319 | From Zero Experience to Ecommerce Success | with Johnny Person

Johnny Person

My main goal is to build something that people recognize and people see it and they're like, that's Aug11 and I know that immediately. 

Chase Clymer

Welcome to Honest Ecommerce, a podcast dedicated to cutting through the BS and finding actionable advice for online store owners. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. And I believe running a direct-to-consumer brand does not have to be complicated or a guessing game. 

On this podcast, we interview founders and experts who are putting in the work and creating  real results. 

I also share my own insights from running our top Shopify consultancy, Electric Eye. We cut the fluff in favor of facts to help you grow your Ecommerce business.

Let's get on with the show.

Chase Clymer

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. Today, I got a great one for you. I'm bringing to the show Johnny Person. Johnny is the owner and operator of Aug11 Company. Johnny, welcome to the show. 

Johnny Person

Thank you for having me. I'm very grateful to be here. 

Chase Clymer

Oh, it's going to be a fun one. So for those that aren't familiar with Aug11. Could you tell us a bit more about the company, the products that you guys are bringing to market over there? 

Johnny Person

Yeah, absolutely. So we specialize in making hats, specifically 5-panel structured snapback hats. Our tagline is quality hats that fit perfectly guaranteed. We guarantee that they will fit you perfectly. And if not, you get your money back within 30 days of delivery. 

Chase Clymer

That's amazing. Now, take me back in time. What was the catalyst to jump into the hat game? How did you get started?

Johnny Person

It's kind of an interesting story. So I've worked in the fashion space for about 10 years with a two year hiatus, roughly. I entered as a graphic designer, I've modeled, I've been a West Coast sales rep, I became director of international sales at a very large streetwear agency in Southern California, which is where I'm from initially.

I had owned a fashion wholesale company for about five years. So I learned about trend forecasting, basically everything you could ever learn about the fashion space I have learned, right? Besides going to like Central State Martins to learn design and sewing things. 

So I got into the blockchain technology space for about two years, and did very well in that. And then the entire economy tanked, crypto kind of went away with it. And I was in a space of, I don't know what the heck I'm going to do, right? I don't know what I'm going to do with myself. 

I took a year off, just kind of established my friendships out here in Atlanta, decided to kind of work on myself, and went through a really rough time in my life. And during that time, I was kind of playing around with this idea of launching a product. I'd always wanted to launch a product, right? My previous businesses were service-based businesses. 

And I had spent the weekend on a boat with a gentleman who owned a clothing company out in Atlanta. And they had grown pretty large, and had a pretty large following. And during that weekend, he was kind of telling me about the back end of his business. And they kind of specialized in hats. 

That's kind of what they were known for. And after he got done telling me about the back end of his business, I was like, no offense to this guy by any stretch of the imagination, great kid. After sitting there with him and hearing him kind of tell me about the back end of his business, I was like, this guy isn't a fashion guy. He's a tech guy. He knows

But he's not like at his core a fashion guy. Like at my core growing up, I've always just fashion has kind of been my thing. And I thought to myself at the end of that weekend, I was like, I'm kind of ready to launch into something else and like, this kid can do this. I can absolutely do this. I know this entire space like the back of my hand. 

So I sat down. I kind of came up with some ideas and I had been getting served a lot of ads for hats. And I was like, hats seem like a very easy sort of medium to get into launching my first sort of Ecommerce company. 

And I thought about it, you don't have to come up with sizing, you have a one size fits most snapback hat, you don't have to deal with huge amounts of inventory when you're doing sweatshirts, when you're doing pants.

you can fit 20 pieces into a box or hats, you can fit 200 pieces into a box. So it just kind of made the most sense for me. And I started to kind of ideate on some ideas. 

I had hired a designer that I used to work with when I worked at the, when I was director of international sales at this company. And we came up with these designs and I was like, I had the idea of Aug11 in my mind, right? And we can get into the reason why I called it Aug11. So Adam designed these graphics that said, Aug11 on the head. 

I thought to myself, I was like, if I'm running ads for this company, I don't want people to have to think about what does Aug11 mean and why would I buy into this brand? I wanna come up with something that is as simple and straightforward as possible so that people see it. 

They don't have to question it. They think that's cool, I wanna buy that. They don't have to worry about branding. They don't have to worry about the story, anything like that. 

And then I went out to this event out here called the Live After Five in Roswell and I saw my entire target demographic, ages 21 to 40, wearing these hats that said, easy does it or caviar cowboy or whatever it was. 

And I got home that night and I was like, those are the type of designs I need to come up with. I was in the gym the next day and I was like, what kind of designs could I come up with? And all the same summer on the boat, people are looking at my tattoos. 

That's a really cool tattoo. You should put that on a shirt. Oh, that's a really cool tattoo. I'd love to wear that on a hoodie or something like that.

So it clicked right then and there. I was like, I already have all of these designs tattooed on my body. So I'll pick the six best designs. I'll give it off to my cousin who does manufacturing in Los Angeles. And we'll go ahead and run our first run of six hats with these designs.

I don't have a black and white art hat. Yeah, I do. That's this hat. And this hat is the hat that kind of put us on the map, right? And then I have the dad tattoo right here, the darling tattoo right here, a couple other tattoos that did really well for us. 

So it was kind of happenstance. Kind of everything just seemed to click for me and everything kind of made sense. I don't want to get too spiritual in this, but like I was very much on a soul searching journey before I started this company. I was very much getting in tune with my understanding of God. 

And everything just lined up to where I felt like it was God telling me, Hey, this is the next step in your journey. This is what you need to do. And everything just clicked and the art that caught fire and the rest is just history. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. I need to ask specifically and call it out here because it's very interesting. It's why we're talking now. When did this happen? How long ago? 

Johnny Person

We launched the company November 1st of 2023. 

Chase Clymer

So that is 16 months around this recording date?

Johnny Person

About 16 months ago. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah. And so where are you guys at as far as what can you share about your sales and the success that you've seen in the last 16 months? 

Johnny Person

So our first full calendar year, January 1st to December 31st of 2024, we did just under a million dollars, which is crazy to me. I launched this company. I had the idea in my mind. I'm like, nothing is going to stop me from making this thing work.

I've decided that I'm going to win with this product. At the end of the day, I'll do whatever I have to do. I'll sell everything. I'll live under a bridge while running this company if I have to, if that's what it means to make this work. I think that's a big reason why this has worked out the way it has. 

But yeah, 2024, we did just under a million dollars. And 2025, we hope to double that. And so far, I was looking at the numbers last night. We're what? Halfway through Q1. We made more money halfway through Q1 than we did. Or we did more in sales halfway through Q1 than we did from November 1st through June of last year. 

Chase Clymer

That's saying something. Now let's dive in a little bit. You're getting people excited out there, the young entrepreneurs. And this is very modern. I think that the hardest thing for anyone to do is go from zero to one to break a new brand. And I'm saying this right now for everyone that needs to hear it again.

No agency is going to help you do this. If someone promises you that they can break your brand, have them show you multiple case studies doing it in the same category that you're in. This is a tale as old as time. No one has the passion that you have. 

If it was that easy, why am I not just starting a brand and living on a beach? Right? I just need to put that out there. 

Johnny Person

I love what you're saying. Okay. There's two things on this. I don't know if you know who George Heaton is. He's the owner of Represent.

But he posted something on Twitter today and he said, people are trying to sell the Represent playbook, Represent blueprint, George Heaton strategy. You must realize this is a decade and a half of absolute dedication to a single output. And every day is extremely difficult, unique, and requires tons more work than you'd imagine. It made me think about when I started this company. 

I could have contacted every agency and said, Hey, I'm going to hire this person. This person does my ads. This person does my email marketing. This person does graphic design. And I'm just going to oversee everything. 

I knew nothing about Ecommerce when I started this company. Nothing. I've never built an Ecommerce website. I never run anything on Shopify. I never run ads. I'd never run email marketing. I taught myself everything. I bought whatever courses I could. I lost some money on some courses. Some courses were absolute shit. Some courses were great. I learned about conversion rate optimization.

I got the company up to doing $30,000 a month based on my own hard work and trying to figure everything out. I knew that if I wanted this to work, I needed to know how every aspect of my business is going to work. And I'm a little bit older, right? I'm 34 years old. I'm not some 21-year-old kid who's deciding to start a drop shipping company or deciding to start an Ecommerce company that they've already probably tried to do four times when they were 16.

I just dedicated myself to learning this and figuring this out. And I decided that no matter what, I'm going to figure this out. Now we outsource our media buying. Now we outsource our media marketing, our email marketing. We have consultants, we have a team around us that works. But I had to figure every aspect of this out. 

And if you're coming in here and you think like, oh, I'm just going to get agencies to run everything, you're going to get fucked. These people are going to fuck you over at the end of the day.

Chase Clymer

Well, I definitely just want to follow up there. 

Johnny Person

Not all of them to clarify. Not all of it.

Chase Clymer

I agree. A lot of people with good intentions, but bad execution. Right? I think most agencies get a bad name. Not because they can't do the work, but because they set wrong expectations. But that's not the conversation I want to have with you.  

Now, in learning these skills, do you think it taught you things about then being able to hire and outsource that skill? Or do you think someone could have pulled the wool over your eyes at the beginning?

Johnny Person

That was one of the reasons why I wanted to learn everything so that I knew what I was looking for in a media buyer so that I knew what I was looking for in an email marketer. I think if I didn't learn these skills prior, I would have no clue. I'm learning at the back end of what these guys are saying I should do.

Now I have an idea of how to do all of these things. And it was very important in helping me choose my people. Now my media buyer is probably one of the best media buyers out there right now. He's had a media buyer over at Ridge. I think if I didn't learn those things myself, I would have probably got screwed because I wouldn't know what I'm looking for. 

Chase Clymer

Right? Yeah. If someone that says they're an expert says everything looks good.

Johnny Person

How would I know? 

Chase Clymer

Know enough to check those facts. Now let's talk about growth. How did you get customers that weren't your friends and family? 

Johnny Person

So for the first round of customers, we did a soft password-protected launch in September, October. And I sold $1,000 worth of hats. My best friend bought $600 worth of hats. And I was like, oh, this is it.

When it came to actually launching though, I had to take Facebook ads courses. I took like three different ones and I had no clue what I was doing. And I lost money running ads. But I remember when I got that first order from a random person. 

And I was like, oh my goodness, this might work. And I had no clue what I was in for. But the way we started to acquire our first customers was through meta advertising. 

Chase Clymer

How long did it take from launching your first ad to getting your first sale?

Johnny Person

Oh, that's a great question. I think it was rather quick. I think it was probably within the first few days. But I think the cost to acquire that customer was $75. Our hats were $65 when we started. So I realized rather quickly, I'm like, oh, I'm not going to acquire customers for $5. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah. So what were you spending back then? Because it's pretty recent. And it's like how you got to set expectations on budgets. 

Johnny Person

Yeah. Everything that I was told. So our ad account starts you at what, $50 a day. I was scared. So I think I was spending like $30 a day. And then I remember being like, when is Meta going to lift our ad spend, our daily ad spend, and then it got to like $200 a day. And then they're like, OK, you could spend $500 a day.

I was like, spending $500 a day sounds crazy. That's 15 grand a month. It was kind of scary to go into thinking about spending 15 grand a month. Yeah. And now, looking back on that, I'm like, I couldn't imagine only being able to spend $500 a day on ads. 

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Chase Clymer

So just for those out there, you can still build a brand on the back of Facebook advertising in 2025. It's just expensive. 

Johnny Person

Yeah, it is expensive, definitely. And I think one thing that I learned drastically is nurturing your customers after you've acquired them. And this whole concept of lifetime value of a customer has become something that is very, very important to me. 

You can't solely rely on Meta advertising, but it's a great way to start something and get it off the ground. But you have to have those other levers that you can pull after you have acquired your customer and look into other avenues of how you can acquire customers. Luckily, we've got a good social media following now. That helps us acquire customers. 

Our MER versus our ROAS is drastically higher, which I'm super grateful for. Because some days, Meta just decides, we don't want to work today.

Chase Clymer

Yeah, I've heard a lot of interesting stories. And I think that the volatility of Meta's algorithm on a day-to-day basis quickly forces brands to make sure they aren't putting all their eggs in that one basket. So what are some of the other things you're doing to acquire new customers? Because I want to definitely talk about the nurturing stuff here in a minute. 

Johnny Person

So acquiring new customers, we do a lot of gifting to influencers and celebrities. I work with a couple of sports agencies that thankfully they reached out to me. I have some good friends who have put me in contact with some of these agencies. One of them actually led to Aaron Judge wearing our hat, which is really cool. 

Another one actually led to us working on a collaboration with a MLB MVP that we're currently working on right now that I can't drop the name of, but that's kind of cool. So a lot of gifting, being consistent posting on social media.

And we've sort of stepped out of meta a little bit and we're going into Snapchat advertising. We've tried the whole TikTok thing. TikTok is its own beast. I think if we're selling a $15 item, TikTok would be an entirely different world than selling a $55 item. 

So we haven't quite cracked TikTok yet, but we're still pushing on there trying some new things. I have a girl dedicated to trying to like tap into that sort of Gen Z customer. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah. You said, gifting. You didn't say influencer first. You said gifting. Tell me about that strategy a little bit more. 

Johnny Person

A lot of cold DMs. It's turned into this thing where I see somebody. I follow a lot of people on social media, right? I consume a lot of content. If I see somebody who I think is cool, who I'm like, oh, this reaches our target audience, or I just think they're a good person, I will just send them a cold DM from the brand account and my personal account. Usually, they'll respond to the brand account.

And I'll just say, Hey, man, I love your content. I would love to send you some hats. And that's it. I don't ask them for a post. I don't ask them for anything. It's kind of like this relationship building thing of just like, I like you. I think your content is really sick. I'd love to send you some hats, whether you wear them or not. I don't care. At this point, it's kind of a numbers game, more or less. 

And I've been able to build some really cool relationships with some great influencers just by being like, Hey, man, here's a box of hats and I'll send them 10, 15 hats at a time. Just like a thank you. And that's just the cost of business. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah. And I mean, obviously, at this point, you should have some pretty decent margins on your product. So you're basically losing money there to acquire a one-to-many-esque brand ambassador when it works out. Just like rough numbers. What do you think it takes? How many hats are you sending out to get just like an organic post that you're not even asking for?

Johnny Person

Oh, man. I couldn't even tell you the numbers on that. I try not to worry about the numbers of how many hats I might have. Because if I did, I'd probably freak out. You know what I mean? At the end of the day, we have very good margins on our hats. I have a very, very close friend who was in the Amazon space probably 5, 6, 7, 8 years ago. He had the number one car mount on Amazon for a while. And he made me think about this entire business in a different way. And he's like, consider the cost of your hats, right?

You send out 10 hats to an influencer. If they post it a couple of times, like you don't know what the effect of that is going to be, but one, that's social proof. You can't really put a price on social proof, right? And two, who knows what customers are going to purchase from that. It's kind of a spray and pray game at this point. 

So I don't know. I couldn't tell you. I don't want to look at the numbers. It's just sort of part of my model. And like, it's also cool to be able to build relationships with these people. Cause that's something that's intangible that

You can't really put a dollar amount on, right? All the hats I've sent out, now we're being able to work on this collaboration with this huge MLB player. 

Because some guys from this one team are like, hey, thank you for sending us these hats. Can you send a package to the whole locker room? Send a package to the whole locker room, and like, who knows what doors this unlocks, right? For the lifetime value of our brand, all the hats that I've ever sent out are probably worth this one collaboration. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah, and it's something about just increasing your service luck area. I talk about this on almost every podcast now. You got to just be about it and talk about it and not expect a direct response in return. 

Johnny Person

Yeah. 

Chase Clymer

And it will come back to you. 

Johnny Person

Absolutely. It's putting good energy out there and doing something good for your business. And I can't look at it as, well, how many dollars am I sending out? How many dollars am I getting back? 

I am building a brand that I want to stand the test of time for, hopefully, as long as I'm alive. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have an exit from the brand someday. But that is not my main goal, more or less. My main goal is to build something that people recognize and people see and they're like, that's Aug11. And I know that immediately. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. Now let's talk about keeping these awesome customers. You mentioned some retention strategies before.

Let's dive in those a little bit more. You said that you used to do the email yourself and now you've definitely passed that along to a great team member. But what are some of those retention strategies that you guys are working with? 

Johnny Person

So a lot of it really just comes down to our welcome flows within our emails. Early on, I created this email that was like a handwritten note or it looks like a handwritten note from me along with the photo.

And it says, hey, you know, I sincerely appreciate the fact that you've purchased from us. I just want to let you know that this is something that is so meaningful to me. I kind of added a little bit of our story in there. And I have a picture of me smiling. 

I'm just like, if you want to communicate with me, respond to this email. And that goes to a separate email than the one that all of our email blasts go out to. And I get email responses to that all the time. People are like, hey, man, thank you so much for sending this email. I'm grateful that you reached out. I love your hats. I love your story.

And I'll respond to those emails all the time and just kind of build those one-on-one connections. On top of that, our Instagram, I try to be as active within our Instagram as I can. Whenever anybody reaches out, I will communicate back with those customers. I don't know what the tangible value is of that, but I feel like it's working and it's working well. Just sort of some more simpler strategies are obviously our email welcome flows.

I have an email guy who has been doing this for years and years and our email flows are fantastic. We actually did a split test for the launch of our last collection. We ran a lead gen campaign on Meta and we didn't put them into a welcome flow. So we spent like $1,000 to acquire, I don't know, 1,000 or 1,500 emails or something like that. And we didn't put them into a welcome flow. And we split test our everyday consumers that are already on our email list with this lead gen campaign.

We had zero purchases from the Lead Gem campaign because, and I'm convinced it's because we did not put them into a welcome flow. Everybody else from our standard email list, our conversion rate was through the roof. So that was a very interesting insight for me. 

And this last collection that we launched, we had our highest ever sales day, our highest ever volume day without it being, you know, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, without it being a sale day. So being able to nurture those customers and just make sure that you have your proper email flow set up I think is super important. Then obviously, you're retargeting campaigns on Meta, etc. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. Now, there's a lot that we talked about. Is there anything I didn't ask you about that you think would resonate with our audience today? 

Johnny Person

I think the story behind why I called it Aug11 is interesting. 

Chase Clymer

Oh yeah. Let's circle back. 

Johnny Person

So Aug11 stands for August 11, obviously. August 11, 2003 is my little sister's birthday.

For those who don't know, I've been sober off of drugs and alcohol for 14 years. I was at one point in time addicted to heroin, Xanax, and I drank alcohol like an absolute fish. I used to love drinking five fifths of Jägermeister by myself. I'm blacking out. 

I was 20 years old sitting in jail for the second time in two months. And I went to court and I said, we're going to give you six years in prison and a strike on your record. I freaked out.

I called my mom on the phone, I said, mom, you need to get me a lawyer. She said, are you kidding me? You want me to get you a lawyer after everything that you've just put the family through for the last four years? My mom stepped out of going through a nasty divorce. 

My little sister's there kind of just being like, what's going on? I don't know what to do here, right? Her older brother who's kind of supposed to be like, I guess father figure of sorts, protector is in jail. We're 13 years apart.

She says, are you kidding me? I'm not going to get your lawyer. Talk to your little sister. She puts my little sister on the phone and in the cutest, most baby-est voice you could ever think of, she says, so does this mean you're not going to live with me anymore? 

I'm 20 years old. I think I'm big, bad and tough. Got a couple of tattoos. I'm in jail with all these thugs and criminals, right? I lost it. I broke down crying. And it was in that moment for the first time in my entire life where I thought to myself,

I'm the only person who got myself in this situation. I'm the only person who can get myself out of this situation. I need to be a better son. I need to be a better brother. I need to turn my life around. And since then, my life has been turned around drastically. 

My sobriety date is not that date because I took some sleeping medication for withdrawals and whatever, but my sobriety date is December 19th, 2010. I've been clean and sober ever since then.

But that moment with those words that my little sister shared with me were so impactful to me. When I started to ideate on this brand idea, I knew I had wanted to kind of do something that was an homage to my little sister, right? Something like a thank you. It marks this moment in time where everything switched for me. And it was just without that moment, I don't know where I'd be today. I'd probably be dead or in jail at the end of the day.

Aug11 was actually the logo that you see here was actually created for a crypto project from a buddy of mine named John Jang, who is a very good designer. And we were going to launch a product called Aug11 and it never worked out. And when it came time for me to actually launch the hats, I was like, I already have the logo. I already have the brand identity. I already know what to do with this. So yeah, it all worked out for the best. 

Chase Clymer

That's a beautiful story, Johnny. And we're so happy that it brought you here. For those that are listening to the podcast and they're like, we got to check out these hats. Where should they go? What should they do? 

Johnny Person

www.aug11.co or check out our Instagram, aug11co. You can find all the information that you want there. Or you'll probably get an ad now that you've listened to the podcast. And the way I talk about our ads, it's like the mafia. It's blood in, blood out. You're never going to get away from our ads after you start getting them. So be prepared. 

Chase Clymer

Awesome. Johnny, thank you so much for coming on the show today. 

Johnny Person

I appreciate you, Chase. Thank you.

Chase Clymer

We can't thank our guests enough for coming on the show and sharing their knowledge and journey with us. We've got a lot to think about and potentially add into our own business. You can find all the links in the show notes. 

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Until next time!