Right About Now with Ryan Alford - Cameron Diaz wine launch, Mark Cuban investment in Cloud Paper, Walmart and Oracle taking ownership of TikTok and more industry news

Episode Date: September 25, 2020

The latest business and marketing news that you need to know about!In this episode on THE RADCAST, host Ryan Alford and producer Reiley Clark, walk us through some of the biggest headlines in the business and marketing world this week:Cameron Diaz's red wine launch set for October 2020. (Sign us up!)Mark Cuban, Marc Benioff, Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, and Uber CEO, invest in Cloud Paper, a bamboo based alternative to toilet paper? How interesting...Walmart and Oracle taking partial ownership of Tik Tok... what does this mean for their eCommerce strategy? Ryan and Reiley break it down for us!Mailchimp is bringing artificial intelligence to small business. Are they behind in the technology space? For more of the latest industry news, subscribe and follow THE RADCAST!Do you want to hear more from your host? Follow Ryan Alford on social media to make the most out of your business, personal life, and more If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. 

You're listening to the latest RADCAST News Update. Here's Ryan and Riley. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the RADCAST. It is our weekly, bi-weekly, when we can get to it, you know, we do run a business around here, Riley. And our guests come first, but it is our weekly news update for the week of September 21st. Today actually being September 24th, just to date the episode a bit. Absolutely, yeah. And then tomorrow it will release September 25th. That's right. So good to be back with you here.

I like having you on. I have someone to soundboard, and I don't have to hear myself talk too much. Right, yeah. I can talk too. Exactly. So I know we've got some news to get to, but I guess first let's start. We'll recap a little bit today.

We're in the middle of our e-commerce series, which has been going really good. Congratulations on the guests. We've had some really good guests. You want to recap some of those people? I would love to. So the Future of Digital Commerce series, we are

four episodes in. We started out with Robbie Fitzwater. He gave us some really good insight in the beginning, kind of teeing off some big trends that were coming up holiday-wise. Then we had Sean Whalen, the CEO and founder of Lions Not Sheep. I know you loved that one. Oh, I did. I love Sean and I love the brand. And so it was a guilty pleasure and someone that I follow. Don't agree with everything politically, but I agree a ton with his kind of approach to life and really admire how he's turned things around and he lives his truth. So you can't fault him for that. You have to respect that. Absolutely.

fault them for that you have to respect that you know absolutely uh we had another guest um that came out on tuesday that episode with jordan schindler the ceo and founder of new fabrics which first of all that was an amazing episode very insightful very revolutionary technology it's going to be awesome to keep following up with that it hit every we talked about this on the episode it hit every part of radical exactly radical growth for him with his business but the products are you kidding me like i can wear a shirt and get rid of my back pain exactly i mean part of radical. Exactly. Radical growth for him with his business, but the products, are you kidding me? I can wear a shirt and get rid of my back pain. Exactly. I know that there's been these patches and things, but the thought that a full garment in certain areas can absorb and release those medicines, for lack of better words, the opportunities are endless, but it was

just really, really cool to talk to him about it. I agree. And the part about the military eventual equipment, that's going to be a very interesting thing to follow back up on. I can just see it now. This is like Bionic Men. Oh, 100%. I was actually thinking about this, and you're not going to know this. I'm going to assume you don't because I was thinking the Bionic Man when I grew up was Lee Majors.

You're right. I don't know. It was an awesome 80s show. Oh, yeah. It might even have started in the late 70s when I was babyish, but I think it was mid-80s, the bionic man, Lee Majors. Anyway, he could run super fast. He was bionic.

Oh, yeah. He was in his thing, super cheesy, super over the top. But all I can think about when he was talking about the military, I'm like, these guys are going to have clothes on that like release some endorphins or something that just turned them into animals. I'm about to go put on something when I go work out for like my sore legs. But think about it. You probably could be like caffeine. I'm going to put my caffeine shirt on and have some energy. I don't have to drink it. You know? I mean, hey, healthwear. I love it, Jordan. Our next guest that will come out on Tuesday at noon is Sanjay Jenkins.

He's the director of e-com at Buff City Soap. And that is, I, first of all, love the concept of scents first, taking care of your skin. I'm very skin conscious. So that kind of product, I'm very excited to keep spreading. Nicole and I, my wife Nicole and I, are scent people. We have candles. She's definitely got candles everywhere. We were talking about my wife Nicole and I are scent people. We have candles. She's definitely, she's got candles everywhere.

We were joking about this the other night. Oh yeah. And so we're scent people and so he had me at Smells Goods. You were like, check.

I was like, check. Okay, I actually have a cart started that I didn't finish because I got busy doing something else. But I'm definitely ordering

some of that soap and he said he was going to send some detergent. So, Sanjay, if you're listening, you better send that soap. I'm telling you. Exactly, exactly. And then I'm very excited for another guest we have lined up. The following week, Kalila Wright, she's the CEO and founder of Mess in a Bottle,

wrote a revolutionary way of just, like like wearing your message on a t-shirt another clothing um company super cool stuff really cool you know i i actually was thinking about this before you found her i was not aware of this brand or or kalila and i was like everybody's got a t-shirt company now how are people differentiating you know everybody's kind of writing these cool sayings. And then, sure enough, you send this, I'm like, that is different. That is cool. And a reusable bottle.

I love that. Reusable bottle. The messages felt fresh, too. 100%. I felt like I'd seen every T-shirt message. And I started, these are actually pretty good. Actually, I've never seen these. I'm sure they probably have a writing team at this point.

We're going to find that out next week. I was about to say. But really cool and really looking forward to that. Oh, yeah. All right, let's get in the heart of the news here. So we'll start out. Karen Diaz founded Avaline Wines, co-founded with Catherine Power. They started out to do clean wines,

and then they are launching a new red wine that is coming out next month. They started their white wines in July 2020, and then now they're having a red wine launch. But I like the idea of this being a clean concept, no added anything else, just super clean. What are your thoughts about her investing in that i think it's cool like i'm a wine guy i collect wine i know wine austin if you're listening i love you austin hope we've had on the episode one of the fastest growing wineries in the world

and in california um yes commercial for austin but uh there's a lot of celebrities getting into alcohol now you've got The Rock doing tequila. You've got, was it Ryan Reynolds doing gin? And so now wine makes sense. And I like seeing celebrities transition into business and different things. So it's cool seeing them use their celebrity in their platform, especially clean. I'm assuming that's probably some lack of sulfites. I don't know everything about the wine, but I think it's great.

But how it will differentiate in the market comes down to taste and kind of getting the word out. So it would be interesting where it lands and all of those things. Having her name attached to it helps a lot. Absolutely. I'm always a little cynical with the celebrity drinks until I, you know, try them. Until you try yourself. You know, but I imagine, I think people are figuring out now in what I call the aware society

because of social media and reviews and everything else, you can't really have a shit product anymore and get away with it. If you put your name behind it, you know, there's such a feedback loop that's out there that I think, you know, most of these guys are doing their homework. And it sounds like Cameron Diaz is, and I respect her. I've always thought she was cool and, you know, had her shit together. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I definitely think there's a point about having your following. You have accountability whether you want it or not. Your fans are going to let you know, actually did not like this. But I'm a red wine girl, so I'm very excited about next month. I'm going to be looking for that for sure. So we'll see. It'd be cool to follow where it goes. Maybe we'll do a follow-up and have a glass or something.

Oh, 100%, yeah. Check. Yeah. Radical's getting it, right? Yes. I love this next one. I'm a big environmental person. So this one was awesome to me. Bamboo based toilet paper. Investors are so many celebrities. Mark Cuban, Gwyneth Paltrow, Robert Downey Jr., the CEO of Uber. I mean, they're all getting behind this. But what do you think about the price of it?

It originally started as B2B. Now they're starting to get into B2C. But $28 for a 24-roll pack? This came across my Twitter feed. You brought it up in our news recos. And I saw it in my Twitter feed. And it started wracking my brain. I saw the 24 rolls for $ bucks and i was going and my we share a lot of the common duties but my wife does

buy typically the toilet paper or some of the more grocery things i don't want to be like well my wife does the shopping you know she does a lot of it but um it felt expensive at first i don't know i was like using my Costco brain. We'll go, and I'm like, how much do we pay for that giant bag of toilet paper? I don't know. But it seems a little pricey. It seems a little gimmicky. The more I read and studied and what I've heard about bamboo,

that sometimes it takes more bamboo than the wood would. Wood, wood? How much wood would we need? How much bamboo would or bamboo is necessary? What does it take to process all that wood, all that bamboo? So it feels a little gimmicky, but big names behind it will be interesting. And then that price point kind of got me. But then I read that somebody said, well, that's about what an average

tall pepper is, but I don't know. Does that seem high? It seemed a little high to me for 24 rolls, but at the same time, I'm the kind of person where I think bamboo is a little bit more renewable than just regular wood in the sense that I think it takes less time to grow bamboo than it does to grow, you know, and deforestation purposes. Having grown up in South Carolina, and a quick detour here,

because we had bamboo will get on your nerves when you don't want it. Really? That stuff will grow. But that's what I'm saying. Like, that seems renewable. We would chop that stuff down, and it'd get everywhere. It was like my grandmother's house. We'd go over there, and for'd get everywhere. It was like my grandmother's house.

We'd go over there and for whatever reason she had a bamboo farm. I should have started a toilet paper company because she had like four acres of bamboo. You missed your calling. It's a nuisance if you don't want it. Right. Because it just never goes away. So it obviously grows quicker. I can vouch to that because we would knock that stuff down. I swear like three months later it'd be 20 foot tall bamboo shoots.

So is it really that bad of a concept then? I don't know. I'm, look, I'm cynical that if this is truly, if this is truly helping the environment, sign me up. Right. Great. Right. I'm all for that.

I'm cynical sometimes of whether or not when you really get underneath what it takes, I would just want to know more. Oh, absolutely. I'll spend a little bit more to save the environment. Let's do it. But I want to – Make sure it's actually practical. I trust, but I verify. That's exactly right.

So says my Instagram post yesterday, which is actually true. Yeah, exactly. Third topic for today is Walmart investing in TikTok, which I think is very interesting for a lot of reasons. Obviously, just with everything that's going on with President Trump's initiative and creating the TikTok global, I like that Oracle and Walmart might be teaming up in this endeavor. 20% ownership is what it's looking like that they will both be sharing into TikTok Global. But as a response to competing with

Amazon's e-commerce, this is Walmart's goal. How do you feel about, does that make sense? do you feel about does that make sense here's where it makes sense um walmart is you know has a historical brand i feel like it's demographic and is older traditionally uh that's changed with them getting a better app experience and yes they've definitely changed this perspective so i don't want to say that it's still this way. This gets them in front of youth, the younger audience that gets the brand in front of them. It makes them more relevant. It gets them in front of technology. And look, they're trying to out-innovate Amazon. So Amazon's been in the forefront of innovation as far as shopping goes. And this is a play for Walmart to leverage. And you say, well, how does that leverage? If you don't think that the ad platform on TikTok

isn't going to, as long as it doesn't get shut down, caveat, a little asterisk on anything we talk about, assuming Donald Trump doesn't shut it down. Exactly. The ad platform is going to be billions upon billions of dollars that are going to be spent. So marketing is going to be filling in. You're going to have these natural opportunities for e-commerce,

no different than what you see on Instagram, Instagram shopping. Right. And yes, TikTok's a different platform with the video, but they're still in the same vein. It's content and how you link content to shopping. And so Walmart sees this as a play younger demographic. And so Walmart sees this as a play younger demographic. They get a direct way to have app integration directly with their products. So it makes sense to me.

I see that. And what I'm waiting for is I feel like the shoe hasn't completely dropped on TikTok. It's super popular now. It's been a release and entertainment segment for people, especially amongst COVID. It's a perfect timing for how they've grown. Obviously, video content is here to stay. It'd be interesting to see. If I had my crystal ball like three years from now, what TikTok is, I think you're going to see an evolution of it.

And I think Walmart could probably help it. I think both of these companies could help each other. I think TikTok can make Walmart hipper, cooler, give a natural outlet for selling directly within the app. I think Walmart can bring your level of practicality in leadership and branding to TikTok. I agree. And I think you're going to see a maturing of TikTok in some way. Not because you're not going to have fun and do dances and all that. That'll still be there.

But I think you might see come to the middle, which helps TikTok in the long term. That was the only thing that for me, when I was just initially reading it, I was like, I could see it from a branding standpoint at making sense. But the other business side of it, I was like, I'm going to let Ryan take over this part because this doesn't make sense to me. It makes sense. I trust you. No, it makes sense. The Oracle factor will be interesting, too, how that relationship, the marriage of all this comes together.

how that relationship, the marriage of all this comes together. I can understand it from where each entity's technology comes in, but how all this gets sliced and diced will be interesting. Similarly, I'm going to let you take this one as well, because this one, Mailchimp is bringing AI into the small business market, but I'm not totally understanding what this is going to mean for small to medium-sized businesses. Here's what it's going to mean. A lot of people use MailChimp, and if you're using it now, it's getting better.

I'm not going to talk down to MailChimp, but it's really more in the e-com play, in the funnel for shoppers, some of the automation of what natural steps should be for customers, and them automating it. They're behind, point blank, especially in e-com. They're late to the game. Yes, they've integrated. They canceled their integration with Shopify, or Shopify canceled them. This was about a year ago.

And Klaviyo, which is where Klaviyo partner, Privy, there's a lot of email platforms that are growing in the e-com space, especially with integration with Shopify, which is more of that SMB platform unless you get into Shopify Plus. And so these are features that are already really present in those platforms. They're not really packaging necessarily as AI and automatic, but it does do recommendations based on your behavior, triggers and flows, all of those things which Klaviyo

and Privy and others have been doing for years or months. And so this is a little bit of catch up for me for MailChimp. Don't get me wrong. There's some cool features here. And MailChimp is definitely more of a household name. So, again, this is kind of like Walmart adding TikTok. Walmart's got such huge scale.

MailChimp has huge scale because they're already there. But a lot of these guys that are coming into e-commerce or in small business may not have even heard of Klaviyo or may not have heard of Privy because they don't have the brand power and cachet and overall. But this is kind of catch up for me. And so and I don't think it I will get it. We use it with certain clients. We use it for some of our email campaigns. So we'll get in and play around and see if it maybe maybe it'll supersede some of the tools I just named. But that's kind of the news to me. I think the mainstream that use MailChimp

and weren't aware of other ways to do these types of automations, especially with e-commerce, great. And I do think beyond e-commerce, they are bringing kind of this flow in these funnels, for lack of a better word, to your existing customers. Because now there are certainly certain things that are automated within MailChimp, but a lot of it, those triggers weren't as automated as they needed to be. And this is bringing more of that automation to even non-e-commerce campaigns. So I get a newsletter and I read it and I do these things and maybe I click on something that's in there.

Well, that might should trigger a follow-up email 10 days later about something else. I got you. And that's where MailChimp's been a little behind, I think. And so this is good. But let's see if it actually supersedes some of the tools that are already out there that will really jazz up your e-commerce. I got you, I got you I guess to close out

there's really only one other thing to really kind of point out, Instagram Reels now 30 seconds? That's right Oh my gosh, are you so excited? I'm excited, we did one at the lake a month ago we've got to do better, we're going to do more we're doing a lot of content Are you so excited? I'm excited. We did one at the lake a month ago. We've got to do better.

We're going to do more. You know, we're doing a lot of content, but we're probably behind on the reels. But the one for 15 to 30, you know, they're trying to catch up with TikTok on the kind of real-time video and the editing and the fun and the entertainment. This is an entertainment play for Instagram. Oh, for sure. I mean, you know, all social media has that aspect to it, But TikTok is kind of owning the entertainment space, I think right now, you know, true entertainment. Yeah, there's some knowledge and things down here. But, you know, Instagram's in this, you know, including the stuff that I do. I mean, it's in, you know, that influencer space of

sharing knowledge and sharing insights and motivation and you know the pictures that i've taken and the things that i've done and tiktok's more in that entertainment space where everyone's an entertainer and everyone's entertaining i think this is instagram's play for more of that space and in times like now i think we all need a little more entertainment but i do think it's good. I think it will increase engagement. It should make it easier to edit. You do 10-second clips, I guess times three, and can edit them.

Or break down however you really need to for whatever kind of story you're trying to tell. I think it's cool. Either way, I'm still not going to be a good dancer. We'll work on it. We'll work on that. We'll work on that. Signs up for dancing classes. That would be radical. TikTok gave me too much pressure. I need dancing classes.

Yes. I'll call my good friend, Rich Constantine. There you go. He never taught me. I got to watch him a bunch, but he never taught me. He was a good dancer. We'll arrange it. We'll arrange it.

But yeah, no, that's it for us on the Radcaster this week anything else you have? I think that's all we got appreciate everyone follow along as always at theradcast.com and at the.rad.cast

on Instagram and we'll see you next week have a great weekend to listen to full episodes or to contact us visit us on the web at the radcast.com or follow our host at ryan alford on instagram thanks for tuning in