“If no one's clicking your ads, you're not making them feel anything.”
Kyle Hale spent a year teaching himself to draw so he could start Ambitious Kids, a T-shirt company for children. His designs have a retro midwestern vibe that has a way of sparking conversations. Still early in his journey, Kyle is open about the struggles he's faced starting his brand, and the lessons he's learned in the process.
The Unofficial Shopify Podcast
2/15/2022
Kurt Elster: Today, on The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, we are talking to a gentleman who has made clothes for my toddler. Wait, hold on. That’s not quite right. He has designed his own t-shirt line and it is so adorable, we dressed our daughter in his clothes, and it is the… She has a pizza power shirt. It is the cutest thing ever. Today, we are talking to the owner, founder, entrepreneur behind AmbitiousKids.com, and Ambitious Kids is a brand that started in the pandemic and has now grown, and is successful, and is evolving, and it is such a cool story, and he’s just starting, and so I wanted to dive into it and hear some of these early learnings from someone who started a store in a difficult time and has been able to succeed and grow a brand in a really competitive space.
Apparel, t-shirts, that’s hard, because the barrier to entry is fairly low now. And so, I’m joined by Kyle Hale, Minneapolis-based entrepreneur who went from sales exec, to tech COO, to eCommerce brand owner, and dad, founder of Ambitious Kids, a clothing line making graphics tees, hoodies, and baseball tees reflecting the big personality of Earth’s littlest humans.
I’m your host, Kurt Elster.
Ezra Firestone Sound Board Clip: Tech Nasty!
Kurt Elster: Kyle, thank you for joining us.
Kyle Hale: Thanks, Kurt. I love the Tech Nasty, and I have to just ask, how is the queen, also known as Mrs. Tech Nasty? How’s she doing?
Kurt Elster: Mrs. Tech Nasty, Mrs. Elster, going strong. It’s a weird… You know, because everything she does is travel based, and so it’s such a weird time for it where it just really like waxes and wanes with what COVID is currently doing. Like we were in the theme parks, and then, oh, it’s like Omicron hit. I don’t know. It’s been up and down, truthfully.
Kyle Hale: I think it’s so interesting how some brands got these massive tailwinds from the pandemic and some had massive headwinds, and I think in the end all will balance out, but I have some friends that are in the space of repping brands and getting them into Target and Best Buy, so they own like rep firms, and those big retailers are headquartered here in Minneapolis, and the tailwinds they got just blow my mind. Some had such big tailwinds that they ended up with exits during the pandemic.
And you have someone like Mrs. Tech Nasty who has a Disney travel-based business who obviously had some headwinds because, well, nobody was going to Disney for a while there. But I think she’ll come out ahead here in the not-too-distant future.
Kurt Elster: I hope so. Traffic’s trending up. She’s starting to get her commission and affiliate payments again, so that’s good.
Kyle Hale: Good.
Kurt Elster: And thank you for asking. I appreciate it. But we’re here to discuss you, sir. What the heck is Ambitious Kids? What is this brand?
Kyle Hale: It’s really, it’s something that I started kind of after… what I kind of call my former life a little bit now. I was in the tech space, venture-backed tech space, and wanted to kind of shed that skin to a degree and start something different, and it’s really a brand that’s centered around recognizing I think the personality of, like you said, Earth’s youngest humans, which is just so interesting to me to watch them develop, and the way their personalities develop, and your observations as a parent, and so it’s a brand that really takes graphic design, I design all the shirts myself, and screen print those designs that reflect that personality and family culture onto t-shirts, and baseball tees, and hoodies now, and I think that line will continue to evolve.
So, that’s really what it is.
Kurt Elster: What was the impetus? What was the thing that made you say, “I should pursue this.”
Kyle Hale: I think it was a few different things. One was that I always had this strange notion that when I had a kid, I would do something, and I had no idea what that meant. I didn’t know that that was going to be a clothing brand. But where I do really well is when I’m close to market, you know? So, like in my past where I’ve had success, whether it was with BiteSquad, which was a restaurant delivery system based out of Minneapolis that we sold, like I can order food, right? And I love ordering food, and I love food, so I can be close to market with that, so I think when I can kind of shape shift and be part of the market is when I do well because I think that just comes through in your work then.
So, I think that was part of it, and then I had the kind of mental space to take a break after we sold BiteSquad to decide what was next, and I just… Sky was born in February of 2018, so he’s almost gonna be four here at the end of February of 2022. And I just was kind of like these ideas just were kind of chirping at me of like just observing his personality and I enjoyed the ritual of dressing him, and I noticed that if he had a fun shirt on or a fun outfit on, like either it was a statement shirt, or just had a great design, it could kind of make things a little more lighthearted during the day in a tough moment, and or people would interact with him out in the world if they liked what he was wearing.
So, then I just started kind of a spreadsheet literally of ideas that I had and that’s where you’d see things like master of negotiation, where I just was like, “I can’t believe how many deals this two-year-old is trying to swindle from the moment he wakes up to the time we go to bed,” whether it’s like, “No, I want to put my socks on before my pants.” Or like, “One more smoothie this morning,” or, “One more book at night,” and it's just like never ending. And so, I couldn’t believe how much negotiating he was doing, and as someone with a sales background I just found that kind of fascinating, so then all these ideas just kind of came to life and that was kind of why the brand started, and then as I started making beta shirts, which originally I just did print on demand, so whether it was master of negotiation or some of the more simple designs, I just printed through Printful before I kind of went full on, and inventorying, and working with screen printers here.
As I was developing the brand, these beta shirts, when he would wear them out in the wild, people were commenting on them like without fail, and I was like, “Well, this is kind of cool that depending on what you dress your kid in, that can spark a positive interaction out in the world and get a smile, or a laugh, or a conversation.” And that kind of then became a little bit of the mission, was especially in such a contentious time the last few years, both politically, and with COVID, and all these things, the idea that someone with completely different views than I may have, we can still center around like we all want our kids to be the best they can be and to have good interactions and experiences.
So, then that kind of fueled the really like, “Hey, I’m gonna go all-in on this, inventory product, not do print on demand, and just really make this a true brand.”
Kurt Elster: In your background here, you go sales executive, tech CEO, t-shirt designer, right? Did you have an artistic background?
Kyle Hale: Just one correction, I was our COO, not our CEO of BiteSquad.
Kurt Elster: COO. Sorry. Even reading it, I keep saying CEO. It’s like just habit.
Kyle Hale: That’s all right.
Kurt Elster: COO. There we go.
Kyle Hale: So, I think this is an interesting topic in that I think people sometimes put their skills in a bucket and just keep it there instead of seeing it as a more fluid thing, so if you look at my drawings as a kid, they’re pretty bad. Actually, they’re really bad. But if you look at when I… Like I have story projects from when I was a little kid that my mom gave me a box of a few years ago, and when I would write stories, like if there was a class project, I can see the collection of stories of other kids and then mine next to theirs, because that was kind of how they printed these projects out. You could kind of see all the kids’ stories.
And mine were always different, like the drawings weren’t very good, but the story was good. And it was different than the take that maybe the other kids had, whereas like maybe the other kids kind of all did the same story, I had a different take. A different view of it. And I was always strong with words, so you might say, “Well, someone who can’t draw, there’s no way they’re gonna start a t-shirt brand and draw the designs.” But what I was good at was like taking words and images and meshing them together to make something that gets a reaction out of people.
So, I think that’s where you can maybe sometimes get lost in a lane of like, “Well, I can’t draw.” Well, okay. Well, you could probably learn that and get most of the way there and because you are strong with words, and visuals, put them together, you can make something.
Kurt Elster: Absolutely. It’s easy to have limiting beliefs that hold you back on things. And one is I can’t do that, because I don’t have that skill. This is a thing you see with kids. It’s like, “Well, I tried it and immediately I was not amazing at it, and therefore I’m bad at it and I should never try.” Right? It’s like if I’m not instantly good at it, I should give up. And that’s such a limiting belief. And when you put it that extreme, it makes it sound silly, but we do this to ourselves all the time.
And in this case, it sounds like you knew like, “All right,” you knew you couldn’t make the… You could come up with the creative idea and you could communicate it, but you couldn’t necessarily create the final output, the technical output required to print it on a t-shirt. How did you come to accept that and come up with a solution there?
Kyle Hale: Well, I think what’s so fantastic about now and to anyone listening to this that was like me, and I listened to this show as I was developing the concept, Kurt, so thank you for putting this stuff out there, because I think it’s important to hear other stories to motivate you, and then I think there’s a period of time, then, where you have to say like, “Okay, I’ve heard enough stories. Now I need to take action myself.”
And so, I had this period of time where I listened to a ton of podcasts around eCommerce, and then I just went dark and I didn’t listen to anything and I said, “Okay, I gotta get to work now and I gotta draw.” And so, my thought to all those people out there that are thinking about doing something is there is now, with the gig-based economy, and kind of outsourced services, someone like me with no drawing experience can learn how to draw well enough to get a design like 80, 90% of the way there, and then work with someone like Design Pickle or an outsource graphic designer to say, “Hey, can you help me polish this and get it?”
So, I think to me it was like, “All right, I can see what I want in my head, and I have inspirational creative out there that I’m basing this design off of.” And now I can work with somebody to get it there, so to me it was just like there’s enough resources now around in the gig economy and other places where you can take that raw idea and bring it to life with the help of some other people.
Kurt Elster: There are two lessons here. One is it’s important to be prepared, but preparation at some point becomes procrastination, where you’re just permanently in this research and development phase in which you’re gathering more and more info and you’re learning more and more, and you essentially… At some point, the scale tips and you’re… Instead of doing, now you’re not researching anymore. You’re just coming up with more and more reasons as to why you shouldn’t. I often wonder if I were to start over, had I known more about the journey I was about to go on, would I have done it? Did I know… Not knowing what I didn’t know, is that what saved me? Is that what enabled me?
And so, I think it’s a thing to ponder if you’re like you’ve been researching, you’ve been thinking about it for 18 months, 24 months, like at what point do you just pull the trigger and try it? And certainly, experience is the best teacher. And then to your other point, wow, the amount… We live in a golden age of information that also includes interconnecting people and services. That gig economy, tremendously helpful for building a lot of the things that most of us can’t do on our own, be that a logo or a t-shirt design.
Kyle Hale: And you know, and you’re pumping money into other people’s businesses when you do that, like I’ve supplied a lot of probably paychecks to the screen printers I work with, and to the graphic designers I’ve worked with, and that feels really good too, like I don’t… It’s just me, right? I have some shipping help with some local college kids that do a great job for me, but outside of that, it’s just me. I’m a single founder-led business.
Kurt Elster: You had some good advice for new store owners in there, which is really like, “Hey, just get started,” and the things that you can’t do, you can hire out on a short-term basis to knock those objections out of the way. Any other advice? Because it’s relatively recent. You started this not that long ago.
Kyle Hale: Yeah. Just celebrated my first year. I think one really important lesson is to work with what you have. When you’re starting and you don’t have… Let’s say whatever the case is. Maybe you don’t have a lot of cash to put in the business, or you don’t have a fancy videographer, or whatever it may be. Work with what you have. So, like I have this office space that you can kind of see behind me here. It’s an old warehouse space. I thought, “Wow, there’s great natural light in here. I’m gonna buy a camera, learn how to use a camera.” So, I take all my own photos. I have a son who I can put shirts on when it’s convenient and get pictures of him for some on-model shots.
I have my personal skills, which is using words and creativity. I have knowledge of email marketing. Just my own personal skills I’ve developed over time, so I think be comfortable in working with what you have and don’t worry about making the perfect thing. So, I think that’s one really important lesson. Then a second I would say is don’t do exactly as your competition does. And this kind of goes into marketing a little bit, so I think to stand out, at the end of the day I think a lot of marketers forget that marketing is really just feelings. It’s getting… It’s doing something that gets people to feel something and to take action.
And so, when I think of parents, which is kind of my core customer, they’re on the couch, whatever, they’re watching Bachelor in Paradise or something on a Monday night, and they’re scrolling and they’re scrolling. Well, if they see a flat lay of a t-shirt with some little kid’s tchotchke next to it, which everybody is kind of doing, then it just becomes more of the same. Scroll, scroll, keep moving. So, do something that stands out.
For me, that was really crisp photography where the product is the star, really up close, and my brand is kind of about big colors. Bright, big contrast of the ink against the fabric of the shirt. And so, to me that was my differentiator and no one else was really doing that. Everybody was kind of doing the same thing, so I think that’s where I found some success. So, I’d say like… Yeah, two of those things. Work with what you have and be comfortable with that, and then two is don’t do the same thing that everybody else is doing. Find something that’s true to you, and your creativity, and let that shine through and stand out so people can feel something and take action.
Kurt Elster: Certainly that authenticity is what makes or breaks people, especially in… I think it’s more important than ever. One of the other struggles that people have early on is how do you get those first sales? Where did you get your first sales?
Kyle Hale: So, I let friends and family know, of course, at first, but I just kind of viewed that as like, “Okay, that’s just like a box you check because you want to get some transactions coming through.” But I was like, “Okay, I’m gonna learn Facebook ads.” I’m gonna learn Facebook and Instagram ads on my own. And I had never done that before. I’d built big teams to lead that charge for other companies that I’ve either co-founded or been a part of, but I’d never been in Ad Manager, pulling the gears on my own, and going back to kind of that outsourced service is what I did was I hired… I contracted somebody to do ads with me. So, I think that’s an important distinction of like done for you versus done with you. And a big piece of advice I would have is as intimidating as it can be, find someone on Upwork to just pay on an hourly basis to help you learn the ins and outs of Ad Manager if you’re going to be running paid ads, so that you can one, control your own destiny, but that’s a huge life skill. There’s not many people that are actually… A lot of people run ads on Facebook. Not many people are actually very good at it because you need to understand creativity and psychology, which is the most important thing.
Because the way I look at it is like if nobody’s clicking on your ads, it’s because you’re making them feel nothing. That’s what I tell other founders that I talk to or mentor with is like if you’re not getting ad clicks, is because people are feeling nothing about your ads, and you need to change that. That’s the most important thing. It comes down to creative I think first and foremost.
So, I think you start to understand what works and what doesn’t, and then as you understand the kind of tactical levers you can pull in Ad Manager around audiences, or budget optimizations, or whatever it may be, it’s just an important skill to have, and even if your business fails but you learn that really well, you’ve got a skill that’s valuable to companies. And agencies, while they can be great, and I’ve got a lesson there because I at one point outsourced my marketing to an agency so I could focus on the business more, because my thought was I’ve learned this from scratch and I’m getting insane results out of my ads, so I’m not a professional. I just learned this in the last six months. Certainly, a professional agency could take me 3-4X ROAS I’m getting and turn that into 7. And boy, was I wrong about that.
So, I ended up I had a contract with an agency for a couple months, and now you’re paying them a retainer, and here’s kind of the lesson. So, you’re paying an agency a retainer now, plus your ad spend, and if they’re reckless with your ad dollars, which the group that I hired was, and I’ve hired a lot of agencies, so this wasn’t my first rodeo on that. They were reckless with my ad dollars, and they had a retainer, and that was like detrimental to my cash flow, and so I had to get rid of them pretty quickly within six weeks on a 90-day contract.
So, I think it’s an important lesson that you can keep more cash in the business if you’re running your own ads. And then one day, if you do hire it out, then you can keep up in the conversation and you can know when they’re doing something wrong, or at least you want to be able to ask the right questions. So, I think it’s a very important skill to have, so that would be another… I think a good piece of advice around marketing. That’s how I got my first few sales.
And then, so the business launched in December of 2020, and then January, kind of first quarter of ’21, it was growing, so from 5K to 10K to 20K, and then in April I finally did my first video ad, which was intimidating to do for the first time because you’ve gotta find caption software, because you have to have captions, because people just don’t… Most, like 70% of videos don’t have the volume on, I think is the stat, or something like that.
Kurt Elster: Which one did you use?
Kyle Hale: Kapwing.
Kurt Elster: Oh, I use Rev. R-E-V.
Kyle Hale: Okay. Yeah, I think I’ve used them, as well. I’ve used a few different ones but they all kind of have their different challenges, you know? But just learning those few things for the first time to me is the bigger hassle than actually making the video. My first video was like mic drop, one take, done, here you go. And then it took me like an hour to figure out the captions. And so, I took my first video ad live in April, which I sent you the video. I don’t know if you had a chance to watch it. But it’s just me, standing, you can see this rack of shirts in the background here. Just me standing by the rack of shirts going, “Here’s what I have,” and my revenue went from like 20 grand a month to almost 60 immediately.
And so, I was like, “Wow.” The power of video is much stronger than I even realized. And then I never looked back. And that’s a long form video. That’s like a minute-long video. And everybody’s always saying, “Don’t do long video. Don’t do long video.” I’ve not been able to replicate the success.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. It’s a minute, nine seconds. It really is just you in this space talking through these shirts. Hey, everyone. Kyle from Ambitious Kids here is how it opens.
Kyle Hale: Yeah. It’s just pretty much a soft sell and it’s funny, like I’ll see… That video’s had I think now close to a million views, and like 10,000 likes, and a lot of comments, and I think there’s some comments in there that are… just kind of show that the video is what it is. It’s like one lady said, “Hey, here’s some stuff I made. If you like it, cool. If you don’t, great. Best sales pitch ever.” You know, so it’s like just that super soft sell.
Kurt Elster: It is such a good sales pitch, though. She’s not wrong. It’s like, “Take it or leave it. This is me.”
Kyle Hale: Right. So, you guys had a good quote the other day on one of the shows that was like the product that is for everybody is for nobody. And you know, I think that’s true, and it’s kind of like I don’t have any illusions that everybody’s gonna like these. Some people aren’t gonna like them, and that’s fine, and I don’t really care. That’s fine.
Kurt Elster: And certain… As soon as you have a video with a million views and thousands of comments, you get some crappy comments in there. Everyone handles them differently. I’m always curious. How do you handle them?
Kyle Hale: Largely, my social experience has been fantastic, like I cannot believe how many nice things people have said, and DM’d me, or in the comments, or whatever. It’s really beautiful. But there are people that just without any context come in and want to label you as a gaslighter, or a bad person, and you’re just thinking like-
Kurt Elster: Isn’t it strange?
Kyle Hale: It is strange. And so, I think my philosophy on how to approach this is to view all of your digital ecosystem as an old-timey classic storefront. Like that old window shopping. And it’s like if somebody were to come and write on my store, “You’re a jerk,” or, “You’re a gaslighter,” or something, I would want to probably… If it was really offensive, I’d want to take that off of my storefront, right? If someone came and spray painted that on my storefront.
If they came into my store and said, “Hey, I don’t agree with this one shirt in your collection. Why are you making this?” Then I view that as let’s have a discussion about that. And so, when people troll you, I don’t like to come back at them with more negativity. I like to give the context of why I made certain things, so like let’s say Meltdown Island as an example. A few days ago, some lady was telling me that I was being hurtful to kids because they have meltdowns. And I was like, “Listen, we all are learning how to be better with our behaviors and kids especially, and I don’t think that’s something you sweep under the rug. I think that’s something that you celebrate as normal behavioral development.”
Kurt Elster: Wow. Way to flip that back on her. Like, “Look, we’re normalizing this thing.” I think it’s concern trolling. I think it’s people who… They feel self-important and they bring attention to themselves by tearing someone or something else down in a way that makes it sound like, “Yeah, I’m just worried about the kids. I’m just concerned about this and the fabric of society.” And the worst part is engaging in the discussion only encourages them to do it more.
Kyle Hale: Yeah. I think so. And you know, it’s like I think the context of why people create things matters. It doesn’t mean you have to agree with it, but we have to be at a place where we can not agree on everything but still be okay with each other. And I always think about like this lady, I have no idea who she is. I don’t have any ill will towards her even if she doesn’t like a few of the things I’ve done. And when I responded to her in that way, and she kind of came back at me and she was like, “Well, it’s sad that you don’t see it.”
And I said, “Listen, I respect-“
Kurt Elster: Yeah. See, there was nothing you were gonna say that would have changed her mind.
Kyle Hale: Yeah. Right. But here’s where the script kind of flips then, is then I’m like, “Listen, I respect your criticism and your ability to do that, but it doesn’t define me or my brand,” and I left it at that. And then she came back and actually said, “No disrespect to your creativity. You have a lot of cute products.” And it’s like, “Well, you called me a gaslighter and that I was sad for not recognizing certain things, so you did disrespect me, but it’s okay.”
Kurt Elster: As soon as someone says, “No disrespect,” you know immediately it’s like, “Well, if you had to add that…”
Kyle Hale: Yeah. And I don’t want to give the illusion that I get a lot of those. I get a few of those a quarter.
Kurt Elster: You only get a handful. But when you do, it’s like it’s really annoying for several days.
Kyle Hale: It is. And I don’t think I could scale out responding to those forever, probably, as I grow, but to me it’s important to have those discussions and for people to see like hey, fighting that comment with more hate and anger isn’t going to solve anything, so it’s kind of become an important mission for me to speak with those people and give them the context of where I’m coming from in a respectful way.
Kurt Elster: You know, and truthfully, seeing those comments, it drives engagement. It helps the algorithm. Seeing you reply to the stuff makes you more real, and genuine, and authentic. I think there’s advantages to it, but it’s also at the same time, it’s not sustainable long term. Because A, you don’t want to encourage the behavior, and it’s not a great use of time, and B, eventually it’ll drive you nuts.
Kyle Hale: Yep. Yeah. I agree, so I think you gotta be selective with it, but I also want to do my part to not just contribute more of the shit talking that happens on social, you know? And I think it’s important for a brand to show that they can navigate a tough conversation.
Kurt Elster: Yes. And especially, I think just the nature of selling anything for children, and especially like a t-shirt. A t-shirt, it sounds superficially trivial, but at the same time, a graphic design t-shirt, there is decades of culture behind that. And your identity gets wrapped up in it a little bit. And so, I can see where to the right person, in the right situation, it suddenly becomes a sensitive thing.
Kyle Hale: Yep.
Kurt Elster: And that’s like when you’re going online with a new business and a brand, and we’re saying like, “Hey, you gotta use video, and you have to be authentic, and you have to share your story, and you need to be niche,” well, what we’re really saying is, “Hey, you gotta go out there and be vulnerable to a whole bunch of strangers that you’re also asking for money.” And so, comments in situations like this, they’re inevitable. They’re gonna happen to everybody.
Kyle Hale: Well, and I think too, people don’t stop and think about, “Hey, what did this person go through to create this?” It was incredibly embarrassing for me to sit in a WeWork in Minneapolis and draw what looked like kids’ drawings, like, “Is that guy okay? Why’s he just sitting there with a bunch of colored pencils drawing?” It was really… It was honestly scary and something I’d never done, and Sky also approves all of my designs, so I don’t release a shirt unless Sky looks at it and likes it. And you know, so it’s actually a collaborative process with my kid, and it’s brought us closer together, and they’re just… You know, so you have to understand where people are coming from, and I think we’ve all gotta take more pause to do that.
Kurt Elster: Empathy. Empathy is a life skill, for sure. So, switching gears a little bit, you started out with Printful and then moved to screen printing and stocking your own inventory. Why? Isn’t the dream being able to drop ship it and have zero-day inventory and your just-in-time manufacturing?
Kyle Hale: Well, to me, the most important thing was to make a really, really good product, because if you start with that foundation, your business will grow. So, if you make an awesome product, that works so hard for you, and I wanted to make something that was different and that was better in my opinion than what was out there.
With print on demand, and print on demand I only did in the beta testing before the site was live, and what I learned about that was the print area on print on demand of the shirt is really small, and my brand’s about big colors, like big prints, so I really max out the size of the print on the shirt. So, you can’t really do that through print on demand, and then during the pandemic too, print on demand shipping times got incredibly terrible. I mean, you’re talking like five weeks to get one shirt.
And so, for those two reasons, but most importantly for the product reason. It was just like I can’t make the product I want to make through print on demand, and they also had very limited colors of shirts for toddlers, and babies, and kids. They had like two colors. And I have a lot. I wanted to have a lot of colors.
Kurt Elster: You know, perfectly sensible reasons. I hadn’t considered the print area. But yeah, if someone else is making it for you, you’re playing in their sandbox, so you have to play by their rules, and it’s like use their blanks and print the way they decide. And if that works for your product, great. If it doesn’t, it drives me nuts when I see people trying to force a solution to fit the problem or feature set they want. And whether that’s like a vendor, or an app, or whatever, and in your case you went, “Look, it’s just this doesn’t work.” And so, you moved to the higher quality but more expensive option, screen printing.
Kyle Hale: Yep.
Kurt Elster: Did you know anything about screen printing?
Kyle Hale: Absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Kurt Elster: But conceptually, I get the idea. That’s about it.
Kyle Hale: Right. Well, I think one other important thing on product was like you said in the beginning, you’re in a competitive space, like anybody can go and do POD and make a kids’ t-shirt, so one thing that was important for me is like when I had a concept or an idea, I went and I searched Etsy, and I searched the internet, and if I could find that same concept, I didn’t make the shirt. So, like everything you see on my site, all my products, you can’t find really anything like it as far as like the theme, or the design, or whatever it is.
So, I think scarcity is important if you’re in a competitive space to stand out. And no, I didn’t know anything about screen printing, and that early journey of understanding screen printing, and what kind of inks you can work with, you can work with Plastisol, which is like a plastic-based ink or water-based ink. I use water-based ink because it’s better for the environment and it also… So, water-based ink sinks into the fabric of the shirt and changes the color of the fabric of the shirt. Plastisol ink just sits on top of the shirt.
So, that’s where kids get that scratchy feeling they don’t like on their chest if it’s a plastic ink, so I thought water-based ink was better for the environment. I thought it made for a cooler shirt. And then it also provides more of like a matte finish to the colors, which has more of a retro vibe, and I kind of wanted to have that retro feel in all my designs, too. So, I kind of learned that over time and went with water-based ink to start. And then I’ve learned a ton about screen printing in the last year and it’s a craft, and water-based is also way harder to work with because it dries faster on the screens. It’s just more finicky. It slops and flies around more, so you’ve gotta really choose your printing partners carefully, and I have two fantastic partners here in the Twin Cities that I work with.
Kurt Elster: So, you’ve mentioned quite a few tools here. You’re on Shopify. You used print on demand, Printful, to validate some of the early designs. Design Pickle is a gig service to handle making illustrations. What are some of the other tools that you have found helpful in your journey?
Kyle Hale: I think one just to call out that maybe shop owners don’t, especially early on, take for granted, is just literally your Shopify dashboard. I know that’s a really obvious answer but the reason I say that is because everything you need to know about what’s happening at a high level on a daily basis is there, so it’s like, “Okay, how’s my traffic today?” Let’s say you’re having a down day in sales. You can say, “Okay, my traffic is about the same. It looks like my traffic from social is about the same where I run my ads out of. My AOV is the same. But my conversion rate, for whatever reason, today is just in the doghouse. I don’t know why.” And I think it just helps you have more peace of mind as an owner just to know like, “I don’t know why conversion rate is down today. Nothing’s changed. All my products in stock. All the things I could control are happening.”
There’s just some rules of the universe where people on certain days just aren’t buying, you know? And you don’t know why. They’re still coming to the site. They just aren’t hitting purchase. And I think just that is interesting as to the why, and that’s a whole rabbit hole, but… So, I think just your Shopify dashboard of like when you’re early on especially, like, “Hey, here’s what’s going on,” and just taking solace in it. You know what the numbers are and that tells you what you need to do or not do, probably.
So, I think that’s a real simple one. And then outside of that, like Canva, another kind of obvious answer, but Canva allowed me to do more video. Like after I learned how to just do the basics and shoot my ads, now I do more fun collection videos, or when I released my preschool hoodie, I did a really fun video. Those more intensive editing tools, like from Adobe or wherever it is, are really hard to learn. So, I think Canva is such a fantastic tool for that reason, and I know people talk about that one all the time, but…
Kurt Elster: So, Canva can do video now?
Kyle Hale: Yeah, which I didn’t even know, and then I got an email from Canva, and I was like, “Wait, you guys can do video?” I’m like, “Well, that’s really good news because I’ve found your photo editing super easy, so I’m assuming your video editing is really easy.” Yeah, and the transition screen’s super easy. Really easy.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. This looks good. Yeah. This is another one where if you think to yourself like, “I don’t know graphic design. I can’t do that. It’s too hard.” Canva, and I’m sure there’s other tools, but we’ve all used Canva. I mean, it really… It is a tremendous utility for like, “I need some X graphic design template.” And I don’t really know what I’m doing, but I have an idea. Canva just makes it really easy. And if they support video, that’s phenomenal. I’m gonna throw placeit.net in as a suggestion. They can… It’s similar to Canva. They can do all kinds of templated mockups, designs, logos, videos. I’ve had a lot of success with that one, too. That’s lesser known than Canva, and I’m putting these all in the show notes.
Kyle Hale: For creative, like if you need creative inspiration as a tool, Dribbble and Pinterest are amazing. So, kind of speaking to the creative process, sometimes I have an idea and it starts with just a font, like I might be on Pinterest searching like vintage national park posters from the ‘50s.
Kurt Elster: Oh, man. You’re speaking my language.
Kyle Hale: Yeah. And I’ll be like, “Oh my God, look at that blue with gold color combo, or look at that font,” and then that just sits in my head until a concept comes along that matches that color combo or that font. So, like Dribbble and Pinterest are fantastic for trying to just find inspirational cues, would be a big one. And doesn’t really matter if that’s UX, UI design, if you’re into that space, or if it’s your making t-shirts, or whatever. You can find a lot of inspiration there.
Kurt Elster: I love the idea that everything is a remix, right? So, you’re saying, “Hey, I’ll see a font I like,” all right, can I use that? I’ll find a font and then somewhere else you’ll find a color palette. Ah, then somewhere else you’ll find a layout. And they’re all from separate places. And then when you put them together it becomes an entirely original work. But the reality is really it’s a remix of different things you saw, then put through your own lens, then also put through an illustrator finishing it for you, and then separately put through the limit, and then worked within the limitations and confines of what we can screen print and what will sell.
And so, you end up with this… The input was not original and then the output is. And I think that’s how most creative processes work. And I think a lot of people are going through that thinking that they’re not real creatives. They’re not real artists. When the reality is that’s probably how a majority of people work.
Kyle Hale: You literally just pulled out of my head how I felt when I was doing this, because I was kind of like, “Am I like a poser because-“
Kurt Elster: Imposter syndrome.
Kyle Hale: Yeah. Exactly. I really felt that way. And then along the way, as I was drawing, because I would stay up until like 3:00 in the morning, listen to the music, and draw. Like when I was developing the concepts. And I was listening to the Rick Rubin podcast that’s called Broken Record. You ever listen to that?
Kurt Elster: No. No, I’ll put it in the show notes, though.
Kyle Hale: I highly recommend it. So, Rick Rubin, he was like an original DJ in the Beastie Boys, and then he was the founder of… Was it Def Jam? But he produced all… He’s known as like the godfather of hip-hop production pretty much, right? He produced all the big albums of the ‘90s and to this day. And you know, he would have like Kendrick Lamar on, or Andre 3000, or whoever, and to hear them talk about like they drew inspiration from whoever, Marvin Gaye or someone, and you can hear that in their music, and then like as I started to listen to more ‘70s music and ‘60s music during when I was drawing, I was like, “Where do I know this song from?” And I was like, “Oh my God, this was half of these tracks were remixed into Kanye’s College Dropout album.”
And I’m just going, “Oh, this is just how it works. People get inspiration from other people.” And then like you said, it’s the original input isn’t original, but the output is. And so, I love that you said that, because that was something I really experienced.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. When you don’t embrace it, that’s where you get imposter syndrome, and that’s the limiting belief that holds you back. There’s multiple books about it. I think there’s one called Everything is a Remix. And another that’s the Pablo Picasso quote, “Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal.”
We’re coming to the end of our time together, but I did not want to let you go until we had discussed some of your conversion rate optimization testing. So, you hired an agency to do split testing for you, and… Well, what’s been your experience? How is that going?
Kyle Hale: So, we’ve been about six weeks together so far. I heard of this agency on the Social Media Examiner podcast, which I know someone mentioned that to you in a past episode, and I think that was a new one to you, but they have some good episodes. And we’ve ran… I would say the most consequential test we ran was around the collection pages, so like if you go the toddler collection or the baby collection, the test they ran was removing the price from the products on those collection pages, and that has been so far the variant that’s really won out, where the improvement was like 54%, which will be something like an additional five to seven grand a month in net revenue.
So, I think the idea of my brand isn’t a discount brand. I don’t run a lot of discounts. I don’t run a lot of promos. And I think that because I’m not a price-based product, but people are price sensitive, letting them kind of get lost in the creative on the collection pages and then clicking on a product, and then getting to it, and then worrying about the price, I think stops those people who maybe are more price sensitive but really could buy the shirt if they wanted to from just bouncing. And so, that’s been a really interesting test.
And then we took that test now and we’re testing on mobile, which is where most of my traffic and purchases come from. We’re testing on the collection pages do we show two products side by side, or just one product at a time in mobile as people scroll through the collection, so we’ll see how that one turns out. Right now, they’re kind of neck and neck, two images versus one side by side.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. That one’s tough. And it’s tough in a CRO test. The worst is when you have a CRO test that comes back as inconclusive or when it tells you… where it’s like you can see one did better, but it goes, “Look, it’s not actually statistically significant. Our confidence interval is too low.” Oh, it’s brutal, where you go, “Flip a coin. It doesn’t matter.”
Just let the data make the decision for me.
Kyle Hale: Yeah. I think so. And I think too, another piece of advice I would just have is if you have good traffic, so I have somewhere around 55,000 monthly visitors, so if you have good traffic, and once you’ve kind of got traction, I would invest in conversion rate optimization testing early. Because a lot of people are always just throwing more money at their ads. What you really want to be doing is just converting more of your traffic. So, I think I would do that early on, and that way you’re kind of setting yourself up for success.
And the next test that we’re running is more of like a floating add-to-cart button on mobile so they can access it easier all the time. And then we’re doing a-
Kurt Elster: Oh, like a sticky add-to-cart button where it follows you down the page.
Kyle Hale: Yep. So, we’re doing that, and then we’re also doing a menu at the bottom that almost looks more like an app menu, so like when you’re on mobile, you can access collections easier at the bottom of your phone, basically at the bottom of your screen. Kind of more reflective of a traditional app menu at the bottom of the screen, so we’ll see how that does. I think that one might be a good one.
Kurt Elster: You know, with conversion rate optimization testing, I find the hardest part is coming up with the test ideas, right? Google Optimize is such… I said that weird. Google Optimize is such an easy to use, accessible tool. It’s free. It just plugs into Google Analytics. It’s very easy to set up and work with. And so, that’s not the hard part. I find the hard part is coming up with good tests and then lesser… implementing them in a statistically significant way, because it turns out it is shockingly easy to screw up and skew your own results.
But one good resource I’ll throw out is Good UI. Good UI has tons of great tests and examples. And one of my favorite things is the… I forget what they call it, but it’s like secret tests where they uncover… They’ll take notice of tests that sites like Amazon and Etsy are running and then pay attention to, “All right, which one do they stick with?” And then they assume. They go, “All right, we’ll assume that if that was a test they were running, that that was the winner.”
And you don’t necessarily know it, but it’s a lot of fun. I enjoy it, anyway. A little nerdy.
Kyle Hale: One more topic if we just have a quick minute that I think is valuable, one area I’ve been successful I’d like to share some feedback on for people is I think just on your social feed. Obviously, there’s just a lot of reels and stories in feed, and I think if I could have any advice on social, and this has worked for me. I’ve gone from obviously zero to I’m about to hit 33,000 followers probably tomorrow, which I think is solid for like a year one business to scale that. And that’s without buying followers.
Kurt Elster: Oh, absolutely.
Kyle Hale: I haven’t done any… I don’t do any bots. I have done no influencer stuff.
Kurt Elster: That’s actually really good. Not pretty good. It’s excellent.
Kyle Hale: Yeah. It’s surprised me. And the things that have worked for me I would say is as a founder, you’re super busy, so just be consistent. And it takes a few weeks of posting before you realize like what’s my theme, here? So, my theme is kind of like I’ve said before. Let the product be the star and I’ve really found that posts where I’m showing four shirts, like two top, two below it, that are just hanging on this old… This door behind me is an old original fire door from this building and I have magnetic hooks, and I just put them on there, and I’ve found that just those close-up product shots, like let the product be the star of your feed.
And the way that I think you should view your feed, and I didn’t really realize this until about three months ago. Your feed is that old timey retail window that people walked by. You know, when they used to really dress those up and you could see them, and it causes you to slow down a little bit, and then you look at it and you’re like, “This place could be cool. I’m gonna go inside of it.” So, I kind of view my feed as that old timey retail window shopping and as like a catalog, so if you can be consistent in your theme it saves you time, because you’re like, “Okay, I kind of know what I do for my theme.” My theme is big energy, let the product be the star, fun, lighthearted, and once you kind of get that, you can just get that workflow consistently. So, it helps you as a founder and I think helps people process your stuff easier.
So, I would say be really steady with that. And then I recently started boosting posts that do really well organically. Even if it’s just like five bucks a day, and sending people to my feed versus my site, and I have some organic posts that I boost and send people to my site, but I’ve found that sending people from really strong posts that I’ve boosted, that have done well organically, now are boosted, send them to my profile, because I believe in my product so much and that my profile is really strong, I know that I’ll get either followers or clicks to the website from there. And my data and kind of later analytics that I use shows that that’s true.
Kurt Elster: Kyle, for the people who are just… They’re starting out. They’re in their first year. What advice do you have for them? What do you wish you knew?
Kyle Hale: I think be obsessed with getting traction. So, I think the day in and day out, you’re gonna have good days and bad days, and don’t… I would say don’t sweat little things day to day. Don’t care if you only get one like, or 10 likes, or two likes with your social feed, or like if you have a bad sales day. But do be obsessed with improving your results every day and putting something out there that’s gonna get a good reaction. So, I think that’s really important because you can give up really easily or get really down if you get too lost in any one thing, and so just stay even and you have to just keep pushing ahead like a tank, like every day, and don’t let things get you down.
So, just keep moving, keep moving, keep moving. And one thing I really obsessed with early on was for example, like my paid ads. The right creative that got me to that 50, 60K a month number in month four, that obsession was like a 2:00 to 3:00 in the morning, staying up, banging out tons of creative in Canva, testing it, see what works, so I would say be obsessed with getting traction and be worried about that. Don’t be worried about if you got likes that day on social.
So, I think that’s a really important piece of advice to just kind of keep trucking along, and don’t listen to what other people tell you to do all the time. Find out for yourself. Like if I’d listened to everybody and said, “I’m not gonna make my long ad,” I wouldn’t be on this podcast right now and I wouldn’t have the success I’ve had. So, just do you and believe in what you’re doing.
Kurt Elster: You know, it is good advice. Believe in yourself. Be tenacious. Ignore the noise and focus on what’s right for you. And only you know what that is, ultimately.
Kyle Hale: Yep. And all the things I said earlier too. Stand out, be different, see what your competitors are doing and kind of do something different. So, stand out, as well, and make a good product.
Kurt Elster: That advice sets the stage for an authentic brand. I think that’s the important part. Kyle Hale, Ambitious Kids, thank you for joining us and where can we go to get some t-shirts for our own little people?
Kyle Hale: All right. Well, on Instagram we’re @AmbitiousKidsShop, and I’m releasing a bunch of new fun stuff this spring. Original drawings, some word shirts, a lot of fun there, and then AmbitiousKids.com on the old interwebs.