#763 – One Review Crushed His Amazon Brand

Paul Baron returns to the Serious Sellers Podcast to share one of the most candid stories ever featured on the show. After entering e-commerce in 2015, Paul and his wife launched a reusable baby swim diaper on the first-ever Prime Day. Their Amazon brand eventually approached $1 million in annual sales, leading them to turn down a potential exit in hopes of building an even more valuable business.

Everything changed when COVID disrupted the swimming industry, and a damaging one-star review accused the company of shipping a used swim diaper through Amazon FBA. The review accumulated hundreds of helpful votes, while listing attacks, incorrect adult-product classifications, rising freight costs, and a delayed container caused the company to miss its peak season. A $500,000 EIDL loan intended to accelerate growth only intensified the financial pressure, eventually leaving Paul and his wife with bankruptcy as their best path forward.

Paul also opens up about the emotional consequences of losing the business and the danger of tying an entrepreneur’s identity to revenue, recognition, and public success. With support from his family, friends, and a mental health professional, he began confronting the problems he had avoided and redefining what success meant. That recovery eventually created space for an unexpected new chapter as a TikTok Shop creator.

After earning only $3 during his first three months, Paul learned how to combine powerful hooks, clear product keywords, compelling scripts, and consistent content. His commissions eventually reached approximately $28,000 in one month, with one day generating around $8,000. Now known as @realdadreviews on TikTok, Paul proves that losing one business does not mean losing your future. Sometimes the end of one dream becomes the beginning of a stronger, healthier, and more meaningful one.

In episode 763 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Paul discuss:

• 00:00 – Introduction
• 03:30 – How Paul Entered The Amazon Business
• 06:08 – Nearly $1 Million And The Growth Trap
• 07:54 – Why Paul Chose Not To Sell
• 09:51 – COVID And The Review That Changed Everything
• 12:43 – Listing Attacks And A Costly Shipping Crisis
• 14:28 – The $500,000 Loan Used To Force Growth
• 16:47 – Public Exposure Reveals The Full Debt Crisis
• 19:06 – Choosing Bankruptcy And Beginning A Mental Recovery
• 23:18 – Paul Starts His New TikTok Chapter
• 24:05 – Cracking TikTok Hooks, Keywords, And Content Indexing
• 25:26 – TikTok Commissions Climb To $28,000 Monthly
• 30:52 – Paul’s Beginner Roadmap For TikTok Shop Creators

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today, we’ve got an episode that’s a rollercoaster of emotions. The guest talks about how we had to declare bankruptcy due to dishonest product reviews and gave up on selling on Amazon, but now has reinvented himself as a TikTok shop creator where he’s generated even $30,000 a month in commissions. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. 

Bradley Sutton:

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, organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And we have a new format, as you guys know, from last year, where we only talk to people who like run their own brands and sometimes there’s people who are, you know, maybe service providers or have courses and stuff, but for our educational stuff, we have that on the AM/PM podcast. Now we’re doing something a little bit different today because we have somebody who used to run a brand, but is still making a lot of money online. And so like, without even knowing the full, what we’re going to talk about today, I have a feeling we’re going to name this something like Life After Amazon, because some of this stuff could happen to you. So without further ado, let’s have, let’s introduce Paul here.

Paul:

What’s up guys. I’m Paul Barron. I’ve been around, I’ve been on the podcast three times.

Bradley Sutton:

At least, at least two, three times. Maybe, maybe even once with, once with Manny back in the day.

Paul:

It has been ages. I joke that, so we’re here at Kevin King’s event in Austin. And I joke that I have been on a two-year vacation, and so everybody is like, oh, you’re back. What are you doing? And I’m like, yeah, it’s a long story. 

Bradley Sutton:

Well, let’s, let’s start that long story. Again, like we said, we’ve got a lot of new listeners because we, we changed the format. And so I would say most of our listeners might not have seen your other episodes. So let’s take it back. I know you’re, you know, we’re in Austin right now. You live in Colorado. Was Colorado where you were born and raised?

Paul:

Absolutely. It was. I actually went to school in Australia and I thought when I was for college and I thought that I was going to live there for the rest of my life.

Bradley Sutton:

And where?

Paul:

Australia. I lived in Australia for a year, moved back to Colorado, kind of fell in love with my home state and got married, had kids, bought a house. You know?

Bradley Sutton:

What did you go to school for in Australia? Like what were you majoring in? Why did you go to Australia?

Paul:

Pastoral leadership. I went to, it was Hillsong International Leadership Academy. And so it was an international leadership school, theological studies. And when I was young, my goal, I wanted to be a pastor. And as, as that sort of evolved later in life, it really just turned into like just helping people. Right. I think you and I had some conversations about personal faith and whatnot. And so that was, yeah, why I went to school. Then fast forward, I was a barista for years, I did landscaping, and then I kind of always had a knack for just connecting with people and just, I don’t know, marketing is human psychology. It’s all of this. And I got my first job, real big boy job, at a company called Madwire Media. And they offered me a position to be a project manager. I didn’t know what a project manager was. I’m like, well, I don’t know, it’s, I had the word manager in the title. I am a terrible project manager. Like I I’m terrible, but I’m really good at connecting with people. I’m really good at sales. So then they moved me into sales, channel sales-

Bradley Sutton:

Like, I like it. So at what point, what year did e-commerce come into the picture? Was it, was it when you were still working a day job or were you in this epoch of finding yourself or?

Paul:

Yeah. So, okay. So the Madwire job kind of came and went, and I was doing just little odd jobs in the marketing, still in the internet marketing space, because I had done a good job of connecting myself and networking in the local community, and so people knew if they had questions about internet marketing to come to me. So if they had questions, I would answer them. And, um, my buddy, Nate, who actually grew up with, and, uh, I’d seen like earlier the year prior that he was promoting these like gloves on Amazon, and I had thought that he was doing like internet marketing for a brand, cause I had never thought like, Oh, he’s going to start his own brand. Um, turns out that he had joined, uh, ASM. So one of the OGs back in the day.

Bradley Sutton:

So are we talking like what, 2014 or something like that?

Paul:

Was shoot. Yeah. I think he launched in 2014 cause we took the course in 2015. So he was ASM too. He was promoting ASM three come the spring. I saw the videos and I was like, this seems like a pyramid scheme. And I was like, Nope. And I watched enough to get intrigued. Then later that week, my older sister sent me a Facebook messenger. Like, Hey, do you see this thing that Nate’s doing? Like you should talk to him. So because of her, I ended up talking to Nate, taking the course, and that was how we launched our brand on Amazon. And incidentally, uh, we launched on the very first prime day ever. Like our products went live on prime day, which is crazy.

Bradley Sutton:

What was your first product?

Paul:

It was a reusable baby swim diaper. And, uh, it was one size adjustable, one size fits all like adjustable reusable. And I was waiting tables. And this was a big conversation with my wife because I put the course on a credit card. And this will, this, this is like, we’re going to foreshadowing. So we paid for it with debt. And we’re going to come back to how debt kind of bit us in the ass. And, uh, we ended up like making nine sales our very first day. It was crazy. It was absolutely crazy. And I’m waiting tables. And back, back then I had the, you know, the seller said that seller happened, I kept getting alerts. And I remember before going to work, like, don’t turn the listing on live because the product photos aren’t done. Thank God she didn’t listen to me because she just did it. And like, we were using the stock photos from the, from the supplier and we made money. It was crazy.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Now, fast forward, what was your most successful year of online sales? And what was the gross, uh, about?

Paul:

I think it was, uh, 2019 and we were just shy of a million. So it wasn’t, it wasn’t, you know, whiz bang pal, but, and this is again, like I want to convey to people that are watching this, when you watch podcasts like this, you’re going to see people talking about either small numbers or big numbers. And everybody’s like, Oh my God, that guy’s doing like $10 million. Here’s the thing. A million dollars is a lot of money. $40,000 is a lot of money. So the one thing that I am saying this, because I would tell myself on this in retrospect, you have to grow at the pace that you can grow and forcing growth for the sake of comparison, like I’m not growing like that guy is toxic, bad, bad idea.

Bradley Sutton:

In those days we’re using Helium 10?

Paul:

Yes, it was. Actually. I went to the very first conference that Manny ever spoke at, which was an amazing conference. And I paid an extra ticket to get into the bat, like the speaker lounge. And now I met, that’s why I have a good, I would say a decent friendship with Manny, like Gui, because I remember meeting Manny and Gui, and they were just talking, he had just launched AM/PM, and I think that he was just talking about this new software that he was building, which was Helium 10.

Bradley Sutton:

So, I mean, he’s been using Helium 10 longer than me. Cause that was a little bit before my time when he’s talking about 2016 about now, you know, normally at this point we’re like, all right, how have you scaled? And let’s, let’s talk about all your successes and stuff. And so I kind of jumped to the, the peak of success for the Amazon business. Now let’s talk about the downfall of said Amazon business. Well, what started happening? Talk about it. So, 2019 was the peak. Talk about the downfall.

Paul:

So 2019, we’re, we’re thinking, man, maybe we should think about selling. Maybe we should think about exiting. We had that comment, we, being my wife and I, we were like, okay, what do we do? Do we want to sell? I’m like, no, you know what? Like, we’ve got a really good growth trajectory. Let’s wait a couple of years, build it up because we could have sold it for like a million, million plus something, million and a half. I don’t know. Right. And we’re like, nah, I bet we could probably get like 5 million in two years. And so that, that was what we decided. Unbeknownst to us, COVID was right around the corner and in our industry, in the, the, the, the market that we were in, it was very heavily reliant on people going outside, people going swimming and public and traveling.

Bradley Sutton:

Are we still talking about the diaper kind of brand?

Paul:

So, cause it was a baby swim. So when we launched, we were thinking, we’re going to do baby products. Now, shockingly, baby products is a very broad category, right? You can’t just say, I’m going to start a baby brand. Um, you can, but realistically you want your products to relate together, right? So if you’re going to sell like burp cloths, you want to have other things that are associated with nursing probably. Right. So when we, when we launched, we were just thinking baby products, but it turns out that we really started building a brand around baby swimming specifically. And so we had all these other tertiary products, but the, but the swim diaper was what we were known for. So we were launching various new sizes, uh, new, new prints. And that, that was kind of our, our gig. We were looking at launching other other side products and all that sort of thing. Not to get into the thousands of dollars we spent on designing hooded towels before there was a certain person in our space that did a, um, a newsletter about his next product being a hooded towel. Do you remember that? I was so pissed. Uh, but 2019 peak of the success COVID comes around. And in July of that year, we had shipped in, you know, Amazon FBA, they do everything. We had a customer in one, one day in July, email us that they had been shipped a used swim diaper. And this was not email. Obviously it was in the seller center, right? So this was back when you could communicate with your, with your customers and she had emailed us and said, Hey, you shipped us a dirty swim diaper.

Paul:

And we were like, Oh my goodness. We were so sorry. That wasn’t us. Amazon handles all of our fulfillment, but as a, you know, apology, we are going to refund your order and we’re going to ship you a new one. We’re so sorry. Cause that was a policy that we had, if there was ever any issues or defects, we would not only refund you, we would not only ship you a new product, but we would refund, refund your order and ship you a new product. So we did that. Um, the next day there was a different listing, our number one selling SKU. So that was our number two selling SKU. The next day we got a absolutely terrible scathing negative review that the same thing happened. So, um, you can be, I went down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, like, well, what if it was a competitor and like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and all this, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. That’s poop under the rug, pun intended, um, at this point in time. So we did everything within our power to, you know, contact this customer. And, uh, you know, we replied to her, you used to be able to reply to comments. So we did that. We were so sorry. We didn’t know that, you know, this is Amazon, blah, blah, blah. Um, and then you could also do the customer messaging and which would go to their inbox. We did the same thing. I messaged her at least three times, um, you know, not to mention being on the phone with Amazon for 80 plus hours. So that was a huge issue that, that, uh, review racked up probably in the lifespan that was on Amazon over 500 uploads. And it was like the most helpful review. So you have like this one star review, this company’s ships out poopy, dirty, gross swim diapers. And obviously that affected our sales.

Paul:

Then fast forward to 2021, which is probably, I think we’re actually first met you at Prosper. This is post COVID where I met you on the, on the party bus. And, um, I spoke at Prosper at this point in time, I was on the speaking circuit, which started in like 2018 and I was teaching people about how to build a brand that the media loves because we had a really good job of getting press and you can, you know, Google all that. So, um, I was just being open with my brand. This is what we sell. This is what we do because it was just way, honestly, it was lazy. It was way easier than blurring everything and way easier than talking around the lines. And at this point we had built so much press and I’m like any intelligent person, it would take them five minutes to Google Paul Barron plus Amazon. It’s not that hard. So, um, after Prosper are every single one of our listings within three days was recategorized as an adult product and our number one listing, we could not get switched back. And there’s probably super intelligent people watching this and you’re like, well, all you had to do was this. I mean, let me tell you, sweetheart, we tried everything. Um, I even have a very good friend. His name is Near Harvey and he had offered multiple times because he is the best person I know about listing reinstatement. He had offered multiple times. He’s like, Paul, let me take a look at it. Let me take a look at it. And I was like, well, I don’t want to do, I don’t, you know, I want to pay you. You’re my friend. And, uh, it took us 10 months near fixed it finally after me giving it to him in like, in like literally three days, but because of that 10 months and then the, I didn’t even get to this. I told you this downstairs in 2021 to write post COVID we paid something like 20, between 20 and $27,000. If you ask my wife, she’ll tell you the exact number for a container. Normal rates were like 1700 for a container. Right. And not only did we pay this exorbitant amount, it arrived three months late. It was supposed to get there middle of May, maybe early June. Our peak season was June.

Paul:

Here I am speaking at Prosper July, right? This is where I meet you completely out of stock. Not only was I like, well, running out of stock actually wasn’t yet, but then we ran out of stock. We ran out of stock. We had no stock on prime day. Um, that container was delivered. We missed our entire sales window. Our account is like major blackout attack. We’ve got this terrible review that’s affecting sales. So COVID just started to tank us. Then 2021 was like, and prior to this in COVID, we had taken out a $500,000 EIDL because we’re thinking, okay, we’re going to recover. We’re going to reinvest into the business. So there’s that foreshadowing. We took out this massive EIDL because we were thinking not because we needed it, but because we wanted to force growth. And so that’s the key point that I want to say. We were really looking at everybody that all these events that I was going to and speaking at and being like, well, why aren’t we making $5 million? Why aren’t we like them? And it was not that we weren’t able to pay these bills. It was that we really wanted to force growth quicker. And we could have done that, but we would have been a little bit slower. And I can’t say, I would honestly believe that if we didn’t do that, we’d still be in business. Despite all of the stuff that happened, despite the negative review, despite the black hat attacks, had we not had this massive amount of debt, we would still be in business. Now, granted, if the black hat attack didn’t happen, if the shipment wasn’t late, we would be making money and we would have been able to pay it off, right? But at the end, basically we’re struggling to pay things. The only listings that were making money were the ones that were like tertiary, were making money because of ad spend, were barely breaking even.

Bradley Sutton:

And this was you and your wife’s or family’s main income for a few years. 

Paul:

Main income, yeah. And so it then transitioned to like I started to have to transition on the speaking circuit to start an agency, to not just, I’m not just helping people anymore, what I am, but it’s like, hey, we need money to pay the bills and it’s not just pay the bills, we actually, we need money to continue the lifestyle, if you will, right? And so I’m traveling and my business is really struggling and I’m teaching people how to make money and I’m just feeling like, oh, this is, but my baby is dying, right? And the case studies that we have with our agency clients were phenomenal. They were, they’re genuinely really good. Like we did $12 million in six months on, on Walmart with Black & Decker with a like TikTok campaigns, right? All to say, uh, fast forward to 2025, 2024, this article comes out, the Bloomberg wrote, and I had met Spencer Soper, who is the reporter for Bloomberg at Prosper in 2024. And, uh, to say, I met, I have a story for you. And so told him this, and he took three months to write it. And meanwhile, um, you know, we’re talking and doing all these things. And then as he was digging into the details, it starts like, I didn’t, I thought that the loan was 200,000. I didn’t realize we were that far in debt. I didn’t realize how terrible things were because I had a very unhealthy way of dealing with stuff was instead of just dealing with it, I just ignore it. It’s not healthy. It’s not healthy. And you can’t ignore these types of problems and expect them to go away. They just, they don’t go away. And so when this story broke, all of my friends in the industry started messaging me. And it was the reality of it just hit, like we’re making enough money to pay the debt. And we could continue to do this for 30 years. So I just didn’t sleep for it. Like it got picked up by everything. I didn’t-

Bradley Sutton:

Tell, tell people about what the, like what the article was, was kind of about it. 

Paul:

And so it was about that review. Um, one of the things that came out in this review is Spencer was able to track down the person that wrote it and asked her if she remembered getting emails from us. And the thing that like really just still, it still irks me is that she remembered getting those and she just still didn’t take it down. She just was like, Oh, well, I’ll just leave it up. It’s like, lady, like you’re literally ruining our business. It sucks, but, um, I’m crying now, but it’s because it was so close. I stopped traveling for two years. Um, after this broke because I was just not mentally healthy. And, um, because I was the guy speaking on stage and telling people the success stories that they could have. And I was like, I cannot do this. I, um, the, the silver lining in this is that I was able to get myself mentally healthy. And after just kind of years of neglect, if you will, like neglecting this, uh, looming, uh, just demon sitting on my shoulder, you know, my wife and I just made the decision just, you know, we, we just have to declare bankruptcy and, um, we should have done it. We, we should have done it in 2023. We should have done it in 2022.

Bradley Sutton:

Then the, the, the agency revenue you were doing could have kept more instead of having it.

Paul:

Right. But the, I guess the things that again, if I’m looking in the camera and I’m talking to my younger self, I would say like what I was doing was just out of hubris. I was like, I was traveling because I had this public persona that I had to keep up. And yes, I was doing it to help people, but at the same time, I was a little bit living a lie and I wasn’t lying to people. It was just like, it became almost like, Oh, I want to get invited to the parties. Oh, I want to fly first class. So I want to fly Polaris and all this stupidity. Um, but looking at how, like when I’m, how I, why I started this business, um, it was to impact and make time for my family, but all of the family was all of the family time was being stolen. And, um, at the end of the day, like I am so, I’m still sad that this happened, but I’m thankful for the friends that I have in this industry because it was not an, I was not in a very mentally healthy state. I was thinking, thinking like my life insurance policy would pay the debt. And these thoughts were going through my head and I wasn’t sleeping. I was, I was clinically depressed and Tim Jordan, uh, heard about this and he reached out and he called me and we had a, like he had to come to Jesus talk with me. And basically he told me that if I didn’t talk to a mental health professional within two weeks of the call and schedule an appointment that I would, he would call it Larimer County where I live, um, health authorities and get me on a cycle because like I was just, I was still ignoring the problem. 

Paul:

I, at the time when I was talking to Tim, I’m like, well, I’m excited about waking up. He’s like, what are you doing? I was like, well, I’m waking up. What? Yeah. What are you doing? Well, I’m excited. He’s like, well, that doesn’t mean anything. So all, all to say like the, I guess the, I guess the transition here, the redemption story here is that like, it still hurts, it still sucks, but I’m at a much better mental state than I was then, because for one entrepreneurs have a really hard time disentangling their identity from their business because it’s so intrinsic. We put so much of our heart and our soul, and I’ve had this conversation with people here at this event. Like, Hey, you are not your business. You are not your product. And like, everybody wants to be successful, but some of the great conversation, I had a conversation with a lady yesterday who just came out of a 10 year bankruptcy and she is like, just crushing it. But also money is not the definition of success at all. Like for me, the definition of success is like my kids, it’s the impact that I leave in the world. And yeah, money makes that easier. Yeah. Would I rather have money? Absolutely. And are we doing okay now? Yeah, we are. Like I stumbled into becoming a really good TikTok creator, which then led to like really fun, like consulting gigs and then other introductions to SaaS companies and like being able to partner with them and like, anyway, so that’s life post Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. So, Hey, um, when life gives you lemons kind of cliche, but let’s, let’s make some spiked lemonade. But let’s talk a little bit about, all right, you know, we had some high, semi highs, super crazy lows. And now let’s talk about the new highs. What you just referenced TikTok, what gave you the thought to, Hey, let me start trying to be a TikTok creator slash influencer.

Paul:

Um, so we’re still running the agency, right? So that’s paying the bills. And it was actually a, just a curiosity that I was like, instead of like texting Gracie all the time, like, Hey, I’m going to send you an invite. Can you take a screenshot and show me what that looks like? Or my buddy Chico, like, Hey, can you do this? I was like, well, I’m just going to start doing it myself. And it at first started like that, but it was also the conversation with Chico that I had where he was like, yeah, I’m making like $6,000 a month as an affiliate. And I was like, what? Wow. Okay. Well, I’ve been working with creators since 2016. I’m naturally going to be good. It turns out I wasn’t at first. Um, I made $3 in my first three months as an affiliate on TikTok. Um, but then in month four, I feel like I, I cracked the code and what it came down to was really understanding like the art and there’s an art and a science of a good piece of content on TikTok. And it first, it has to hook people. Everybody knows that, but beyond the hook, you have to get it to index. And a lot of people think of TikTok as like, it’s just videos. Yes, it is. But every video has to index for intent. Right. So if I’m selling a phone case, right. And I don’t say phone case, it’s not going to index for phone case. Right. If I say this thing here, if I say this, this, this, like, this is the best thing ever. I like how this does this. I like how this does this, but I don’t say phone case, it’s not going to index for phone case because TikTok doesn’t know what this is.

Bradley Sutton:

We’re taking, we’re almost talking Amazon algorithm kind of stuff. If you don’t have a keyword and you’re listening, you’re not going to be searchable. You’re not going to be indexed for it.

Paul:

Correct. Now beyond Amazon and beyond indexing too, TikTok is a discovery platform, so different than Amazon. If there is no keyword intent, it’s hard to launch products if it’s brand, if it’s net new, TikTok is different because it can be net new. So what I kind of learned was that sort of formula to be able to, to hook people in that first two seconds and then keep them engaged. And how do you, how do you do that? And have a good compelling script that then closes. So my first month where I actually started making money, I think it was like 750 in commission and then the next month it was like 1800 the next month, third month was 4 grand, fourth month where I was making money, so this is seven months in, was 28,000 in commission, so like-

Bradley Sutton:

In one month?

Paul:

In one month, it was, it was nuts. It was absolutely insane. I remember one day I did like 8 grand in commission and I was like, is this real? What is, what is, yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Well, what was it? One product that you can remember that, that really took off?

Paul:

There were, there were a handful, there were three, two primary. Um, there, one was a set of, I can share the videos too, so that your audience can watch them. Um, one was a set of, uh, glass, like food containers, and then another was just like this Shilajit gummies. And then another was like a vibration plate, so the, the first one, the gummies started kicking off first. The glassware containers just crushed it for a long time. And then the, the vibration plate was kind of like weird. It was like doing, it was like good some days and bad the others.

Bradley Sutton:

What’s a vibration plate? Is that that thing you stand on? 

Paul:

Yeah, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a little plate that people use it for lymphatic drainage or exercise, or-

Bradley Sutton:

I remember for a while, that was all that was on my TikTok feed, like, like there’s so many people doing lives for that.

Paul:

They, they still do. Um, but so because of that success, um, like we started, we were averaging about 10 grand a month in commission. And, um, TikTok invited me to coach creators, I was one of the first 15 coaches that was in a, well, are still, still in a program called Squat Up, where basically, uh, the reason why they started that was to basically stop the snake oil salesman or, or help prevent, right? Because they’re basically vetting like these people know what they’re doing. They actually know how to make good money on TikTok. They know how to coach people. And, um, you know, I didn’t even mention any of the past, like chat bot university that I ran and all these other, you know, coaching programs. Right. Um, so I had experience doing that. And, uh, so it’s 2024, uh, just basically just created content for like two years, started doing more like brand consulting on the side. And, uh, now I’m, I’m actually, it’s, it’s funny that I made it. I made a LinkedIn announcement. I haven’t brushed up my LinkedIn. I am now working with a company called Reacher, who basically for the brand side helps connect brands with creators. And the great thing about this, well, what I was born as the founder, um, I was like, dude, like I’ve seen it all. Like I’ve done the agency work. I’ve done the brand work. I’m a creator.Like, I know why brands messages don’t get through to creators. I know what makes creators click. And I know how agencies work when they want to make money.

Paul:

And so, um, it’s kind of fun because it’s like, it was weird. I guess I got a little bit bored with just creating content. It’s, I mean, it’s fun, but I was like, okay, I’m at the point now where I’m like, I don’t know, maybe I want to start traveling and going to events again, more and-

Bradley Sutton:

Get back in that Polaris.

Paul:

There you go. Get back in the Polaris class. It’s really fun because now, like I get to look at brands and holistically be like, Hey, this, like I use this software and that’s like why I started working with them because like I use it as an agency first, I switched from a major competitor and I was like, I love this. This is amazing. And I started telling my consulting clients, like, you got to use this, had conversations, the Bora, like basically headhunted me, but anyway, so I’m loving, I’m loving what I’m doing now because it’s like, it’s, it’s, it’s weird working for somebody else, but I still have the freedom of all the other, uh, like the creation and, and that, so.

Bradley Sutton:

I mean, already we’re having some life and business lessons here, you know, Hey, watch your debt. All right. We, we, we had some of that foreshadowing, you know, that, that we had, um, watch your mental health, you know, like, like don’t push off problems. I, I was pointing to me when he was saying that, cause I’m the same way. Like sometimes it’s kind of awkward. I’m like, all right, let me just ignore it and, and get away from it. And, and, and Hey, don’t underestimate, uh, uh, mental health. Even if you think that, Oh, Hey, I’m not a mental health professional or I’m not trying to, you know, coach people in mental health. Well, as long as I can get by, things are good. No, no guys, you know, you got, you got to like stop, uh, and, and really, you know, grasp what’s going on in your life and fix things before things get worse. And now you’re in a pretty good spot. Now I’m going to have you come back like on the AM/PM podcast, maybe do a live webinar to talk about specifically about the TikTok, uh, you know, uh, program, but just for the people out there who, um, might be interested in starting a side hustle, maybe they’ve got an Amazon business, but their family doesn’t want to get into it. Maybe their kid, or we were talking to somebody downstairs who their kid is trying to be the influencer or creator. Um, what’s like the first steps, like just real basic, you know, we’ve already been going at this for a while. Uh, what’s some basics, like how do, how do you qualify to become a TikTok, uh, creator? How do you get your, you know, start doing your first videos and how do you ramp up, um, where, Hey, maybe the first month or so you make $3, but then there’s a chance that you could get a thousand or even more if you follow this path.

Paul:

Do you want to give you an ethical hack that is okay with TikTok? 

Bradley Sutton:

Let’s do it. 

Paul:

Okay. So, um, so first and foremost, you have to be on the platform. We’re going to start there. If you’re not platform native, meaning that you don’t understand how TikTok works, you’re going to have to familiarize yourself with it. Step one, not hard. Download TikTok. Use it.

That’s it. As you start to familiarize yourself with whatever is in your FYP, so it’s a for you page. Um, you’re going to start understanding what TikTok is for you. And the beautiful thing about the FYP is that the algorithm is designed around your interests. So what you engage with is what you see more of. Um, so, which is always funny because when people say like, all I see is thirst traps, I’m like, do you, well, I know what you spend your time watching.

Bradley Sutton:

Wow. Imagine that. I wonder how pray tell that could have happened.

Paul:

Right? Like, Hmm. Okay. Anyway, so familiarize yourself with the platform and understand that it learns from your engagement patterns as to what you, what it thinks you want to see more of. Once you’ve done that, then you want it to start posting content just in general, and this may sound scary. Okay. For somebody who basically a quote unquote made his career around teaching people how to partner with creators because he did not want to post content. Um, it seems scary, but really it’s not that challenging. And if you’re thinking of like, well, what kind of content do I post? Well, what do you love? What can you talk about forever? What is something that you, when you, when somebody asks you a question about you just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blather on, do that. And if it’s dirty, it doesn’t matter because TikTok loves dirty. Like it loves uncut raw. And that’s one of the beautiful things about TikTok is it’s so it democratizes creation. Like you don’t have to have the $2,000 per hour editor. Like you literally can download TikTok and start shooting and editing content today. So start there. Now, once you’ve started to establish some type of content rhythm, maybe two to three months in, if you’re posting, I would say this may sound like a lot, try posting once a day. But if you set goals, it’s easier to achieve something than if you never set any goal. So if a goal for you would be hard to do one every three days, try that. Then up it to one every two, then up it to maybe one, one a day.

Paul:

And once you’ve done that, I would, this is the hack. This is the ethical hack. Um, you can post something generally. What I did is like some sort of like you can do a believe in yourself type post, um, post that on TikTok and then promote it to Kenya. And just target Kenya. And the reason for this and I’ve TikTok, if you’re watching this, don’t, it’s a thing. If you don’t like it, I’m sorry. It’s your, it’s your app. Um, the reason for this is that it’s like, you can get followers for like 2 cents per follower. And so you promote it with the objective of gaining followers. And the reason why Kenya is that I’ve tested America and Kenya, I was getting followers for like 2 bucks a follower, maybe like 80 cents at the lowest in the U S but it’s like 2 cents in Kenya. And so my primary account is like 103,504 or something like that. Um, my secondary account is like 5,000 and I got like four and a half thousand followers for like 60 bucks. So that will help unlock the gate to get you into the creator program.

Bradley Sutton:

What’s the threshold for that?

Paul:

It used to be 5,000 hard, but now it’s like a soft 1000, um, that comes with, uh, sort of gates. Like you can’t, you can only post a certain amount of products or videos per week and per day, but at 5,000, you’re kind of ungated with the amount of videos you can post at 10,000. You can get into programs like TikTok one and TikTok go. Um, we didn’t even get there. Like TikTok go is like a whole different thing. It’s a great, again, if you like, you want to be in the travel space, uh, TikTok go is fantastic because it, you can tag locations, you can tag experiences. So like, if I’m, let’s say, if I wanted to go to Barton Springs here in Austin, I could do a video and tag Barton Springs. And then if anybody taps that link, I would get a commission from them going to Barton Springs, which is super cool. So that’s your unlock. Um, but consistency is key. And also it’s not as hard as you think.

Bradley Sutton:

And he was showing us some of his videos. Maybe we’ll, we’ll put some on and, and actually really quick, just mention your, your channel so that people can, can kind of put it on their phone. 

Paul:

Yeah, my handle is real dad reviews, real dad reviews.

Bradley Sutton:

If you guys check it out, you’ll see this is not like, you know, AI infused, uh, Hollywood production video. You know, I think his, his wife is, is, is the one filming. It’s kind of shaky. Might not even have a stabilizer, you know, there, and, and he doesn’t have a, you know, sure microphone, you know, like I have, this is kind of actually kind of semi ghetto myself. I’m holding this microphone with a cord, but you know, sometimes you might think, oh, we have to have those like fancy microphones that you clip and it has to have perfect sound and we got to do some, you know, uh, audio editing and stuff. No, a lot of his stuff, you know, that has, I saw one of his videos had like 80,000 likes and, and, and you know, the, the audio was just like a cell phone, a camera. So, so it doesn’t take much to start. Now, obviously that’s not the end of it. Guys, um, we don’t do, this is not that we try not to just do the educational. We do talk about strategy here on this podcast. Make sure to subscribe to AM/PM podcast in the next few months. We’re definitely going to have them on for, for more details. Um, just to close this out, maybe like, like what’s, what’s the next few years looking for you? Are you, are you, um, do you consider yourself an educator? You know, now you’re kind of like working for the man again, you’re working for a company. Um, how much percent of the time are, uh, do, are you a creator or do you consider yourself a creator? Like who is Paul Baron of 2026 and beyond?

Paul:

Yeah. So that’s, I’m still balancing the creation aspect because this is like a brand new role. Um, but that’s a huge part of kind of the value proposition for Reacher because we’re building a really strong creator community. And so like being able to bring in that voice of the creator to them is, is huge. So I think if I’m looking forward, like my ideal, let’s say like if I was to project, like this is where I want to be in two years, we would have like the best creator community in the, in the planet, um, with Reacher, which would then power the best brands because the best brand brands cannot function without creators. And if you have the best creators, the best educated, the best trained, the ones that let’s say you, you’re not, you don’t know how to make videos, but then we can help you make the videos. And that would be ideal. Um, so that would be, I mean, where I would be in, you know, two years from now, but like, again, it’s like, it’s all, I’m excited about this role because it like all ties together because it brings in all the brand experience and all the creator experience. And like, like being able to make talk to creators easier is great. Being able to track the halo of what the creators do, being able to put, help your creators get in discord, being able to license the content ethically, like that’s a huge thing for me. Um, like take the content and monetize it on other platforms for, for creators is huge and for brands, because if you can get a piece of content on TikTok and then as a brand, make money with it on meta, but also the creator gets money. And then other we’re, we’re talking with other really big social media platforms. I’m really stoked. Um, that’s where I would be like two years from now, maybe. I don’t know that. Yeah. Could be, could be different. Could, could not, but that’s, that’s where I would see myself.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. Awesome. I think we were talking about lessons from this episode. You know, one of the biggest ones I didn’t mention is don’t be afraid to reinvent yourself, you know, going from pastoral school to filling up coffee and church to, to barista actually had a little bit of a tie to landscaping, you know, to media companies and then selling on Amazon. Now we get to what a lot of you guys are, if that doesn’t work out, Hey guys, let’s, let’s keep it real. He’s not the only person who has had to declare bankruptcy, who was an Amazon seller or had something bad happen. Anything can happen regardless of what business we’re in, no matter how successful we’re in. And now he’s reinvented himself yet again, and he’s a TikTok creator, which is completely different than being an Amazon seller. So, so, you know, hopefully you guys were able to get some lessons from here, get some inspiration, and we definitely look forward to having him back on this podcast in a year or two. But then sooner than that, we’re going to get more into this creator thing on a AM/PM podcast. So I wish you the best of luck. And, and I hope to join you in Polaris soon.

Paul:

Yeah, me too.

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