415 : Daisi Pollard – Real product use drives todays ecommerce sales

eCommerce Momentum Podcast

Great story of not just another pretty face. Yes she has a pretty face, but it is attached to a lot of brains. Great story of paying attention and taking advantage of what you learned. Do you have experiences from your past that can help propel your business? Daisi will tell you what she did to take her opportunities and create several businesses from them. She paid attention!

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Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.

Daisi: [00:00] I think that we have to think about it is that like agencies are essentially sales departments and agents and our sales people. Um, and they’re working on commission, most of them, and they’re gonna go, they operate with the in what is the easiest for them to make a sale and who is going to make you know, the most sale for them. Um, and so [inaudible]

Cool voice guy: [00:23] welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of eCommerce commerce selling today. Here’s your host, Steven Peterson.

Stephen: [00:37] Hey, it’s me. It’s Q4 got to bring up my Amazon seller tribe. Um, this is probably, you know, one of the last chances you’re going to get to join this year. So I’ll, I’ll run this for a couple of weeks, but, um, the, the good news is you could still get in, right? They are allowing people in, but at some point they’re going to cut it off. So I suggest you join today. Try it with 14 days for free. Okay? So you don’t like it, you don’t get value drop. Um, however, don’t only measure on the value of what you’re buying, measure on the value of the impact it has on your business. And what I love about this group, the Amazon seller tribe is the amazing way they invest into your business. They will help you with all the questions. Go out and check out, uh, amazing freedom.com, forward slash momentum dash arbitrage.

Stephen: [01:20] Look at the testimonials. Those are real people. Reach out to them, right? You can kind of figure out who they are and go out and figure out, uh, and ask them, is it real? Are they really helpful? Will they help my business? And you will be blown away again. You get 14 days free if you joined through my link on the, and they do pay me. So I don’t want you to, I don’t mislead anybody. Um, but I believe in them. I’m in the groups, you’ll see me and you’ll get to talk with me too. So amazing. freedom.com, forward slash momentum, hyphen arbitrage. I know it’s a lot momentum, hyphen arbitrage and you’re going to get 14 day free trial on the daily fine list. Make a purchase, get your money back and then say, huh, I can do this again. Wash, rinse, repeat, wash, rinse, repeat.

Stephen: [02:05] Amazing. freedom.com, forward slash momentum arbitrage. They are going to close it. Q fours here. It’s going to happen. Get ready. Welcome back to the e-commerce plan. A podcast. This is episode 415 Daisy powered. Um, very cool conversation. Um, when she approached me, I thought about, you know, whether, you know, I guess I’ve done some of these talks about photography and what it takes before. Um, but there’s just something different and what was, there’s a couple of really cool things that come out. First off her phrase, um, real use drives sales. And I’m putting that in a title because it is something that I think if you’re trying to stand out and she explains why it works, especially from a female perspective. And you know, me as a guy, I struggle with this, but it makes sense what she’s saying, that real use. That’s what people want.

Stephen: [02:56] They want to see themselves using that product. Um, they want to be, they want it to relate to them. And I think she does a really good job. I’m struggling explaining it, but I think she does a really good job, uh, and give some examples of what it takes, um, to really stand out today. Um, second thing that was really a big surprise for me was a pricing that their company has. It is way reasonable, way reasonable. Um, and so I, I have the link there. Um, I mentioned the link, um, very good, uh, pricing, uh, compare it against what you’re paying now and see if there’s an opportunity. Let’s get into the podcast and welcome back to the eCommerce momentum podcast. Excited about today’s guest. Uh, because it’s interesting. She’s had two significant careers, maybe three, I don’t know the third, but two that I know of in her life and they do seem opposite but related in, in, in, in an odd way. Um, and uh, I’m really interested to find out more Daisy Pollard. Welcome, tasty.

Daisi: [03:53] Hi. Thank you for having me.

Stephen: [03:55] That’s accurate. Those two, uh, careers are a little different yet they’re related.

Daisi: [04:01] Yes. Yes, very much so. And I can’t explain to you the connection and how it all fits together too, because I think people are going to be like, wait, what? Yeah. So, um, I don’t know. Do you want me to start or go for it? Yeah. So I started off, um, as a team model and I working in New York and doing all the catalogs and, you know, smiley, fun stuff, the mailers that you get in the mail. Uh, and then I, Yvette, a little bit later, I did this too throughout my college and, and I’m into my mid twenties. And then in my mid twenties, I got, I really lucked out and I was elected as a delegate at large to represent Jamaica in the miss earth. Um, the ms international and the miss, uh, Asia Pacific international pageants. So they are respectively held in the Philippines, China and Japan.

Daisi: [04:56] And that opened up a lot of doors. I, uh, continued modeling in Asia and also, um, was able to turn that into a lot of other business opportunities and, uh, speaking opportunities and appearance opportunities and so forth and so on. And, and I at the time started a small boutique agency slash production company. And what I was trying to do at the time was, uh, what, what is now considered like influencer style work and, and direct to consumer marketing for a smaller brands that were emerging out of Los Angeles. And now there’s a very clear category definition in industry for that. Back then there wasn’t. And um, and, and interesting. We, we did pretty well even though we were way left field and people thought we were a little weird. And, um, since then I continued to hone the idea of the business model and so forth.

Daisi: [05:54] And as technology has advanced and, and entrepreneurship has become more of a common thing and especially e-commerce entrepreneurship. Um, I created a site called my product model. And what we do is we work with eCommerce brands to create creatives for them, um, mainly through like product shots and you know, for their Instagram feed lifestyle for their Amazon feed to really show their customers how their product works. Uh, best use cases for their products and basically to help them sell the products better. Um, and you know, I’ve created a business off of that. Um, and I’m involved in it in many different aspects and from running it to, I still do a lot of the modeling for, um, some of the products and clients that we have, um, to organizing a lot of the other models. And sometimes I play photographer, so every day it’s, you know, different hats.

Stephen: [06:48] So I’m going to go back because, uh, that’s a lot. Um, but it is all connected. No, you’re absolutely right. And I’m, I’m fascinated right now. I’m actually fascinated because, uh, you didn’t quite mention that you are also a miss Jamaica. Uh, uh, so you made it the full, full gamut. So, um, what, what was interesting, you said early on you talked about how you did a lot of fatigue or you were being photographed as a model. And what I think you inferred was that you were representing other people’s products, right? You were the, uh, the face there holding a glass drag, a bad example glass, my water bottle. Right. You would be that person, correct? Am I? Yeah. Okay. So that’s how you’re taking, you know, your skill, which obviously was, you’re beautiful when you, you know, you can do all that stuff that they do, but then you paid attention and saw the way they were presenting it, the photography. Were you always attracted to taking pictures too?

Daisi: [07:47] Oh yes. And I will tell you something very interesting. When I first started modeling, there wasn’t a lot of opportunities for girls like community because you know, I am a minority. I’m biracial, I’m a mixed race and there wasn’t just like a lot of cookie cutter opportunities. And so, uh, what I started to do very young was just kind of create my own what we can now today call create your own content. I would create my own content and I would duplicate the shoots out of magazines and this is still backing like 35 millimeter. And I would set up the camera and sometime it would have like my friend or my boyfriend or somebody take the pictures. But sometimes I would just do it myself.

Stephen: [08:26] What were you going to do with that? I mean, what was that? Just to hone the craft. Maybe,

Daisi: [08:30] um, to Mark it, no, I was like marketing myself. So vertical integration at like 14 years old, I understood vertical integration. So I would like make my own comp cards. I would package myself the way that I thought I should be marketed, um, not just as the accessory or the other girl in the shot, but as like the main subject and to prove basically to have proof the whole concept that I could sell products and that my look could sell products. So was you and my product was me and I was like, I started doing that at like 13 years old. So

Stephen: [09:05] you know, as I sit and I think about this, this is exactly what influencers, influencers are. You are correct. You were doing this way before it was popular to be on the gram. Yes. So, so I mean the common sense thing when Instagram happened and Facebook and all that, I mean I assume you were, you gravitated right there cause that was like, Hey, that’s my idea.

Daisi: [09:29] Yeah. So the first thing, the first innovation was my space. And if my space was really great for me because it was right at the time that I was doing miss Jamaica, the mr maca stuff. And I was just like, Oh, this is great. And I, you know, printed out my page, I had like tons of followers and um, and I would just create, you know, things to sell or businesses and, and you know, photos. I would create photos of myself and put them on posters and you know, use a, what was that? There was a famous, like a print on demand company at that time that I would use cafe press or something and, and to like cater to my fan base. And then I would directly market to companies that were small, but I knew they could benefit from having like a spokesperson or new photos and stuff like that.

Daisi: [10:18] And I remember one time I was like, I would hold, I hosted a, I produced and hosted a bikini car wash with just tires and, and, and right in the middle of like, I was competing, getting ready to compete at ms earth. So it was all environmental awareness and stuff like that. And I was like in that it was hurricane Katrina. And so I tied all that together in the middle of Los Angeles and it has nothing to do with Jamaica and has nothing to do with hurricane Katrina in the Philippines. But I just tied it all together and you know, I had this like just tires to sponsor and, and created these images and the bikini car wash and we raised money for charity and you know, and did some marketing and hours. So it was great. And, and I’ve just always been that way, like very entrepreneurial in, um, within the modeling aspect. I think a lot of people think that modeling is something that you’re just, you sit and you wait for someone to choose you and that is exactly what it’s not. Um,

Stephen: [11:14] again, I just want to, is it, I just wanna make sure I’m clear in this. Is it all models think the way you do or are you an outlier as you’re sitting there you’re like, huh, I see how that works. Huh? I see how this works. Or are all models that way because that’s where I think, I mean, I would think that most people, yeah, hurry up and wait, you know, your hurry up and wait, you know, you wait all day, somebody does your makeup, okay, get in there, do your thing, you get off, you got to wait until they’re ready and your but it’s not that way or not all are that way.

Daisi: [11:44] Not all are that way. And I think that what happens as you know, the origins of modeling actually wasn’t that way. Models were, there were very few of them and they were very entrepreneurial because there was no industry for it. And when there became an industry for it, it quickly got...