The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - “It’s Not That Easy”? Sam Launched Overnight to Prove It Is | Ep. #175

Episode Date: May 28, 2025

Check out my newsletter at TKOPOD.com and join my new community at TKOwners.com.I sat down with Sam Thompson for part 2 of our two-part episode, if you haven’t listened to the first one yet, go check out Ep. #172. In this one, Sam breaks down how a Twitter reply turned into a real hummingbird nectar business doing over $5K in its first 21 days. We talked through his process from idea to Shopify store, how he branded literal sugar, used AI tools to create ads, and scaled it with Meta campaigns. He built everything using tools like ChatGPT, a $20 heat sealer, and SoloDrop, which let him launch the store overnight. We also riffed on smart seasonal products, digital upsells, and brainstormed low-lift business ideas anyone could start using Supliful, Canva, and other very simple tools. If you’re still waiting to “start,” this one proves you really don’t need much.You can find Sam on X/Twitter (https://x.com/ImSamThompson) and check out what he’s building at https://www.unlimitedcontent.com/Timestamps below. Enjoy!---Watch this on YouTube instead here: tkopod.co/p-ytAsk me a question on or off the show here: http://tkopod.co/p-askLearn more about me: http://tkopod.co/p-cjkLearn about my company: http://tkopod.co/p-cofFollow me on Twitter here: http://tkopod.co/p-xFree weekly business ideas newsletter: http://tkopod.co/p-nlShare this podcast: http://tkopod.co/p-allScrape small business data: http://tkopod.co/p-os---00:00 The Launch of Hummingbird Food03:03 E-commerce Insights and Strategies06:02 Advertising Tactics and Cost Management08:57 Product Development and Scaling Challenges11:55 Digital Products and Market Testing14:48 Exploring New Business Ideas18:03 Understanding Offers and Vehicles in Business

So this guy has sold $20, $30 million of sugar water on Amazon. And so, naturally, I posted on Twitter. And then this A-N-on account pops in, dude. And he's like, it's not that easy. Bada, ba-da, bada. And he put a chip on my shoulder. I was like, dude, it is that easy. And so then I woke up the next morning, and I launched hummingbirdfood.

com. I literally built the whole thing in like 12 minutes. It's not just like a free offer to entice them to checkout. $14. All AI generated. 100%. I'm going to do it. And y'all can do it too. All right. This is part two of my conversation with Sam Thompson about all things e-commerce, Facebook ads, video generation through AI, Hey Jen, Hummingbird Necter, e-commerce business. Yada, yada, yada, yada.

You're going to love it. You don't need to listen to part one first. But if you like this one, you're going to like the one a week ago. Enjoy and share with a friend. So my mom texted me. My mom texted me a couple weeks ago, probably about a month ago at this point. and she sends me this picture of the kitchen counter at their house. And she's got a bag of sugar and a pot of water and a hummingbird feeder. And she goes, it was like in our family group chat. She goes, it's hummingbird season. I'm making homemade hummingbird nectar.

Right. And I was like, all right. Like what does that mean? And she goes, you put sugar in water and boil it. And then it is hummingbird nectar. It's like super. That's it. It's sugar.

I was like, it's sugar. I was like, that's crazy. Like, if it was me, I just pop on Amazon, you know, and be like, dude, I'm just going to buy some hummingbird nectar. It's sugar water, basic. It's very thick, kind of like a syrup. Yeah, yeah, basically. Okay. It's just sugar water.

Technically, it's one part sugar, four parts water, whatever amount you want to do that with. I pop on Amazon just to see, you know, as we do, just like to explore. I come across a few listings of people selling hummingbird nectar. And you can buy it pre-made in the jug. You get 64 ounces of this. It's sugar water. Like, let's cut to the chase. Sugar water.

And they're selling a 60, I think it's 64 ounces for like 11 bucks. Right. And I click on the listing in it, it says 80,000 people have bought this more than once. Wow. Okay. Now that's like just Amazon is showing you. that or a third-party tool? Just Amazon. Just Amazon. Straight up. More than once. 80,000 people have bought it more than once. They have 24,000 reviews on the product. Real quick. They're buying it in a powdered form. So are

they just buying sugar? No, no, no. They're buying the pre-mixed water. They're buying a jug. Like, they're buying the premix and it's loaded. It's crap. It's loaded with preservatives and all this stuff because, you know, sugar and water left out. just causes mold and bacteria, whatever. Well, okay, so 24,000 reviews on Amazon, right? On average, 1% of Amazon purchasers leave a review. 2.4 million purchases at an $11 price point. So this guy has sold $20,30 million of sugar water on Amazon. sugar water.

And so naturally, I take a screenshot of it and I posted on Twitter. And I say, just an FYI, as a reminder, this guy, and I forget the number, I think it was like maybe 10,000 people had bought it or 20,000 people had bought it in the last 30 days. And so I was like, there's somebody making a quarter million dollars a month selling sugar water on the internet. And then this Aon account pops in, dude. and he's like, it's not that easy. And he put a chip on your shoulder. And he put a chip on my shoulder. I was like, dude, it is that easy.

Yeah. And so I outlined exactly what I would do if I was going to launch this in that tweet, right? The bag, the sugar, the whole thing. And it just sat wrong with me for like 12 hours. And so then I woke up the next morning and I launched humming, Birdfood.co. Did you leave the tweet up? Oh, the tweets up.

Okay. Okay. Yeah. And so I used AI, chat GPT. I designed the bag. So I'm selling nectar mix, which is, I'll be so real. I say it on the website too. It's just sugar in a bag.

Branded as hummingbird neck. It's just sugar. I literally go down to the smart and final, which is the local grocery store. and I buy 50 pound bags of sugar for $39.97. I take a scooper and a bucket and I load these bags in my garage. And then I got a little $20 heat sealer on Amazon. So I heat seal them. I pack them.

I've got probably 120 pounds of sugar in the back of my Jeep right now to drop off at UPS later. And so I start running ads. I download mock up of the pouch. I give it to chat GPT and I say, hey, generate, you know, a woman holding this, generate this laying on a table, generate all these different scenes, all these different product photos. I turn those into ads. I use solo drop to build the store and I launched the ads. Facebook ads?

Facebook ads. Yeah, just meta. Just like all meta product. Let's get tactical. Are you only in the news feed, stories? Just let Facebook ride. Just let it ride, dude. I just put the creatives in there.

Pledge placement. Sure. I don't even really remember. I just run ABOs. What is ABO? Ad set budget optimization. And so you can either do an ABO or a CBO. It's basically like, where do you want Facebook to distribute spend? And so I generally run. So here's how this works. I make you free videos. I actually know what I'm talking about. I have no greasy sales pitch at the end. And if you implement what I talk about, you'll make a lot more money and have a better life. And all I ask for in return is that you hit the subscribe button and maybe even the notification bell, that. Thank you. I like running two campaigns, each with ad sets within them that are ABOs. And so I have a testing campaign and I have a winning campaign. And then I'll go launch new sets of ads on the testing

campaign, ABOs. So I'll put in, I don't know, let's just say five ad creatives at $100 a day on an ABO, meaning Facebook will decide which of those ads get the most to spend. Because inherently, Facebook is incentivized to spend your money the best so that you continue to spend them. They want to push the content that's performing the best. Yeah, just launched a quick little ABO. A couple of the ads, classic Pareto principle, a couple of the ads perform way better than the others. I move them into ad sets in the winning campaign to scale and let it right. Oh my gosh.

Okay. Well, dude, like what was your cost per acquisition? What are we talking? And you're welcome to share your screen too if you want to get real nitty gritty. Yeah, yeah,

I will. So I really want to show people to ad side because it's like, this is the stuff that's super popular. So I've done about $5,000 in sales in two and a half weeks. Okay. People are buying them. I've spent about 40. So that's a six for your business.

Yeah, yeah. Like if I was really going to go, running gun at this. And so gross margin between the bags and the sugar cost me about three bucks or something around those lines to produce a unit. Not including any labor or shipping. That's just me messing around in the garage. Yeah. So like it yeah, very bare bones. Like let's just see if this works. Packaging labeling raw materials, cogs. Costs it sold three bucks. Cogs is yeah, like 351 or something along those lines. Sell them for 18 bucks. You get two pounds of sugar. for 18 bucks. And so the math is roughly like 80% gross margin. And I'm only selling them as multi-packs.

For those listening, if you want a CPG, a consumer package good product to sell on a Shopify store through Facebook or Instagram ads, you really got to start with a 70, 80% gross margin. You just have to. I don't care what the product is. It's almost impossible. Like you're not going to do it on a 30% margin. Right. And similarly, like AOVs less than 30%. 30 just like mathematically hard. Like you got to get north of 50. Yeah. Even if you're selling like a thousand dollar mattress like Casper style,

your cost for acquisition is probably going to be like 400 bucks, 300 bucks. So that thing's got to cost like 200 bucks. Yeah, 100%. Once you get through the first two, like week or two of ads, you start to get a pretty good feel for what's good. And so I was able to get up to,

like a one and a half X Roas. Mostly because I stopped selling single packs, that was the one big learning was like, I got to sell two of these specifically because the thing that's killing hummingbirds right now is shipping. Like we should actually talk about the shipping stuff because like me shipping, six pounds of sugar from Los Angeles to Tennessee is costing me a fortune, dude. It's insane. How much are you spending on shipping?

Average is like $12 a shipment, which hurts, dude. What are you shipping in? A poly bag box? Boxes, unless it's a one pack, then I ship it in a poly. And how much does the product weigh a one pack? Yeah, they're two pounds each, like 1.8 pounds each. Again, I'm not even, I'm not using a ship station. I'm not getting any discount pricing, like any of those things.

But what I was able to prove is that people will buy hummingbird nectar on the internet that's well branded at a reasonable Roas. I'm not mad at that. It's a super seasonal business for sure, May to September. Like when I did, you know, classic, you go to Jungle Scout and you use that to look at the Amazon stuff. Like all of the purchases that are happening for any of the competitors on Amazon are, it's made a September for the most part. Yeah. Oh, interesting. Hummingbird season.

So your cost acquisition is going to go way down. Yeah. Presumably. Yeah, that's the, that is the hope. And so the shipping is its own thing, but cogs will also continue to drop as I order more volume, specifically on the bag side. Because I only ordered 250, which is if anyone is starting to do some sleuthing. The reason there's no ads running right now is I ran out of inventory and have to wait for them to ship me more bags. That cogs will drop shipping.

I have to, like if I could even just cut the shipping expense in half, my math holds. You will. I just texted Kirk to see what that should cost. And I think it's like as low as $4 or $5. And I'm open. Like I like whatever needs to go down to be able to drop that cost. If it's moving to a 3PL in Texas, like fine. Like I'm in right.

Like whatever needs to go down. You should also experiment with dropping your product weight to like 15 ounces. That way it can still be under 16 with a poly bag. because that's 16 ounces is a cut off for first class shipping and it's it's the difference between like $8 and like $4 like 1.1 pound versus 15 ounces is literally like it's twice as much so smaller bags yeah and you even if you need to drop the price to compensate but then you're right yeah yeah and because I'm selling multi-packs a ov will go up because I just started doing that we're like you can't you can't buy one anymore but I've been

with that of I want to drop, yeah, dropping from, because it's two pounds right now. Like, they're heavy. Like, yeah. Dude, I'm sweating walking in and out of the EPS, dude. It's a bunch of trips with a bunch of weight. Everything you described, I could hear a hater writing in the comments. What is you going to go to the grocery store, buy a 50 pound bag of sugar, and then go online and buy some packaging with a $20 heat, heat sealer and then put up a solar drop on. And you, yeah. Oh, and it did $5,000 of sales on its first 21 days. Yes. Exactly what I did, dude.

I filmed the whole thing. Popping the link in my Twitter bio, dude. You can watch me do it. I literally filmed the entire thing. Oh my gosh. But yeah, it's literally, it's sitting there. Lauren thinks I'm absolutely insane. I'm out there in the garage for two hours once a week, just scooping shows to it.

I know. That's what I said, dude. And then I'm on Amazon. You can buy, like, you can buy machines that you just pour the sugar in. you press a button and it automatically dispenses 15 ounces out the slot. And I was like, dude, it's only $1,200. Can I put one in the garage? And she goes, no.

One might show up, dude. I don't know. But yeah, and then I'm just going to go to a baking mix manufacturer or copacter and say, yeah, I want to do a custom baking mix. And they're going to be like, awesome. What are you making? Do you want like cookies or like, you know, a cake mix? I'm like, no, no, no, no, just sugar.

Just sugar in a bag. Be sick. And so then they'll handle that. and what I've realized is this summer is going to be a total testing. I'm only going to go direct consumer next summer. You'll see me on Amazon. Like, you'll catch your boy. I was like, dude, I think I can do a million dollars a year on this.

Of course you could. You would have like 1% of the market. If I can get 10 to 20% EBIT a margin, like for four months of the year, I make an extra 100, 200k selling sugar. I'm going to do it. And y'all can do it too. I'm just going to do it. Like, I've just decided.

All the skills you pick up in the process of optimizing your Facebook ads and launching a Shopify store, like you could use those skills across so many other businesses. Sharpen the sword, dude. Like, it's why when like on the past episodes, I've always been like, yo, you guys should just go launch digital product Shopify stores.

Like, because you'll just learn. You'll learn how to run ads on easy mode with zero cogs. zero shipping. Like, you're not going to deal with all the stuff that I'm dealing with in terms of operating an e-commerce brand. You just get to send an email as your fulfillment. You get to play with offers and you get to understand what makes things work.

And you, like, I'm in the middle of doing one of those right now because I'm annoyed that I got to ship units. I'm like, I'm just going to launch a digital product and see if I can do the same thing. Like, you get more flexibility on it. I can't charge $60. for a two pound bag of sugar. But you can charge 70, 60, 70 bucks for a very niche specific digital product that solves a very specific pain point. Yeah.

Like we watch it happen all the time. What do you think you're going to be able to get your cost per acquisition down through Facebook ads too? We've had days, times campaigns that I'm getting purchases for like 14 bucks, which works on a because my AOV has has been hovering at like 40. to 50 thanks to my in-cart bump offer, which is Hummingbird Attraction 101, the e-book for $14.00-cogs, pushes my AOV up, 5, 6% of people. So they're paying for that. It's not just like a free offer to entice them to check out. $14. $14.

All AI generated? 100%. It helps. Well, and then you set your, you set your free shipping threshold to incentivize that add-on in-cart. Oh, my gosh. And so how many minutes of prompting did it take to make that ebook? Dude, I did it during like the first quarter of the Lakers playoffs game a couple weeks ago. Like I think I literally built the whole thing in like 12 minutes.

The prompt is easy, dude. It says, I want to write a book about this, write a detailed outline of 10 chapters, 12 chapters, whatever it is. Right? You got to write the outline. You got to do the outline. Then you got to take it one at a time. Then you say, then write chapter one. Sweet. Now write chapter two, all in the same chat so it knows the reference and and builds it all out. I've done that a bunch of times. I got a digital product that's just sitting in my back pocket that I got a launch that I did that on. And so. Here's the reality of it. It's all V1s. All of this is V1s. Like it's not like I'm going to go sling this AI book forever. It's like if people are actually buying it, yes, I will take the three days and like actually try to make it good. Like for sure.

but like I'm not going to go do all that work until I know people want it. Why would I? Let's go. If the market tells me they want it, I will build it. None of this build it and they will come stuff, dude. It's like, no, no, no, you come to me. You tell me you'll pay for it. Sick.

Then I'll build it. Absolutely. Build it and they probably won't come. Sell it first and you know they're coming before you go. And you know what to build because they tell you. You know what to build. Yeah. Like I see so many people doing it to flip, dude.

It's crazy. But the more people to listen to this, the less, the fewer people doing that. Look, listen, get rich. That's right, baby. You know? So video's cool, but you know what's better? Longform audio via podcast and my newsletter. TKOpod.com.

Go there to subscribe for free to my newsletter. It's one email a week, very tactical. And then go to my audio podcast, three episodes a week, stuff like this. You're going to love it. All free. No sleazy sales bitch. TKOPod.com. All right.

So I got a paid account for exploding top. topics and anyone listening to this, if you're not, if you're not watching, I'll describe what I'm showing. But these are technology topics sorted by growth from the last three months. And they're at the quote, exploding part of their growth cycle. Not at peak, not at regular. First of all, if you're like an ADHD, like idea addict, this is like the best thing you could do. So let's brainstorm real quick, some like ebook ideas that you could generate with chatyPD and sell that matches. That matches. some of these topics that we're seeing. So I'm just going to name out loud some of the ones that look interesting to me. Robotic lawnmower. Okay. Awesome. That's interesting.

Let's see. I don't know what a lot of these are. Inflatable screen projector. Cool. Huh. That's interesting. Let's see. Portable neck fan.

Lovable exploding. Oh yeah. There you go. Maybe like a $19. Ebook on like lovable hacks. Yeah. Or a $99 how to build X app. Yep.

Or maybe like a so mini portable air conditioner. That search term is growing 200% almost. Dude. Maybe an ebook on how to build one, dude. I thought about that for a robotic lawnmower. I was like an ebook on how to build your own robotic lawnmower. Smart lawnmower. Yep.

Digital planners is exploding. How to make your own digital planner with AI. You use AI to build that and sell it. Yep. Any of these stand out to you? Phone cooler. devices designed to manage the temperature of smartphones during high heat activities like gaming and live streaming. It's all the summers, dude, the summer stuff too. I know. It is like lawn mowing and

yeah. Air conditioning. Let's go out a lot of SEO type searches. You see all those? There are a lot of off page on page a bunch of people searching for stuff like that. Let's do that. Let's do this health and wellness. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, let's do time frame one year because then it won't be seasonal. Yeah. Let's look at growth, explode. Let's do non-brands. So dumbbell bracelets, so weight almost like, dude, that's so good. You know how people have like ankle, ankle weights? You just rebrand those as wrist weights.

PDRN mask, a skincare product designed to improve skin firmness and elasticity while promoting a youthful company. You can't tell me people wouldn't buy that. I like the rye serum. Eyebrow, eyebrow specific. I like that a lot. Skin care product design for eyebrow care. I'm just going to tell some people what's good real quick.

Is that cool? Yep. Okay. So eyebrow serum, you're going to go to suppleful.com. Okay. They have two separate products, one that is a peptide hair serum. The other is, they have two different hair serum products that you can go and brand and essentially just white.

They'll do all your sharing. It's drop shipping of supplements. You could go and rip an eyebrow growth serum pretty easily. Like solo drop store, branding in Canva, put that on the template that Suppleful gives you, connect your Shopify directly to Suppleful. What a sublifle does all of the fulfillment for drop shipping supplements. Oh, okay. We've talked about that. Yeah.

And so, yeah, you could literally go and run that immediately, actually. Like you get it live today. Solo drop, supple, Canva, chat GPT, Facebook ads manager. Bing, bang, boom. Get your ads on. Filtered shower head, dude, I just bought one of those. Loneliness epidemic is booming. Mop soap.

We need special soap for mops now. Dude, you do. You have to. Dude, I can't believe you're behind the time. A device worn like jewelry that helps control breath. My gosh. What? It's just, it bludely.

my mind what people pay for. Lymphatic drainage is a big one. That's not about the massage, but like a lot. Dude, I spend a lot of time talking about the difference between offers and vehicles. And I think people get them confused. Dude, go. Go. Go. And so like, dude, when you think about like an offer, right, I'll use B2B. Just I feel like more people listening. But if you're talking about B2B, your offer generally is we're either going to help you make more money, save time, or save money, right? Like, those are the worlds that you live in. That's what people are paying for as the end result of what you're doing. So then you back that into like a service, right?

Or a method. So we'll say, like, we help you automate your business to save time and make more money. Now, that's an offer, right? Now there's multiple vehicles that that offer can live in, right? You can launch that as a service. We will do automation for you for X amount per month. You can launch that as a digital product of, hey, buy this $99 guide on how to automate your business to save time and money.

Or you could sell it as a software. Zapier, that's what Zapier sells. Like Zapier sells automate your business to make more money, save time. Right. Like, you could sell it as coaching. Like, hey, join this community that will help you. automate your business. There's all of these vehicles that exist.

Similarly to form factor on CPG product, right? There's protein shakes. There's protein bars. Dude, there's protein pop tarts now. Shout out legendary. Right? Like there's creatine gummies, creatine powders, creatine drinks, like all of the vehicles that exist.

And so when I look at these and see collagen supplement, I go, okay, what is the vehicle? Like create, try create.com. Phenomenal. Like amazing. Yeah. Amazing. Founder, amazing product like so good.

And all he did, not to like water down everything he's achieved is a great operator. But he just changed the form factor of creatine. Yeah. Creatine historically has always been a power. We need to be gumming everything. Like everything is a gumming. it's all a gummy dude like it's all a gummy like it's literally whatever and so it's like when i look at all of this i just implore people to explore the vehicle side of the game with different

price points different requirements of like everyone's over here saying i'm going to launch a sass to do a bc and d and i'm like dude you'd probably make more money selling that as a service a digital product a coaching program a community yeah whatever right if you are skisks Right. Like you don't have to go learn just because lovable is an exploding topic doesn't mean that that's the only way for you to make money on an offer. But everyone just like wants to run a software product. Any software that I've ever had success with started as a service business. Like creative OS was an agency called Better Creatives three years ago. I sell the same thing that that agency sold, which is higher converting ad creatives. We were just doing it as a service. Then we sold it as a digital product, buy our template pack one time. Then we transitioned it into a software, have sold the whole, like the same offer all the way through. But the vehicle changed. And so I'm like, start with the, start with the vehicle that's the easiest.

Software is arguably the hardest. I'm sitting here being like, dude, I might just try to sell the book top of funnel for hummingbirds. Right. Like, it proves that more people want the thing. It's not even that we're trying to do the easier thing. It's like if you choose the harder thing, then you're going to be less likely to ever get to launch. Right. It's just more friction.

Right. You know, like there's people that pop in saying, hey, I want to do this as a software. And it's like, awesome. Have you ever sold this to a human being before? And they're like, no. It's like, dude, I promise you. Just like go sell it as a service first. They'll tell you what to do.

They'll tell you what that, like what they actually care about. And it's easier to go and update an ebook or a service. service or a than it is to go and make those product iterations on a software. And guys, you'll make more money selling it as a service. Like, yeah, at a thousand customers, software makes more sense. But if you're going to go fight for 10 customers on an offer, I promise you, you'll make more money doing it as a service than a software right now. So do that first.

And then use what you learn and the cash flow that you got to then invest in automation and technology that it supports that offer in the best way. Yeah. Like, what are we doing? What are we doing, bro? All right, thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time on the Kerner office.