let's say you're selling a spatula and you're making a cooking video where you're using the spatula, but you don't necessarily mention the spatula as, you know, you're selling the spatula, but you know, it's in the video and people might choose to buy it because they see it in the video. Um so yeah, those are the those are the main um the main three. And then you could also just make a video in relation to your niche without even mentioning your topic or using your topic. So the way that I think this is You depending on what your niche is or what your product is, you need to decide what like type of content you're trying to make. So for me I like to make content that is to help people. So I like to make content that's gonna help people improve. So I don't think every video should even mention my product because I want to create authority and I want people to trust that my my coaching is good. So, not every video I make is meant to sell. Some of the videos I make are meant to gain trust. So I actually cycle through all four of those different styles. I think depending on what you're selling, what your product is, what your niche is, you have to decide which of those you're going to use. And it's totally fine if you just want to make an ad every single time. But what you need to know is that it's very hard to build up a following if you're just trying to sell really hard in every video because like I said, people don't only want to be sold to. So you have to decide beforehand. And there's a lot of examples in terms of creators that do different variations of this. So one, one that I think does this very well is, you know, ScrubDaddy, the sponge company.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, the sponge, like the smiley face on it.
Connor Hance
Exactly. They're not selling in every video, but every single video is about their product in some way. You know, whether it be funny, whether it be, you know, them cleaning something with it, right? An external example or a different example would be liver king. So liver king, do you know who liver king is? No So Liverking is this crazy content creator who's like super, you know, muscular and jacked, and he he makes content about, you know, how to live under these ancestral pillars that he created. Um he pretty much follows, you know, like a paleo diet and he does a lot of the carnivore stuff. Most of his videos he's just talking about that. He's talking about what he's eating for the day. And it's kind of just ridiculous and extreme, and it's sort of funny what he's doing. But in the background, he's also has his own supplement brand and it does really well on Amazon. He only mentions the brand occasionally. It's probably in one out of every five videos at most. But he's built up such a massive following talking about the other stuff that it's, you know, it's he still sells a lot of his supplements. in his in the in the few videos that he mentions it. So that's a different approach. That's sort of more what I do. I do a lot of videos where I'm just coaching. And then, you know, maybe every three or four I'll throw in a video that I talk about my product. And that's proven to been be the best for me because I've been able to build up a huge following and I'm also selling. So I don't know if I would have been able to build up the same following had I just been selling in every video. Because you can see when I when I Post a video about my product, the following rate, the amount of people that follow me per view drops drastically. Right? Because you have to be in in incentivizing people to follow your account. And in videos that I talk about my product, I'm incentivizing them to go on my website and purchase. So I think there's a push and pull. Um but it's really just about finding what works for you. You just have to know, you know, have these things in mind.
Kurt Elster
So when you upload a video, what metrics are you looking at? What how do you determine if it's successful?
Connor Hance
To start, I think you need to be make sure that you know how to get exposure and know how to know how to get views. I think if you're getting 200 views on your you know Instagram reel, it doesn't matter if there's an ad in there. There's not enough people that are gonna see it to where they'll buy. So the first thing you wanna look at is am I getting some exposure? And every every you know account's gonna get a different level of exposure. But I'd say you should be able to get a few thousand views per video consistently in order to make this work. If you're getting five hundred views every video, you're it's not gonna make enough sales to where I think it's worth your time. So to start, you should test out can I make videos that get used? After that, you look at your videos that where you have products and You need to see, can I drive traffic? So on Shopify, right, you can see, you know, the basic, or you can go on Google Analytics. You can see generally how much traffic you're it's not going to be perfect, but you can see how many people you're driving to your site. So that's step two. Can I make a video that not only gets views, but also drives traffic to my site? And then of course the last part is can I make sales? So It's it's it actually is challenging in the beginning, I'd say, to get all three of those together. But I think you have to learn like how how hard of a CTA should I put in the video? You know, where should I put my product in the video? What type of video should I put in my product? And depending on what style of video you're making, your results are going to be different. So for me, if I make a video where I'm talking only about my product, I'm gonna be happier with less views because a video that's solely focused on my pro on my product is gonna drive more traffic to my site versus if I'm giving a tip and talking about my product. So depending on how hard you're advertising, you're going to see different results with those three, you know, different characteristics. But it's really just about You need to have some element of all three, right? So you need to figure out what the recipe is for getting all three on your account.
Kurt Elster
Inverse of that question. What are the common pitfalls you see other people making, or maybe you made you made them yourself early on, where like you see a video and you go, oh man, I know why this isn't gonna work.
Connor Hance
I'd say the f the number one pitfall I see from other e-commerce people that are making content is they just they're advertising, they're selling way too hard. They're not making the videos entertaining enough, and they're just trying to use content. as a means of making money, right? So I think that you need to come into this with the approach that you're making an entertaining video that includes your product. Not you're making a video all about your product that might be a little bit entertaining. So that I would say is the main one. Um also just you need to you need to go into this with a system You can't a lot of people just start making videos and they don't do any sort of research on what topics they should use. They just they think of the ideas, which if you're a creative person, like I said, you can think of some good ideas, but Odds are your ideas aren't going to be what's already viral in TikTok. So like I said, you can think of something viral, but you're not going to be able to outthink what's already viral. It's it's pretty hard to do that.
Kurt Elster
So that you've been at this uh three, four years. How how has content creation changed? Because it it moves pretty rapidly.
Connor Hance
Yeah, I'd say there's more competition now. So I think it's probably a little bit harder to get started. But I think that momentum is now more valuable. So You can start posting, right? And even if you're not getting a ton of exposure off the bat, the more followers that you get, the more people that you get seeing your videos, people become very comfortable watching the same creators over and over again. So momentum is definitely a real thing. I think in the beginning of TikTok and of, you know, Instagram reels, you could go viral immediately and really get things going. Now it takes more consistency for sure. So you definitely need to put in more time and get on the schedule of posting to really start to get the momentum. But The good thing is if you do that, right, like now when I post a video on Instagram Reels, even if it's just me, you know, if it's a horrible video, it'll probably still get at least 10,000, 20,000 views. So you kind of get a baseline to where the the content becomes more worth it because even if I make a terrible ad right now that no one wants to see 20,000 people are gonna see it and the the algorithm you build up trust with your followers and with the algorithm. So Things start to work more in your favor. Where before I think it was just random, like one video would get a million views, and then you'd get no exposure for 20 videos. So Can be a little bit more methodical with it now.
Kurt Elster
It sounds like when you're starting out, you have to prove yourself. And then over time, you just need to maintain that momentum.
Connor Hance
Exactly. Yeah. I'd recommend to anyone starting out that they go through a testing phase in terms of try trying a bunch of different styles of content. And then once you get what's working, just stick with it for a long period of time. And you should see, you know, there'll be fluctuations for sure. And there might be periods where it falls off. But if you're adjusting and you're consistently coming up with new, you know, good ideas, things should steadily progress upwards.
Kurt Elster
What's one piece of advice you wish you had when you got started? Because you've been filled with great advice here, but like what's the one thing you're like, man, I wish I knew that in 2021.
Connor Hance
You either learn the hard way or you learn from someone else who learned the hard way. So when I started out, whether it be within the business or the content, I made a ton of mistakes that were setbacks. Now I and I've learned from them, but I think we could have moved a lot quicker had someone that was further ahead of me you know, essentially told me to watch out for that. So the biggest thing that I'm trying to do going forward is get advice from people that are ahead of me, whether it be with content, whether it be with, you know, any part of of the business. I think that Learning from someone that's done it before and that's better than you is the fastest way to to improve. And it's it's like a sport, right? If you imagine how hard it would be to go pro in a sport if you didn't have a coach. There's been like a consistent, you know, people learning from from each other over generations. And now when you start off playing any sport, there's someone to teach you exactly what not to do. Where in business, I think a lot of people are sort of just, you know throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. And there's stuff on the internet that you can learn from, but you can't really beat learning from someone that's that's further ahead.
Kurt Elster
Where where are you finding these connections today?
Connor Hance
That's a good question. So I'm not the best networker by any means. And so I've actually done a lot of uh I've I've paid a lot of people to to give me advice. So I go on my favorite sites, Mentor Pass. There's some there's other sites like that though where you can literally just book entrepreneurs that you know they could be in your exact field you can book them for 30 minutes for an hour and I'll just write down all the questions I have and I've I've talked to a lot of different founders. It's that's been one of the most helpful things to where You know, you don't have to go begging for someone, you know, to help you for free. You can they're there doing it for money and it's a little pricey, but it's it's so worth it because you can get every all your questions answered on a regular basis. We sort of just factor that into, you know. RP and L now on a monthly basis that I'm gonna be, you know, paying X amount for consulting from these more experienced founders. And I've done it with more experienced creators too for for content. And You can learn a lot in 30 minutes if you ask the right questions. So these are these are things that will, you know, skyrocket your growth in terms of your knowledge. The I believe it.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, you're right. There is if you just want to ask somebody a question, a you can find them on social media, but a system like, you know, they may or may not pay attention to you But yeah, systems like MentorPass or similar ones, I mean they're everyone on there is raising their hand and voluntary could say, hey, I would love to answer your question. And you don't have to feel guilty about it because you're paying them for their time. It's a great system.
Connor Hance
Exactly. The other thing I'd recommend is there's a lot of there's definitely I mean if you're in a big city, I I live in LA. There's a lot of dinners and founder events that they're usually free. that you can go to to meet other founders. A lot of the time they'll be, you know, around the same, you know, level as you. But sometimes you'll meet people that are ahead of you in, you know, one thing or another. And it's a good way to just make friends. I I think as an entrepreneur, it's your job to have the ability to text people. to answer questions for you immediately if you have something that you can't figure out. So the way you do that is you make friends that are doing the same thing as you. And you have you'll ha you'll end up having a lot of things in common. So it'll be easy to be friends with them, easy to talk with them. Um so the combination of that plus sites like Mentor Pass where you can pay for advice for me has been enough to get all the knowledge that I need to to grow.
Kurt Elster
You know, I'm actually I joined MentorPass. Uh This year? I believe this year.
Connor Hance
I think I've done I'm gonna book you.
Kurt Elster
I've done like five calls.
Connor Hance
Yeah.
Kurt Elster
It's great.
Connor Hance
It's really, it's really helpful.
Kurt Elster
Man, you should be on MentorPath. You've got all this content creation knowledge.
Connor Hance
Maybe, yeah, maybe I'll join now. I'll I'll flip the I'll flip the rules.
Kurt Elster
I think I similar to to what you've been saying, I I think you could help a lot of people. The um yeah, no, this has been really helpful. What's next for enhanced pickleball?
Connor Hance
Yeah, so we're we're trying to grow and become the biggest pickleball brand that we can. Like I said, we just recently started making paddles. So Entering a bigger portion of the market. Training aids is is more of, you know, side thing. And paddles is the biggest product. So we're starting to make bunch of different types of paddles and we're really expanding our product line. We're going to continue making content. And in the future we might actually expand into some other sports like tennis, other racket sports, because there's a lot of overlap between racket sports. Uh so yeah, we're just gonna keep rolling and pickleball, keep trying to make the best content that we can, and keep making products.
Kurt Elster
Fantastic. Uh Connor Hans, thank you. for sharing your experience with us with Enhanced Pickleball, uh and and being so open about, well, a lot of learnings, but a lot of effort. that went into growing a a huge YouTube channel and an audience on uh Instagram and and TikTok. Congratulations. It'd be really phenomenal place to be at your age. Yeah, thanks so much.
Connor Hance
Thanks so much for having me on the show.
Kurt Elster
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