#684 – From Shark Tank to TikTok Shop: NeuroGum’s Story

Join us in a captivating discussion with Jonathan from NeuroGum, the popular brand recognized for its appearance on Shark Tank and use by personalities like Joe Rogan. We explore NeuroGum’s impressive strategies on e-commerce platforms like Amazon and TikTok Shop, revealing how they leverage tools like Helium 10 to enhance their online presence. Jonathan shares his personal journey from Korea to Texas, then New Jersey, and how his diverse academic background in communications, entrepreneurship, and art history has shaped his perspective on business and travel. Discover NeuroGum’s ambitious growth plans and their recent move from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.

Listen in as we explore the entrepreneurial journey of an e-commerce success story. Beginning with a modest role at Bed, Bath & Beyond, our featured entrepreneur stumbled upon a life-changing YouTube video that propelled him into the world of Amazon selling. This narrative intertwines with the origin of NeuroGum, crafted by college friends Kent Yoshimura and Ryan Chen, who turned their dorm room creation into a thriving e-commerce product. Despite the allure of Shark Tank, they opted to focus on Amazon and TikTok, proving the power of strategic decisions in online retail. Their story illustrates the dynamic shift from traditional keyword ranking to innovative product offerings like nootropic gum and caffeine gum, tailoring marketing messages across platforms for maximum impact.

Gain insights into the evolving landscape of e-commerce and the strategies that propel brands like NeuroGum to success. Discover how influencer marketing tools, such as Helium 10’s Influencer Finder for TikTok and Amazon, can amplify business growth when paired with the right creators and organic content. Uncover the logistical considerations of fulfillment strategies, balancing personal warehouses with TikTok’s services. Additionally, we share a compelling tip for enhancing your Amazon brand’s presence through personal TikTok accounts centered on unique interests. This episode offers many strategies for aspiring sellers, emphasizing the importance of networking, collaboration, and strategic product offerings to achieve e-commerce success.

In episode 684 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Jonathan discuss:

• 00:00 – NeuroGum Amazon Strategies and Origin
• 04:25 – Entrepreneurial Journey in E-Commerce and TikTok
• 05:00 – Late Start Leads to Successful Career
• 10:00 – Optimizing Advertising Spend for Sales Growth
• 16:56 – E-Commerce Platforms and Fulfillment Strategies
• 17:49 – TikTok Viral Video Success
• 25:06 – E-Commerce Strategies and TikTok Marketing
• 26:58 – Unique Approach to Amazon Business
• 30:24 – Amazon vs TikTok Subscription Savings
• 33:29 – “Employee Generated Content” for Brand Success 
• 35:49 – TikTok Strategy for Amazon Success

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Maybe you’ve seen Neuro Gum on Shark Tank or seen Joe Rogan using them, but today we have them on our show and they’re going to talk about their Amazon strategies, TikTok shop strategies and even how they’ve been using Helium 10 for years. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that’s completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world, and we’re very privileged today to have a really popular brand. And long time Helium 10 users. Come on to the show with us. We’ve got Jonathan from Neuro Gum in the house. How’s it going? Man

Jonathan:

Nice to meet you, Bradley. Thanks for having us now.

Bradley Sutton:

Before we start, you know, just like you know Joe Rogan does on his podcast, I’m going to have to pop a Neuro Gum here. You know, I see you’ve got something in your mouth too. Right now, I’m not sure if you’ve got the gum or the mint possibly there, but I need to get some energy. Oh, you’ve got the mints right?

Jonathan:

This is gum.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, guys, there’s no sponsorship here or affiliate action going on. Just with Joe Rogan, I’m being all organic where I literally use this stuff myself. So this is, I think, a popular brand that’s been used for quite a while.

Bradley Sutton:

And I was actually on the call with my team this morning and my team from the Philippines and it’s like it was like three, four in the morning. I can see their bloodshot eyes. I was like, hey guys, I was up until like 4 in the morning last night and this is what kept me way up this Neuro Gum and then they actually went. I was like, hey, maybe you should check to see if you’ve got Neuro Gum there in the Philippines. And they went on Lazada or TikTok shop and they found Neuro Gum there. There you go, there you go, there you go.

Bradley Sutton:

But now you know we’ve got a lot of product placement action going on here. Maybe some people think this might be like a Korean drama or something for this product placement, but you know there’s maybe some people out there who don’t know too much about Neuro Gum. So we’re definitely going to talk about the origin story there. But first I want to get to know Jonathan First of all. Now, you had just told me off camera that you’re from Vegas right now or in Vegas right now, but you’re originally from Jersey, so is that where you were born and raised?

Jonathan:

Not born and raised, born in Korea, grew up a little bit in Texas but spent most of my life in New Jersey. I met Kent through a friend in an agency world just three years ago. It honestly feels like a lifetime ago, but you know what? They had ambitious goals to grow the business they had moved from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. So we packed up our bags, drove across the country and I came to Vegas a year ago.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So how old were you when you left Korea?

Jonathan:

I was three.

Bradley Sutton:

Three, okay. So did your parents keep up with the language? Did you keep your Korean?

Jonathan:

It’s good enough. It’s good enough.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. For me just a “jogeum”. I think that means like a little bit right. But, like I said, I didn’t even know you’re Korean. But I don’t watch much American TV. People know that about me. I only watch Korean dramas and that’s how I know they always have these like product placements in Korean dramas. So you said after Texas, growing up there as a kid, you went to Jersey?

Jonathan:

No, I was just there as a kid for a handful of years, Grew up in Corpus Christi, but I’ve been in New Jersey most of my adult life 20, 25 years now.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, so did you go to college out there?

Jonathan:

Yeah, I went to Rutgers University.

Bradley Sutton:

Rutgers. That’s mascot is like Scarlet, something right.

Jonathan:

Scarlet Knights, yes.

Bradley Sutton:

There we go. Scarlet Knights, Rutgers, you know a good football team sometimes but sometimes a really bad football team.

Jonathan:

I know now.

Bradley Sutton:

What was your major over there?

Jonathan:

That’s a funny question, Bradley. I majored in communications, entrepreneurship and art history.

Bradley Sutton:

You know, art history is one of my favorite subjects in the entire history of subjects that I’ve taken in my scholastic endeavors. Changed my life like especially the way I travel and appreciate things when I go places. But you know, I think, entrepreneurship is pretty cool. I wish more colleges would actually teach entrepreneurships.

Jonathan:

Yeah, it was. Honestly, I was never a bad student. But when I got to college, I just couldn’t justify. I had a hard time understanding why I needed to go to an English class, to business or anything like that, right?

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, ok, so how did you get into one of those maybe majors there, like after college? You know that was a pretty diverse field. Like you can be an entrepreneur, you can be an art history major, but then what are you doing? Selling books on art history online, or which of those fields did you actually get into upon graduation?

Jonathan:

So, funny enough, I actually started my career a little bit late in a traditional standpoint. Like I said, I didn’t really see the point of college. About halfway through I took a break, I went back and finished but, needless to say, I got really bored at my first job when I was like I was an e-commerce. I was like a low e-commerce person at Bed, Bath and Beyond, so that takes my time a little bit.

Bradley Sutton:

Interesting.

Jonathan:

Yeah, and I just saw like I didn’t see my future there. It was a little bit mundane. I wanted to like break something and build something new. And, long story short, the way I got into Amazon actually and found out about Helium 10 is through a YouTube video. I think it could have very well been yours.

Bradley Sutton:

Yep, could have been me. Odds are maybe it was.

Jonathan:

Yeah. I ended up selling my motorcycle going down the rabbit hole at night and like learning how to do all this, like product development, working on Alibaba, and I launched my first product just about 10 years ago.

Bradley Sutton:

Wow, that’s awesome. You know, if it was 10 years ago though probably wasn’t me, because I wasn’t around yet then it might have been the founder of Helium 10, Manny Coats, you were an entrepreneur, a solopreneur, I guess, started your own business. How long did you do that?

Jonathan:

I did that for about a year and a half, I actually launched a diaper caddy product. I knew just about nothing about product development or marketing or anything like that at the time, but I learned everything about Amazon from start to finish in a three to four month span and it really jumpstarted my career as an Amazon seller.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome. So then, like, since then, have you been pretty much consistently in like the e-commerce world.

Jonathan:

Yeah. I’ve been an Amazon seller for the last nine to 10 years and most recently I have gone all in on the TikTok shop business about a year and a half ago.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome, okay, now we’re definitely going to talk a lot about that. Now let’s go to the origin story. We got the origin story of you. Now let’s go into the origin story of Neuro Gum. Now, I know you weren’t there in the very beginning, but you know, some of you guys out there might have seen Neuro Gum, like we said before, from Shark Tank, or maybe they heard about it from Joe Rogan’s show or other things like podcasts that the founders have been on, but what’s kind of like the cliff notes of how Neuro Gum came to be.

Jonathan:

So the Neuro Gum founder story is honestly like as organic and as beautiful as it gets in my opinion. So there’s two best buddies from college, Kent and Ryan, long story short. These guys are high performer athletes. Kent was doing martial arts, overseas here trying to compete for the olympics. Ryan is the same. He’s a, like, big time cross country runner. Just super active guys and long story short. They found that they couldn’t really get the supplements they wanted accessible, and so Kent, who has a science background, was kind of mixing his own blend in his dorm room, sharing it with Ryan and like loose powders, clear baggy, not labeled, not a great look, not accessible, not delicious, definitely not shareable. So that’s how Neuro Gum was born. They made caffeine, theanine and B6 vitamin, included mints and gums right out of their dorm room, which is like really, really cool. They made it for themselves and Shark Tank, Joe Rogan. The rest is history.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So then they went on Shark Tank to try and get some funding. But I think one of the reasons why they got famous on Shark Tank was didn’t they actually deny the offer? It was from Mark Cuban or somebody.

Jonathan:

Yeah, yeah, they don’t have a business background per se, but they’re very scrappy entrepreneurs that always, like, know their numbers, dive deep and really spend a lot of time understanding their business. Right, so they were prepared. They were prepared, they smelled that it wasn’t a great deal for them and they passed.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, in the early days, you know, even when they got on Shark Tank, they were already selling, I know. But what was their, or where was the revenue coming from? You know, was it distribution wholesale? Were they on Amazon already in those days? What was going on? 

Jonathan:

Yeah, they were already on Amazon. They’re primarily an e-commerce business. Between D2C and Amazon was the majority of the business. As of the last few years, retail has been a big emphasis for us as well and, of course, TikTok shop.

Bradley Sutton:

What would you say is the breakdown of online sales now for Neuro Gum as far as from Amazon, Walmart if you’re on their TikTok shop, your own website, et cetera.

Jonathan:

I would say about 60% Amazon man. It’s really hard to say Bradley, because over the last six months, 12 months, 18 months, our business has transformed so much because of TikTok shop, but I would say Amazon still makes up the great majority of our business in terms of online. TikTok shop is a near second, D2C last.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, now I think I saw Kent, founder of Neuro Gum, on a podcast recently and he was talking about, unless I misunderstood it, that he actually dialed back some of the maybe advertising spend on Amazon because he found that it was actually more profitable to divert that a little bit to some of the TikTok. Did I hear that right or am I confusing something there?

Jonathan:

You sure did. You sure did and I know it’s not popular to say that, or common at least but we found that the best Amazon advertising actually happens on TikTok.

Bradley Sutton:

Interesting, interesting. So like, talk about that for a little bit, because obviously the attribution and things are a little bit more difficult but obviously it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that, hey, this video went viral and then all of a sudden the product that the video talked about on Amazon, you know, doubled in sales. So you know you don’t need attribution to understand an aspect of that. But how did you guys, what did you start seeing that was affecting it? How did you double down and what kind of effects was it having on Amazon?

Jonathan:

How did you double down and what kind of effects was it having on Amazon? So we the reason why we even went so bullishly on TikTok was because I smelled a lot of the same things that I saw in the Amazon space in the last seven years that I’d worked in it, right seller side, agency side, brand side and so because I saw a lot of the same signals, I decided to go all in with Kent actually, it was our new year’s resolution in 2024 to make content every day personally, so that we could really get familiar with the platform. But what we noticed after going viral for the first time. It took us, I don’t know, five or six months to go viral on TikTok. We saw our Amazon number skyrocket like overnight, right, and so the attribution is super weak. But, like you said, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the synergy, right.

Bradley Sutton:

So when you say go viral, are we talking about just like regular brand videos or your TikTok shop was going viral.

Jonathan:

One of our creators had a viral video, got it, yeah, so we I’m an Amazonian by trade. Like I said, I used Amazon to do everything it was. You know, I was very famous in my community for telling people not to do D2C, not to go retail. Amazon is the only answer. So, coming from that, I know it’s a bold statement, but I went from seeing Amazon as not just a great place to sell a product to new customers and repeat customers.

Jonathan:

I transitioned that business and that philosophy to kind of Amazon being a digital shelf, more like Google, and I drive the attention and brand awareness off platform, i.e. TikTok. So I find that people are coming to Amazon now, just not for caffeine gum or energy pills or energy gummies. Right, those are the alternative keywords you’d find on Amazon for our product. But they come for searching for Neuro Gum straight and I see that in the search results. I use Helium 10 to look at the keyword data and it’s really fun to tell. This is a really fun fact, but Neuro Gum as a search term was searched more than gum itself last month. Imagine that.

Bradley Sutton:

That’s crazy, and that’s when you’ve got good brand recognition, brand penetration. Not many people can, or not many companies would be able, to say that that’s pretty cool.

Jonathan:

Yeah, really really cool.

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Bradley Sutton:

I’m actually gonna look up really quick here in Magnet, some of some of the search lines. I’m sure it’s kind of crazy. Let’s see Neuro Gum. Okay. So I’m like looking here in Magnet, like a lot of keywords that have to do with Neuro Gum, Neuro Gum itself, tens of thousands of searches. But look how many different variations of keywords there are here that all have Neuro Gum in them Fancy Neuro Gum, Neuro Gum, focus Neuro Gum, mint, caffeine gum, Neuro Gum. All of these have a total of thousands and thousands of searches and while total click share in Brand Analytics, like, obviously you’re dominating, you know, your own keywords, which is important that you’re not losing.

Bradley Sutton:

You know a bunch of sales to some competitors. But man, yeah, this is what brands want to be able to see. You know, I think before, when you started 10 years ago on Amazon, and even like maybe eight years ago, five years ago, people didn’t think too much about building a brand on Amazon, like, oh, I got to build brand recognition. They’re just like I’m just looking for the keywords or I just want to dominate the, you know nootropic gum keywords or something like that.

Bradley Sutton:

But nowadays that’s what sets you apart. You know like that’s what the, you know, a lot of the, you know, factories in China or whatever they’re selling direct and people like oh, I can’t compete on price, but where American companies can compete on is the branding and the brand recognition that the Chinese Indian companies where their factory direct are never going to be able to match. So, yeah, so how did this build up? It wasn’t just hey, let me find one creator, and this guy just randomly went viral. You probably have some science to it about how you look for creators, how you develop the relationship, what you tell them to do, cadences. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Jonathan:

Well, it was totally Wild Wild West stuff when we first got started. There was no playbook there. Kind of is one now, but I would say we were just very early on to the game, so the marketplace was totally undeveloped on tap. What TikTok did super well was it gave creators normal everyday creators the opportunity to make content, advertise it in a very organic way, and it’s totally independent of follower count right, you can have one follower or a million, it almost doesn’t matter. And that’s the beauty of TikTok is what we’ve learned. And so we hired 15, 20, 30 creators to partner with us, make content every single day, just like Kent and I’s New Year resolution.

Bradley Sutton:

What did you use to find them? Like, obviously there’s tens of thousands, I don’t know, maybe hundreds of thousands of creators. You don’t just, you know, pick them out of a hat or pick a name that looks cool. Do you remember? Like, how did you identify those 15, 20 creators?

Jonathan:

So, there are like tools, like Helium 10 for the TikTok shop space.

Bradley Sutton:

Which we now have. We’ve incorporated some of them into Helium 10, like Influencer Finder, which is why I’m asking this question. So I’m like, if I’m using the Helium 10 Influencer Finder are were you doing like by GMV, for by keywords, by engagement, what kind of metrics are you looking at?

Jonathan:

Yeah, I mean at a high level, definitely GMV and within the category, right. I wanted to see what kind of sellers were actually driving GMV already. They knew how to sell, they knew the setup, they knew how to do the product tags, all the technical parts of it, which is not that complicated, but it was early days, right. And then two, I wanted to see that they’ve actually sold stuff in the health category, because selling a coffin decor, for example, to energy them very different, right?

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, you found those 15, 20 creators. And then next step.

Jonathan:

Next step. We’re making content every single day and we provided a lot of resources, brand guidelines, hook ideas, product benefits, all the normal stuff. But really we let creators run wild and free with it. We didn’t dictate too many. We didn’t put any hard guardrails of how we wanted the content to come out, because we wanted to take advantage of that organic, native aspect of TikTok. So we did that for a few months. We saw our GMV growing incrementally like any platform would, but then in reality, what really changed the game for us was one video. Just one video went super viral. It seemed like on that day, all of TikTok all of a sudden found out about Neuro Gum and on Amazon alike, we saw the sales go up our GMV. You know it spawned pretty much a brand new TikTok shop e-commerce business, and that was about a year and some change ago.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, when you say going back to that original 1520, when you say hired them, was it just the standard thing, like you do with tools, like you can do with Helium 10 or other tools, where you give the offer of, like you know, 20% commission or something. They just accept it and then that means anytime they make a video about that product they get that amount. Or did you actually hire, hire them like have them on a retainer or have a contract with them?

Jonathan:

We did both. So these creators on our team, they’re definitely paid retainers and it’s just like any other agreement. You know 30 days, 30 posts. If you don’t meet it we don’t pay it, and if you do, we pay it, no questions asked. And then anyone that works directly with us, we give them special commission rates. So for example, our open plan commission rate on TikTok shop anyone can join, advertise Neuro Gum. If they make a sale, we give them 15% but if you work.

Bradley Sutton:

Did you say 15? One five.

Jonathan:

One five. And then if you work with us, we do somewhere between 20, 25%, depending on what kind of GMV that you generate and the partnership level.

Bradley Sutton:

How you know, there are some people who it’s a constant cycle. You know, like I have a metric where we need a hundred reach out every day to get 50 influencers to post 40 videos weekly or something like that. So do you guys have something like that? Where you’re, you’re still constantly giving out free samples and trying to get new ones, or are you just focused on this core number and then maybe adding subtracting here and there?

Jonathan:

So that’s a great question, and a lot of brands struggle with this because of the free sampling right. Because sampling at the end of the day can be very, very expensive, especially if you have 500 or 1,000 or thousands of creators reaching out to you every day. So in the beginning, we were pretty loose about free sampling. We wanted to work with every creator that we had access to or that showed any interest in our brand, and then, as time progressed, what we ended up doing was we started putting some filters around what would qualify for a free sample. So, for example, you had to have had at least $500 worth of GMV all across TikTok shop in the last 30 days. It shows that you’re not just here for a free product, but you’re actually here to make some money and partner with us, right. So those are the kind of filters that we use to scout the mass of creators.

Bradley Sutton:

How are you fulfilling the orders? You’re using your Amazon inventory. You’re shipping from your own warehouses logistics place.

Jonathan:

So we’ve actually tried all the shipping options. Early days we used our own warehouse in Las Vegas. We’re shipping it out ourself. And then, just like Amazon Prime, TikTok shop opened up their own facilities called FBT. We tried that, beta tested it. It was kind of a disaster. It was about a year ago, so we pulled it back, brought it back to Vegas and now actually we’re transitioning back into FBT.

Bradley Sutton:

Fulfilled by TikTok.

Jonathan:

Fulfilled by TikTok, yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, yeah, like before, I knew some people who did it. But then obviously you know about Amazon placement fees and stuff last year where it’s like, hey, if you try to send it all to one warehouse and they put a surcharge. I heard TikTok came up with something like that a few months ago where it was even worse than Amazon’s, believe it or not. You know where it’s like yeah, because what we were doing you know there’s a, there’s a big Depot here in Southern California, like their main, one of their main ones in like Ontario or something like that, and so I have a warehouse at my house and I fulfill orders for some TikTok sellers or my family’s a side business.

Bradley Sutton:

My family runs and there’s one guy that we were, you know, he was doing big numbers on TikTok shop and so we’d like rent trucks and then just take like seven pallets up there. We just go there and then drop it off and boom. It was so easy and so convenient because you know like it costs us maybe you know to hire my son and to rent a truck like what 500, 600, 700 bucks for a day to do that, and then that’s it. You know the product is like available and fulfilled by TikTok the next day. But then we haven’t done that in a while because he said man, those fees like drastically went up. If we don’t ship all around to their warehouses and try to just go there, it becomes just really eats into the profit margins. Are you guys doing that or are going to do that thing? Where are you just sending it to one location, or are you having to do like on Amazon, where you send it across the country to different fulfillment centers?

Jonathan:

I’m pretty sure we’re sending it to multiple fulfillment centers. What I do know is that FPT has made a lot of changes in the last few months rate, card and fees included. Some positive, some negative, but yeah. What I see is that they’re definitely trying to replicate all the pros of FBA, right.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, for sure, for sure, and you know that that’s, I think that’s where there’s a big race. You know, not just TikTok and Amazon, but Walmart is always trying to, always trying to get in on the game too. Are you guys selling on Walmart.com at all?

Jonathan:

We were. We pulled out of it about a year ago.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, well, why was that?

Jonathan:

Mostly because it was disrupting my buy box issues on Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s a big issue. Yeah, any other platforms on your website like Temu or anything else like that?

Jonathan:

It’s funny you bring up Temu. I think we are going to start exploring Temu. I thought I’d never say that, but yeah, we are.

Bradley Sutton:

Well, Temu today is completely different than Temu of like two years ago or one year ago, where, yeah, I don’t think I would never have suggested somebody, but now it’s mainly US. It’s almost like, you know, like a TikTok or Amazon, where it’s mainly US based fulfillment and more decent prices. The thing I’ve always, I think the thing that has held some people back is the inability to control the price, the retail price on Temu, and so we know that Amazon right now is not price matching Temu like what you had with Walmart. But if that ever happens on Temu, then that’s going to be a problem because you can’t just, you know, on Walmart you still, technically, could have just all right, let me go change my price on Walmart, you know and everything’s fine, but you can’t really do that in time. But I do think Temu is a good market to sell on, like right now, in 2025, who knows, maybe a year from now but because 80% of the sellers based in China are kind of like not selling anymore, it’s a little bit better.

Bradley Sutton:

What are some of your Amazon strategies like? Obviously, your main goal, like you said, is locking down your branded searches and things, but are you still going after nootropic related keywords or caffeine gum and stuff like that, like? Are you monitoring those kinds of things like hey, uh, where’s my? You know, using Helium 10 Keyword Tracker? Where am I on these non-branded searches? Or are you just all in on branded searches?

Jonathan:

So for the last year, I’ve been all in on branded searches. I’ve really been. I pivoted my strategy, like I said, from Amazon being like a new customer acquisition channel, ranking for keywords, all that good stuff, right, all the good stuff that every Amazon seller knows about. And then the last year, I focused really on using Amazon as a fulfillment. I mean, in terms of operations, fulfillment and customer satisfaction, confidence, Amazon is the best, right, and so we use Amazon as a digital shelf where product that you come across on TikTok you buy there confidently. I will say. In the last month, though, we finally got enough gum to go after it again on Amazon, so I am going to start going after those keywords like nootropic gum, caffeine gum, caffeine pills all that good stuff. So excited to use Helium 10 again a little bit more actively to track those keywords.

Bradley Sutton:

How do you guys decide for product line extension? I don’t know what was first. I’m assuming the gum was the first, then mints came later, but then you have like sugar-free stuff and are you just listening to customers? Are you doing like Helium 10 research on keywords or in seller central where you’re like, oh man, there’s a lot of people all of a sudden asked you know, looking into this kind of you know product or flavor or something like that. But you have a wide you’re not just Neuro Gum like one. You know. I’m assuming this is probably maybe the first product that you started with. But now you’ve got I don’t know what, 20, 30, 40 SKUs or something. How did you get there?

Jonathan:

We do, but I will say, unlike more common Amazon businesses and sellers, our founders are very, very specific about what they want. They don’t ever want to give away or move away from gum or mints because it’s a confectionary, shareable, accessible, travel-friendly format, right, and that’s kind of like our special sauce. We’re not out there like many other brands getting into every single supplement category. I will say, though, it’s funny that you bring that up, and maybe this is my Amazon brain, but this is one of my. This is my new baby. It’s vitamin D3 and K2 in a mint form, so I am starting to bring some of those elements of Amazon sellers. Okay, the business. This is our first big bet. It’s the sunshine vitamin in a easy mint right. Freshen your breath, you get some D3 I like it.

Bradley Sutton:

I like it because you know I, especially me, I stay inside the house all day long. I need, I don’t get out in the sun. I need that D3 with my caffeine. So there we go. That might be my next shopping cart. Add, hey, if you need a new influencer, I have a TikTok. I’ll take a free sample of 15 commission. What’s strategies you think that you guys do on Amazon or TikTok shop? Obviously, we’ve talked about some of them, just naturally, here, but what are some other things that maybe we haven’t talked about? That like the way you set up your listings, the way you’re handling other aspects of the creator game, the way you’re doing advertising, like if you’re doing TikTok lives or having influences in your lives. Talk a little bit more about some of your secret sauces.

Jonathan:

Sure, I think, as much new stuff is happening in the e-commerce space in 2025, I think the root or the foundation of a lot of our success is based on what everyone knows. Every e-commerce business is just two things it’s either traffic or conversion, right. And so with the traffic side, we’ve kind of figured out this new play with TikTok shop, working with creators, creating viral content for mass brand awareness and product awareness right. Done. But what we’re now seeing is that every channel and every touch point it serves a different kind of customer or viewer, and so what I mean by that is you might come across TikTok Neuro Gum content on TikTok, hear about it for the first time, be excited that caffeine is in gum right, I like to call it adult gum. But if you buy it once on TikTok shop, you might actually want different information on Amazon, right? So on TikTok, we talk a lot about, for example, the product benefits, the founder story, that kind of stuff.

Jonathan:

Right, introducing the product to the customer. On Amazon, if they feel more comfortable subscribing there or buying for the second time there. We want to, for example, be a little bit more scientific. Why do we only include 40 milligrams of caffeine instead of 100 or 200, like some of these other products. What’s the science between the half-life of caffeine in the body that actually contributes to focus, not just jittery energy, for example. So we found that in different parts of where our product is available or how people come across our product and brand, we need to tailor the message to who they are.

Bradley Sutton:

Interesting, interesting, I think that’s important. Now, something I just thought about when we’re talking about differences of Amazon and TikTok. I would assume you can correct me if I’m wrong that a decent amount of your sales, compared to, like, my coffin shelf, are subscribe and save. You know nobody’s subscribe and saving coffin shelves. At least I hope not, otherwise I’m going to worry about their mental health. But on TikTok there is no subscribe and save, or is there?

Jonathan:

They just launched it this year.

Bradley Sutton:

Look at that, all right. So how is that like? How do the percentages compare? Like? Are the percentage of overall sales that turn into, you know, continuity replenishment, like that Amazon versus TikTok shop? Is it less on TikTok, since it’s a newer thing and maybe not as natural of a segue like it is on Amazon?

Jonathan:

Yeah, you have to nail on the head. I mean, it’s a brand new feature and it was in beta in Q1 or two this year. They released it to a bunch of sellers just this past two months and, needless to say, I think the consumer experience is totally different. And so we find that Amazon versus TikTok. The subscribe and save take rate is much lower on TikTok shop, but I think that makes sense when you really think about the differences between the platforms. One is like a digital shelf, right, just like a grocery store shelf or a Walmart in-person shelf, whereas TikTok is more of a interest, entertainment kind of shopping platform, right, and so I think it’s a little bit more impulsive, a little bit more discovery and interest based on TikTok shop versus you know, your dishwasher detergent or your favorite energy gum or your coffee that you need every month or every other month you kind of use Amazon for. Okay.

Bradley Sutton:

There are certain things that only you guys can do because you’re Neuro Gum. You know it’s not like every Joe Rogan talks about everybody’s products and so you can double down on stuff like that. But if you were to advise newer TikTok shop sellers, you know, maybe they’re established on Amazon, they’re just trying to like break into TikTok shop, so they’ve got the products already and you know they’re decent, you know six, seven figure seller, whatever what what’s like a generalized playbook on how they can get started? Obviously, the first step is migrate your Amazon listings over, and Helium 10 has one button. You can just combine it and we do it with AI and stuff, set up the fulfillment, all that stuff, of course. But how would you advise a newer TikTok seller to start their affiliate outreach cause I would assume that that’s where you should start or is it a combination of from day one affiliate outreach and start doing a crazy amount of their own branded content?

Jonathan:

It’s content, it’s all about content on TikTok. It’s content, it’s all about content on TikTok. So, kind of like your last point, the recommendation and it always sounds more simple than it actually is to execute is content is king. On the brand side, I would turn all of your social media teams to focus on TikTok, making TikToks. And the main difference is it doesn’t have to be this polished Instagram kind of content, right, that’s beautiful, perfect, sunny California every single time kind of thing. It’s more native and organic, right. So TikTok bloomed this new term called EGC. I mean, I’ve never heard of it before TikTok, but it’s employee generated content, not UGC, but EGC, right Interesting. And so I lead the TikTok and Amazon business on Neuro Gum. I’m constantly throwing out these little internal campaigns of hey, let’s make videos together, highest views gets cool prizes. And that’s happening internally, but also externally, right.

Bradley Sutton:

It goes on their private accounts or on the Neuro Gum corporate account.

Jonathan:

On the Neuro Gum account.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay cool. That’s what we’re trying to do here at Helium 10. Instead of just me we joked about that at the beginning where my face is on every single video, we’re like we’re 700 people in this company. There should be other people out there generating some of this content, right?

Jonathan:

Because you never know again. We’re kind of moving away from the social media era into an interest media era, right, and we all have different interests. We natively look different, sound different, come across differently, and so when you use multiple different faces to represent one brand, you just don’t know who’s going to resonate with who, right? So that’s the playbook, in my opinion, on the brand side. On the affiliate side, you kind of have the same approach. You want to treat them more like your internal team and not like external affiliates, or whatever you call it in the, or influencers.

Jonathan:

We treat them as an extension, like our sales team. Their vehicle is making videos, and so we heavily incentivize them. When they win, we win and vice versa. We send out plenty of samples, we dump a lot of resources into equipping them to, and so we heavily incentivize them. We send out plenty of samples, we dump a lot of resources into equipping them to sell our product well, represent our product well, and we found that to be very successful.

Bradley Sutton:

I love it. I love it. All right, you know, normally I ask guests like hey, how can we find you on the interwebs? I think everybody knows how to find Neuro Gum. Just type in Neuro Gum to anywhere and you guys will be able to see. Are you active on LinkedIn? A lot of people can follow your wise discourses on LinkedIn. All right, so look them up on LinkedIn. Before we go. Though, how about? You’ve obviously given us strategies throughout this episode. Can you think of a 30 or 60 second tip, either on Amazon, on product development, on staying cool in Las Vegas under 120 degree weather? I mean, it could be about any possible thing.

Jonathan:

So this is. I’ve been on the podium saying this to my friends and family, I’m sure they’re sick of it the last two years, but is make a personal TikTok account with whatever weird interest that you have. Make one, because TikTok, it monopolizes the views. It’s all interest-based and a lot of us, especially Amazon sellers, who are savvy on Helium 10 and love Helium 10 as a tool, the dream is to one day live your version of your rich life right and do the thing that you love every single day. I think there’s no better opportunity than to do your crocheting, your dog walking, whatever it is on TikTok and you just never know what’s going to happen, right? So that’s my 30 second tip.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome, I love it, I love it. All right, you ever go to any of the conferences around there, like Amazon, Accelerate or anything like that?

Jonathan:

I might be at Accelerate this year.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, if you do, let’s definitely let me know and we’ll link up. Maybe we can if anybody out there is sees him walking the floor, I’m sure he’ll have some of that Neuro Gum mints there. You can probably cop one off of him. And, yeah, I look forward to collaborating with you guys more and any help you need with Helium 10, let me know and I wish you guys the best of success in the future.

Jonathan:

Thanks, Bradley. Thanks for having me.

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