Marketing Happy Hour - Leaning In to Your Brand's Community | Kennedy Crichlow + Mary Ralph Lawson Bradley of Daily Drills

Episode Date: May 18, 2023

This week, Erica and Cassie sit down with Daily Drills founders Kennedy Crichlow and Mary Ralph Lawson Bradley ("Kenn" and "Ralph") to chat through their brand marketing and launch strategies, how to work with your BFF, and their best career advice. Here's a peek at what we cover in this episode: [00:03:30] - Kenn and Ralph walk us through their marketing backgrounds and the launch of their clothing brand, Daily Drills. You'll hear why they focus on building a community, the power of just starting, and how they developed a solid (but fun!!!) brand identity. [00:13:32] - Kenn and Ralph share how they marketed the initial launch of the brand with a low budget, and how support will follow when you have quality product. [00:17:13] - Kenn and Ralph explain what their tasks look like as founders, their best advice for getting clear on what you're good at and what you like to do then delegating the rest, and the key to working alongside your BFF. [00:24:09] - Kenn and Ralph reveal their current marketing strategy and the "why" behind it, how letting people in to celebrate with the brand is one of their secrets of success, and the ways they lean in and listen to their community. [00:32:19] - Kenn and Ralph let us in on their content cadence for new product/collection drops. Grab a drink and listen in to this week's Marketing Happy Hour conversation! ----- Other episodes you'll enjoy if you enjoyed Kennedy + Mary Ralph's episode: Top Tips for Creatives | Lisa Meyer of Beekman 1802 How to Build Brand Loyalty | Kara Salazar of Southwest Airlines Product Marketing 101: Your Go-To-Market Toolkit | Jaylen Adams of Rare Beauty ____ Say hi! DM us on Instagram and share your favorite moments from this episode - we can't wait to hear from you! NEW: Download the Dream Career Game Plan! NEW: Check out our website! NEW: Join our email list! Learn more and shop Daily Drills: Instagram | shopdailydrills.com Connect with Kennedy on Instagram | Connect with Mary Ralph on Instagram Follow MHH on Social: Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter | TikTok Subscribe to our LinkedIn newsletter, Marketing Happy Hour Weekly: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/marketing-happy-hour-weekly-6950530577867427840/

you're listening to the marketing happy hour podcast where we discuss career and industry insights with our peers in marketing we're here to talk about it all like the ups and downs of working in social media how to build authentic relationships in the influencer and pr space managing a nine-to-five and a side hustle at the same time, how to be productive in your life and career without losing your sanity, and more. Ultimately, we're here to build a community with you because we're all trying to navigate the world of marketing together. Are you ready? Grab your favorite drink and join your hosts, Cassie and Erica, for this week's episode.

This week, we're speaking with fellow BFF founders, Ken and Ralph, to hear their journey of starting daily drills together. The apparel brand was launched in 2020 after the two friends spotted a niche space in the ever-growing leisure industry. In building the brand over the last several years, a compelling brand identity and a strong social media presence have both been crucial. We hear their strategy recommendations for creating community on the platforms and launching new products, plus their must-learn career tips. Grab a drink and join us for this week's episode of Marketing Happy Hour. Well, Ken and Ralph, we are so excited to have you here today. How are you guys? We're so good. We're so excited to be with you guys today and chatting. It's

such a fun part of our day. Awesome. I can't wait for all of our listeners to hear your story and behind the scenes of the brand. But before we get started, I do have an important question that we ask all of our guests. And that is, what is in your glass tonight? It is marketing happy hour after all. I love this. We're actually going happy hour tonight, which is very fitting. And we're going to our favorite place in Malibu and they have an endless summer margarita, which has, it's a coconut margarita and it's topped with coconut flakes on the top so that's my fave

especially for summer I love that I'm addicted it's like juice yeah it is and the crunchy coconut shavings on top do it for me yeah like it feels like a snack an appetizer and a drink yeah oh my gosh oh my Well, gotta love that texture. Where is that at? What, what place is that? It's at surf rider, the hotel in Malibu. Oh yeah. Yes. Yes. Staying there. You have to have one. Awesome. What do you have Cassie? I right now have a classic cola poppy and water so double fisting as always two beverages today but what about you Erica I am just sipping on this Ouroboros I've talked about it a few times it's like a peppermint watermelon like flavored sparkling water which sounds like a really weird

flavor but it works it's really good oh yum Oh, yum. Yum. Yeah. We're definitely going to book a flight now to come over to California and try those drinks as well. You got me hooked already. So super excited about that, but let's just dive into it. So we're big fans of daily drills and we're really excited just to hear more about your brand story today, kind of how you got started. But first tell us a little bit about your backgrounds and what led you both to starting the brand together. Yeah, I love it. I'll jump in first. My name is Kennedy. I'm originally from Washington State, grew up there, born and raised, was dying for some sunshine. So ended up at LMU, Loyola Marymount University, which is like a

smaller Jesuit school, kind of by LAX I studied communications because I was way too intimidated to be a business major which is so funny looking back so I never took a business course or anything like that but I do feel like my college experience translates to what I'm doing today thankfully communications I think is definitely a growing major and it just is so important especially just in interpersonal skills and stuff like that so while I was there I also did like a variety of internships which I think was super super helpful for me and just kind of like narrowed in my focus of what I wanted to do post-graduation I actually ended up graduating a little bit early and transitioned straight into a full-time role

with a startup I was in the CPG world. So consumer goods, um, working specifically within like the health sector, which is so funny. So different from what I do now, like, again, didn't have any fashion experience. I was also doing a bit of like marketing consulting on the side. Um, so I did that for like three and a half, four years before starting daily drills, definitely felt like I wanted to make a shift in my career. Always knew I wanted to own my own business. My dad owns his own business. I was very inspired by that lifestyle, but didn't really know how I was going to get there and when I was going to get there until Daily Drills happened. Yeah. I am Mary Ralph. I'm from Austin, Texas, and I moved to LA. I went to Pepperdine,

and I loved school. I feel like my education has helped me in so many ways, honestly, more through the connections of the people that I've met and stayed in contact through after school. But during school, I was doing social media stuff on my own for my personal account. And I was also helping a startup at the time called Bumble, which is obviously a huge dating app now, through all of their social, their strategy, their influencer marketing. So my twin sister and I were their interns and we would go back to their headquarters in Austin every summer. And then we would work for them when we were at school during the school year, which was so fun and obviously learned a ton from

a startup. I think there were 12 people when we started working there. So it was super fun to get hands-on experience. And then after we graduated, my twin sister and I started a boutique social media agency. So we were doing social for like a few of our favorite brands in LA and she was still in Austin, which was exciting. And we got to do all of their content creation. We got to do their photo shoots. We got to do their posting, everything.

So I feel like I learned a ton, but I remember like thinking to myself, this is so fun, but this would be like 10 times better if I got to do this for my own brand. You know, like I was seeing these brands grow. I was seeing their sales numbers and everything behind the scenes. So I always thought to myself, like, I'm going to start something one day, like Ken said, my family has their own business as well. And I always thought that would be something down the line, but never knew how quickly it would come. And I think Ken and I were always the friends that like talked about that stuff together. We, we always were circulating business ideas. We got to do this one day, we got to do this one day. And then it was just kind of right place, right time. It was the middle of COVID.

We were both doing our other jobs, but obviously had free time at the end of the day. So we were like starting daily drills, doing all of the things on after work hours. And then when we started it, we, you would come over and pass like on Tuesdays and Thursdays is when we get our orders out. So that's kind of how it started. It started in 2020, um, November of 2020. Yeah. Yeah. And it quickly became a full-time job. Like I think within four to six months for both of us, we had quit our other jobs and we're focused full-time on daily drills because it just needed that kind of attention um that first summer we literally we had never had honestly anyone work under us either and so we're like how do we we

need interns we literally and they were full-time workers bless their hearts we love them um but like just we needed more hands on the ground and that's just like pretty much it just kind of it kind of caught wind and then we had to like go with it and like yeah and actually like follow the momentum so it's been a crazy last two and a half years but yeah I love what we do that is so fun and I love to hear the behind the scenes of like what you were doing before because I think a lot of the best brands are born out of like I know I want to be doing something but I don't know what I want to be doing. And then just kind of like partnering with somebody else who's in that same boat. I mean, Cassie and I have the same story. We have always talked about starting brands and like all these

things. Now we have this podcast. So totally identify with you there on that. But what do you say that you each brought with you to the brand in terms of just like marketing strategies that you learned in your previous roles? I love that. I thought something that I always say is best idea wins and just not having an ego. I think a lot of those like corporate atmospheres, it's like, you have to get this person's approval and then this person's approval, then they have to like your idea. And like, rather than like having everybody sit in a room, like it doesn't matter if it's an intern or if it's a C-level exec and having them all put out their ideas and like the best idea for the brand, what's going to push the brand forward wins. So I feel like that was something I really learned

in past experience. And then also I'd only, I've only ever worked for startups, which is really interesting. But just like that hustle scrappy mentality, like I love how scrappy a startup is. And like, we just ran like a crazy last minute sale last week when we hit 55,000 followers, but it was like, because we're a startup, we're able to be like, so able to do it lean and like the honor fee. And I just think that there's so much fun in a startup atmosphere. So I feel like my experience before kind of helped lead me here because I knew I wanted to create my own startup and like really live in that space instead of move into the corporate world. Yeah. I love that. I feel like for me, Bumble obviously helped. They had an amazing influencer program and college ambassador

program that I think a lot of other companies really look up to. And I feel like when we started Daily Drills, we obviously didn't have the funds to do a ton of marketing and a ton of pushing, but we really leaned on like our influencer community and friends that had more influence in this space, I think to like really get the daily drills name out there. So I think I learned that for sure. Cause I, I would see the power of a conversion. Like we're telling this girl to post this and this is what we're getting in return. So I feel like we really leaned on that when we started daily drills. And also I think like something that I didn't like in previous that I feel like we've kind of changed for daily drills is I was running social for a clothing lines, food company, very different aspects of different industries, but they were all doing like the

same social strategy. They were all posting on every holiday. They're all doing a sale at every single, at the same time, they were all wanting to post one time a day. They were, you know, very, very sort of like cut and dry. I felt like, which, um, and obviously they found success from that, but I just felt like when we started daily drills, we're like, what can we do? That's different from that. So when we launched our Instagram, we turned the Instagram on private, which obviously like brands normally

don't turn their brand on private. Obviously they want everyone to see it. Um, but that first wave, we pretty much invited people from our personal followings to follow then we would accept them and then that first wave of following was the first people to get like the password to enter to shop our first drop and I think that's really like fostered the community from the beginning because like those people that shopped us at the beginning still remember like oh I had to request to follow so like we obviously want it want to be like it's like, we obviously want to be like, it's the community. We want everyone to be a part of it, but also aspirational as well. So I think

we do like a nice job balancing those two aspects. And it kind of started from like our first, I guess, marketing strategy that we know was a strategy. Yeah. Oh my gosh. That is so cool. Well, take us back to that time period when you have this amazing idea and you're just getting started. How did you go about building the daily drills brand identity and story? Gosh, I feel like so much of it was really instinctual. Like it sounds when I look back, I feel like I can like piece it all together, but in the moment, like we didn't have a strategy. We didn't have a roadmap. We didn't have CADs of our designs. Like it was just kind of, let's make a crew neck. And like, we're going to fit it to being the best crew neck that both of us want. And like,

what different details and elements can we add? So it's funny because I don't really feel like we had like an initial roadmap, but we've just let the brands like grow and evolve with us. And I feel like when it comes to like our logo and different things like that even our name it Kennedy's sister actually thought of daily drill she sent us a bunch of names because the name that we really wanted was trademarked and we needed a new name and we just kind of fell in love with it so we don't have a big story behind that our colors we liked green and white we felt like they were outdoorsy we were gonna be an active wear brand originally which is just funny to see the evolution of the brand because that's like such a small piece of our offerings now.

Yeah. But. And then the exclamation point, I feel like. Yeah. Was really like the thing that had sort of carried us through. So in daily drills and drills, the exclamation point, the eyes and exclamation point. And I feel like our first logo designer might have like put that in there. We text with a lot of exclamation points.

It's just kind of us I feel like um so when we when we saw that with an exclamation point we're like oh my gosh we're obsessed with it but it's kind of like carried on its own besides just daily drills now we do the three exclamation points by itself I feel like not a lot of brands no brand has like capitalized on the exclamation point as their brand signature and I feel like daily drills sort of has and we got lucky that I feel like it's not used yet um so I feel like that kind of has encapsulated what we want Daily Drills to be fun, spontaneous, exciting. It's kind of the silver lining that we want through our marketing, through our storytelling, through all of our photo shoots, through even like internally in our office.

Yeah. I love that. That is so cool. And I feel like it's just so authentically you, you were saying we use a lot of exclamation points in our texts back and forth to each other. And it's just like reflected throughout the brand, the, you know, just the fun whimsy elements of what you, you guys are as founders. So I love that so much. You talked about it a little bit with the private Instagram account and everything like that but can you just give us a little behind the scenes look at how you marketed that initial launch of the brand other than the uh the private account gosh that first drop was so low budget I mean it was entirely self-funded we paid 300,000 or 300,000 300 for our photographer we had four

pieces so there really wasn't like an initial launch strategy other than like turning it private. We shot it in our favorite place in Malibu. I kind of think, um, this might not exactly answer your question, but it's kind of funny. You said it best. You're like, I'm very inspired by like my life, but like what I'm seeing and what I'm experiencing and what my friends are up to versus like, I think it's so much harder when you're like sitting in a cubicle and you're like what do people in New York like right now like I'm gonna try something for them it's like that is it's someone else can do that it's it's like yeah done I don't know yeah versus like for us we're like what do we want what are we inspired by what

are the colors that are missing in our wardrobe where do we want to shoot it where do we want to travel what do we want to eat when we travel like let's show them like the whole storyline of like who we are because that's kind of what daily drills represents and stands for and like so much of the details of daily drills really are born out of like things that we love or and are excited by and I feel like that just translates so well in our marketing because in our pictures it's like we're shooting in our favorite places like Like we're in the pictures. We're not, we're not models, you know? So yeah, I feel like that's kind of the approach we've taken to our marketing strategy since the beginning. But again, we didn't have that strategy. It was just like, well, it's just us two. Where do we want to shoot it? We have $300 for a photographer. Like let's make, let's

make something happen. So our first collection was like biker shorts and a white t-shirt and leggings and one sports bra. So it was very, very simple, black and white, but we wanted the best biker shorts, the best black leggings, the best sports bra and the best white tee. And I feel like we nailed that. And so that kind of sparked the momentum. And obviously like our personal followings,

our families, everyone supports that first launch. It's the first business we had created and done together. So everyone's like excited to support us. And then I think we, we thought to ourselves, like we should be workout instructors. We should do a whole workout guide. We should go that route. And then we filmed one booty burn in my living room, like move my couch and everything. It was a whole situation. And we looked at each other. It was five minutes. We looked at each other. I'm like, this was terrible. We're not, we don't like working out as much as we like fashion like we're pivoting I remember the day yeah we wanted to make an app we had this like that I guess that was like our initial strategy is like

we're gonna build out an app we're gonna have like a workout curriculum for everybody because that's what we had seen everybody else do everybody else have success with yeah and then we're like okay what are we wearing with our active wear like what was what we were always pairing with what we had launched. And we're always like grabbing like a vintage crew neck or like you were grabbing your husband's like college crew neck, you know? So I'm like, okay, let's just make the best crew neck that goes with the active wear. And so that's kind of how our oversized crew neck that's now still our bestseller was the second like category, I guess, that we launched.

And we've just kept going like that ever since. It's like, okay, then what do we want to wear in the summer? We want a short sleeve version. We want shorter shorts in the summer. So that's kind of how it's evolved over time. Oh my gosh. That's awesome. I'm a big believer too. Like if you personally are the one developing the brand, you feel like there's a need in the market. Someone else probably likely has the same need. And so starting there versus doing what everyone else is doing and just copying because you think that's what's successful. It's such a great way to start and it can always evolve from there. So I love hearing about that, but I want to know too, a little bit about the way that

you guys manage the business. You know, you started it with just the two of you. So now fast forward to today, how are you guys splitting your roles and managing the brand? Like what do your daily tasks look like as founders? No day is ever the same. Yeah. All very different. Maybe six months into working together. We decided to write like a list of everything we love to and everything we hate to because at the beginning we were kind of like co-owning everything. And it just wasn't like efficient and sustainable because it was kind of like everybody owns everything, but nobody owns anything. And it just started to get a little bit like disorganized as we were growing and doing

more jobs. So we wrote down that list and it was so crazy. Everything that I love to do, Ralph hated to do everything that she hated. I love to never really talked about it. It was just funny. And you never really think like, what do I hate doing? Because you just do it. The business needs it. Um, and just kind of really realize that like Ralph loves a creative side of things, photography events, um, social photo shoots, all that. I love operations, love writing an email, love, I love strategy and promotion. Like I obviously have a marketing background and I still do a lot of that, but definitely like a little bit more of like managerial stuff, onboarding kind of like that with our new hires. And then thankfully we have a small, amazing team here with us in LA,

like three full-time, one part-time. And then we outsource probably like 10 different contractors, including our manufacturing team. So we're definitely like growing and it's, it's super nice not to have to like know everything and do everything. I think we're like huge believers in hiring for our weaknesses and like, we don't need to know how to do everything. So it's been fun. Yeah. It's been fun. Also, I think like just internally, I thought that we would like to do the same thing since I like it. I'm like, oh, Kennedy for sure would like it.

But it was so relieving when we found out that what was raining for me was exciting for her and vice versa. And I think that's what really has made us good business partners. Cause we're obviously we're best friends outside of daily drills. But so I think some people always ask,

how is it working with your best friend? But I think it's super nice when we have very different lanes, but we were on track in those lanes and we're very like synced up with one another. I think that it's been such a, a nice way to balance. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. Well, speaking of like hiring too, when was, when did you guys decide like, okay, it's time we need to hire our first person, even if it was like a contractor, like what was that point that you guys got to where you're like, this is too much for just the two of us to manage? Well, our first hires, I guess, were our interns. They were our first summer. So about like six months into business, eight months into business. And we were packing and fulfilling all of our own orders and bringing them to the post office. So we literally didn't have enough hands to pack every order that we got in a week within

a timely manner. So we needed two more sets of hands. So that's why we hired them at first. And they were amazing. So fun. Still talk to them to this day. Ashley, one of them actually just posted in daily drills today. They're so cute. But our first actual hire, do you want to talk about, you were always good at envisioning and looking forward and always thinking like, okay, anticipating the next need. I feel like, Oh, well, we were realizing that our summer interns were about to leave us. And we were like, Oh no, Oh no, Oh no. Cause we had grown so much over the summer. And so probably like three weeks into them leaving, we hired a full-time employee who was honestly like,

it was like a bit of a catch-all role. Just kind of like assuming those tasks that the interns were doing slash also just like helping us pave the path for growth. So that was like our first role. And then we hired like another operations role and then a creative role. So I kind hired like another operations role and then a creative role. So I kind of feel like we go like operations, creative, just kind of building both sides of it.

Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. And so you mentioned this a little bit, but working together as best friends, I mean, I know regardless if it's family, anyone close to you, like it's very different from being friends to starting to work with your friends. So how has that been for you guys? And do you have any advice for just going into a business relationship with one of your closest friends? I would say do it. I think it's so fun. I would, I would do the list thing before you got into business because you don't want to both love to do and hate to do the same things. Cause you might not get as much done or you might need to hire more people than you thought um but I think it's just so fun

like at the end of the day I always get excited that if we do well in a job or something sells out or we we shoot everything on location so we're traveling to these amazing gorgeous places and it's so much better to do together versus like yeah just me by myself yeah we were at an event yesterday and a girl was doing this huge milestone in her life and celebrating it, but it was just her by herself. And like, obviously all of her friends were there celebrating her as well, but no one was at the same level as her, you know? So it just, it's just fun that it both happens to both. It all happens to both of us. Yeah. I literally love it. It also is just so exciting going into work. I'm like, I get to work with my best friend every single day. People don't get get to do that I think it's such a blessing um and I think we're really

good about compartmentalizing like when we're in the office we try to like really just focus on work and then we go to lunch and during lunch we chit chat about our life and then we're good at turning it on and off which I think could have been hard but I feel like and you've you've set like gentle hours at night so I'm like I try not to text her too much after work about work unless it's like pressing so I feel like we also just like fell into a groove of knowing how the other person works best and like I don't know I love it yeah you also make you figure out how to make it work because you know it would be terrible to do it by yourself so I'm like I'll do it to make it work on her wedding and then she had a honeymoon after so she was out for like whatever about two two

weeks and I was literally like I hate this I don't want to do this we're gonna have a team and all we have a team and all that like it's just so much better to do it with somebody else and also just like when you're making hard decisions like I love to be able to lean on Ralph because all of our decision-making like, yes, it's database, but it's also very instinctual because our customer base is just like kind of a little unicorn. And so I'll be like, okay, Ralph, like, do you think I should do, I'm thinking this much, but like, I want to check, like, do you think we should order this many units or whatever? So without her, I was like, oh my gosh, like I would go crazy. My internal dialogue would literally be crazy. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. That's so fun to hear. And I think too, you get to lean on each other a lot more kind of like you were alluding to. It's like, you know, if you're not feeling

well one day or whatever, you know, that the other person will be in there to take whatever tasks that you had and like do it to a level that you trust. I mean, it's just, yeah, I feel like there's a lot of risk, respect and trust there, which is awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, how would you describe your current marketing strategy? Now? A lot of our listeners are actually, most of our listeners are working for either startups or corporate marketing teams. So what does that look like for you right now? What are you focused on and kind of why behind that? I feel like one of the things we were actually talking about this morning was with our marketing. This is kind of more pertaining to like sales strategies or

flushing through inventory, different things like that, that's maybe more related to a clothing brand, but can probably relate to other things as well. But I feel like a bunch of people are doing the same thing, sort of what I alluded to earlier about the social media I used to work in. And we're always trying to break the mold, do something different, do it like the daily drills way. I feel like we're always trying to celebrate with our customers. We just hit 55,000 followers on Instagram, which a lot of brands have 55,000 followers on Instagram, you know, but it was exciting for us. We celebrated with a 15 minute flash sale and it was 55% off our entire, not our entire site, but a lot of products on our site, the majority. And that just like celebrates with our customers. It gets them

excited. It obviously is good for us because it helps with sales, but I think it like invites everyone in on all the little celebrations along the way. Even for like Black Friday, our biggest sale is our birthday, not Black Friday. It's two weeks before Black Friday, but we feel like that's a more fun brand story around us and how we started. And a lot of people follow us that are follow us and buy from us that are in college that are wanting to start their own brand. So I just think like inviting everyone in on the celebration from like a marketing perspective is smart rather than just following like the traditional path. Yeah. I love that. I also think you say this a lot, like everybody goes to Starbucks, but nobody really follows Starbucks on social. And I think for us,

we wanted daily drills to feel like your friend, like you can DM, you know, get a quick response and you're following along, but also we're offering travel guides to all of our big travel destinations. We're sharing our playlist. You guys can listen to what we're listening to in the office and just kind of like making daily drills, have a personality and, um, people feel like they're just following along a friend, you know, not a brand. Um, I think that's really, really played to our advantage. And it's like, like I said earlier, it's easy for us to just be us than to try to be somebody else. So it comes really natural to us. Yeah. Another marketing strategy is we shoot a lot on destination, which is we, again, this wasn't something that we like planned. We weren't like, Oh, it's going to be so much better

if we travel, but like, we were supposed to go to the Hamptons. Cause we were like, this would be so fun to shoot in the Hamptons. And our friend, we wanted to shoot something with our friend, whatever. She lost and it got sick. So we shot in New York. This was our first summer business. And we had like the best days day of sales everybody was so leaned in and we're like wait a second we shot French like or towel Terry which was so beachy supposed to be in the New York subway like so different but it was a last minute pivot and it worked so then we kind of were like wait so we love traveling our customers love when we travel and create a storyline around it like let's start doing that so now we do probably four big travel campaigns a year like

we just got back from Australia we're about to go to Italy so um that's another marketing strategy that has just kind of worked for us and like rather than hiring a bunch of models and having this like big set like we kind of keep it really lean we're the models a lot of the time and we just are buying a ticket to somewhere fun that our followers, you know, would love to see the destination come alive with. And a bunch of our followers are either traveling to that location. A bunch of them are going to Italy this summer.

So it's fun to see the clothes actually shot where they're going or they want to go there. Even our Christmas campaign two years ago, we thought it would be fun to do like a juxtaposition and do Christmas at the beach. And so we bought tickets to the beach, but then we did a poll of where they would want to see it, like in the beach or in the mountains.

And all of them said the mountains. So we last minute pivoted and we literally went to Aspen instead and shot all the location, all the campaign location, imagery and Aspen and the snow. And so we're literally just so leaned into them and whatever they say, we'll literally do it. So I think that's also fun too, because we know where they're going to go because we told them where to go. Yeah, that's huge to be community driven like that.

I love seeing brands that are so tuned into their community and their following and everything. I love that so much. Are you guys currently doing any like influencer ambassador programs right now? We don't have an ambassador program right now. It's something that we want to build out one day. I think they're super successful, especially college ambassador programs. But we have we sort of have an influencer program. We have a lot of influencer friends in our community here in L.A. that just organically

share and influencers that we've made relationships with. But we don't have like a traditional program. I would say we gift a lot, but there's not really a program behind it. It's just sort of getting the clothes in people's hands that are going to wear them and love them and authentically share them. Sure. Yeah. What about like PR or like events and things like that? Are you doing any of that? we're just now starting to yes we don't have a lot to report on but but we did events last year yeah they're super fun for more for community building our our la community um it's like the la influencer community it's always fun to do and i

think it just helps like we were saying before kind of more celebratory events versus like sales driven or yeah huge big budget events it's more something that we want to do to celebrate. Oh, we got inspired to in Italy to buy the pizza and pasta. Let's do a pizza and wine night at one of our houses and invite a couple of key influencers along with friends. So that's kind of our event strategy. Now, one day, hopefully we'll be doing pop-ups and different collaborations with other brands, but I feel like events can be overwhelming. So we try to keep it pretty small and like more strategic, I would say. That's cool. That's awesome. What would you say the Daily Drills marketing team looks like now? I know you have a kind of a slim team, but who is in charge of

the different aspects of marketing? You're looking at it. Yes. I figured we both do most of the like high level marketing. If we have a marketing meeting, we'll sort of boost it in on it. Kind of sign off on everything that's happening. And we have someone that does all of our email SMS marketing. We have someone that just started that helps us with all our influencer and PR pitching and everything kind of under that realm. So those two people kind of own those two lanes. And then we focus a lot on like product and design innovation, especially just like with an editorial calendar, like thinking of what is seasonal at the time and like what corresponds with different marketing pushes that we might want to do. So I think it's probably like four

of us that really sit, we actually have, we had to push it to later, but we have a marketing calendar meeting. So we'll like go through the next month and just kind of like look at what moments we have and what we're trying to message, what we're trying to push from an inventory perspective. And then we kind of break it out into like Instagram, email, like you were saying, SMS, push notifications, like apps, sneak peeks, anything like that. So then we all have like the same synced up roadmap and then we kind of all deploy and do what we need to do to make it happen. Yeah.

That's awesome. Speaking of SMS, I know that's something that's still, I see it so widely successful, but I know a lot of brands are still kind of hesitant or haven't tested that yet. How has that been for you guys? Has it worked really well for the brand? I feel like we like text message

marketing. I think we use it kind of to our advantage and make it fun. A fun story is the other day, the guy that helps us with all of that was sent, I think he scheduled a message and then he didn't remember that he scheduled it. So he double texted everyone. But afterwards we were laughing and he was like, let me just send a picture of me with you guys in the background like this and be like sorry I double texted you guys so we kind of like try to make it like them think we're actually texting them because we are the ones we have to put it into the platform that we use but we're texting um so we try to make it more personal like we do our Instagram yeah and then I think our app has really been a good direct line of communication that is not SMS but it's notifications that pop up on their home screen similar to SMS.

And that's like such a good, easy, like non-invasive way, I think, to ping someone and notify them of certain launches, etc. I agree. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, I'm always curious about how brands are seeing that work for them. But I want to ask about product launches too. So like, what's the strategy behind that? Does it vary depending on the product? Are you guys teasing for a certain number of, of time before you actually launch? Like just kind of walk us through that process for you. From like a product innovation standpoint, we try to plan like six months out and we kind of try to think, well, like make notes pretty much like right now, what are people wearing right now in LA,

in the South, on the East coast. And just so we can have those like mental notes of like, when we should be dropping things like last year, for instance, we dropped swim like a month later and we were like, oh my gosh, we need to like drop a month earlier this year. So I feel like that's kind of what we're thinking about from like a product innovation standpoint. And also just like, what's really working for us and like, how can we lean into that more if it's extra branding? Like what can we do to push that lever even further? We have like four different main categories, which is sport, resort, swim, and lounge. And so when we're looking at like our calendar too, we try to kind of like space them out. So

it's like, okay, it hasn't been six months since they released a new like our calendar too we try to kind of like space them out so it's like okay it hasn't been six months since they released a new sport collection like we try to kind of alternate obviously our I shouldn't say obviously but our best selling category is lounge so we kind of filter that in a little bit more than the other ones but we try to keep like a good variety of collections so that there's something for everybody and for every occasion on our site at all times. But you should talk about the teasing because I think that's really fun. Yeah, so we launch about two collections a month, which is a lot, but it's so fun. And I feel like our followers are super tuned in and excited by it.

We launched on Wednesdays at 10 a.m. and they all know that. So what we'll normally do is we'll tease on our app. So those app users get the first sneak peek on like the Friday before launch. And then on Sunday, we'll tease on Instagram. We'll do like one teaser picture on feed. We'll do a few stories teasing, whether it's the location, whether it's one of the items. It's always something fun. Like if it's Australia, we obviously show that it's in Australia.

Or if it's a new color, we show that new color. And then on Mondays, we'll do showing more of the collection. We'll showcase the entire collection on stories. So we go like item by item and show every, but pretty much a PDP and a lifestyle image for every single item that's launching in that collection. So they the viewers can sort of plan their buy or send it to a friend or decide what they already have and what they want to pair together.

And then on Tuesdays, we always do an IG live with Kit and I, the founders, just to ask people to answer people's questions in real time. I think it's super exciting and fun. And people like to see the garments, actually the color that they look like. Obviously they know they're professional photos and we try to make them look as similar to the actual item as possible, but lighting and different things. So we show them the color of the garment. We show them the fit. We try it on, we style it, we do everything. Um, and then on Wednesdays we'll launch it. So that's sort of our like cadence and it's really worked for us. Um, and that's what we do every single launch. That's so awesome. We, uh, I've noticed that strategy. So I was very curious to hear from your

side of things, like exactly what the cadence is, but that's super cool. Super cool. And it just speaks again to how in tune you are with your community that they have come to expect all of these different teasing moments, and then they're ready to go shop on your app right at 10am or whatever it is like, it's that's so powerful and so awesome. Well, this has been so great to have you on. I feel like there's a lot of really key things that people can take away from this episode. And so thank you guys so much for joining us. But lastly, we'd love to ask this question on the show and that is what do each of you know now that you wish you knew early on in your career? So much. So Honestly, we always talk about this.

Yeah. So I don't know if this is a direct answer to your question, but I'm like, I'm kind of happy. I didn't know everything that I now know. Because I think I would have been so overwhelmed. I think I would have felt so unprepared to start a brand. Like we literally just took it like step by step. Like we didn't worry about the big things until

we needed to and I think if I would have known all that at the beginning I think I would have been really really overwhelmed and felt like you know prematurely defeated so I'm kind of glad I didn't know too too much I obviously if you're in college and listening to this like take an accounting class we always say that wish I would have taken an accounting class have an internship have an internship get hands-on experience I just wish I would have known it's gonna work out and that I'm gonna figure it all out because I think kind of going what with what Ken said it's like we figured it all out along the way but if we knew we're gonna have to do this with a lawyer and do this with a manufacturer and do this with a fulfillment center like that's super overwhelming but we've learned it like

when we had to like after we packed this many, we had to figure out how to move to fulfillment center, but we figured that out versus at the beginning, knowing and doing it all. It's so much more overwhelming. So yeah. I just think if you're going to start a business, if you want to start a business one day, like you will learn the things when the time comes. And also there are people who specialize in things that you can hire them out for. You don't need to know how to do everything. Like I don't know how to do bookkeeping yet. I oversee operations. Like, yeah, I don't know. That's something I learned from you too. It's like hire, invite people in like that know more than you. I feel like I was very like, I can do it better at the beginning,

but once you invite the people and it makes your life so much easier and they get to do what they love to do. Yeah. So I would say hire people. Yeah. Such good advice. And I know that's kind of hard to come to terms with like early on in your business. Cause you feel like you want to be touching everything and having your hands and everything, but that's the greatest advice so that you can focus on what you do best and brainstorming because a lot of that stuff takes away our mental energy and our creative drive for all of those things. So that's really great advice. Um, well guys, this has been fabulous. Like Erica said, we would love to know kind of where we can stay in touch with you guys individually and also just of course, daily drills. So give us all the links

and we'll of course include those in the show notes below as well. We're Daily Drills at Daily Drills on Instagram and shopdailydrills.com. And then I'm at Mary Ralph. And I'm at Kennedy Critchlow. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you both so much for coming on and just sharing your journey with us. I learned a lot. I know Erica did and our listeners will absolutely love this episode.

And so thank you for sharing your time and insights with us today. Thank you for having us. So much fun. Thanks to Ken and Ralph for joining us this week. What a fun and inspiring episode. If you enjoyed this conversation, don't forget to rate and subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform. We'll see you next week for another episode. We are so excited to share that our first ever free marketing happy hour digital resource is now available. Download the dream career game plan today at marketinghappyhr.com forward slash freebie. That's marketinghappyhr.com forward slash freebie. This five-step workbook will guide you through defining your goals, building your network, diversifying your skills, influencing where you're at and investing in your growth.

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