The Startup CPG Podcast

Lindzi Shanks
Foreign. We have a video we posted to TikTok maybe three years ago, and it was, how do we turn a negative comment into a positive? And somebody had commented on it and was like, oh, I ordered from another marshmallow business and my order never arrived and they never answered me. So, like, how can I trust that you're not a scam? Because, you know, we're all the same, right? So me responding and basically saying, hey, I'm really sorry that happened to you, that sucks. We're a legitimate business. We're real. Here's when we started, here's our story, here's why our marshmallows are better than anybody you're ordering from anyway. So you should definitely order from us because we're great. And that video on TikTok ended up getting 26 million views. And so that video we've now turned into an ad on Meta.

01:00
Lindzi Shanks
I mean, that video is three, four years old at this point, but it. It just continues to drive a 12x roas every time we post about it.

01:10
Daniel Scharff
Welcome to the startup CPG podcast. Today is the day we are all finally going to learn how to build an organic social media presence that actually drives business growth. Our guest is Lindzi Shanks. She's founder and CEO of XO Marshmallow. She's grown XO into one of the most recognizable brands in the confectionery space with an audience of more than 1.4 million followers, creating millions in revenue through social content, and even building more than 2 million doll in TikTok shop sales. Today, she's going to take us behind the scenes of her content. What works on different platforms, how to leverage that into sales, how to make time for all the content. And just a lot of tips for founders who are just getting started on their social media journey who want to do what she's done. You are going to love this.

01:52
Daniel Scharff
And be sure to check the show notes for links to all of her content. All right, enjoy. All right, Lindzi, welcome to the podcast. I am really excited for today's episode because I don't think we've ever done one that just goes through. How do you actually build an organic social media following? It's a very hard thing to do as a brand. When I was a brand, we desperately wanted one and could not, for the life of us figure out how to actually do it. Like, how to make your company relevant to people where they'd actually want to click, like, on stuff, not just the things you want them to like. So thank you for joining us today. Do you Mind just doing a quick intro?

02:30
Lindzi Shanks
Sure. Thanks so much for having me. So I am Lindzi Shanks. I am the founder and CEO of XO Marshmallow. We are a gourmet marshmallow company with 1.4 million social media followers across platforms.

02:43
Daniel Scharff
And can you do the breakdown of those platforms?

02:46
Lindzi Shanks
Yeah. So the majority of it is on TikTok. So over half a million is on TikTok. We've got close to 200,000 on Insta and then the rest are Facebook and YouTube. And YouTube right now is our fastest growing platform.

03:01
Daniel Scharff
Well, that's cool. And I know I've seen some of your posts on TikTok that got, I think up to 20 million views.

03:08
Lindzi Shanks
Yes.

03:09
Daniel Scharff
So I'm really excited to jump into. How do you make that happen? So can you just tell me a little bit about, like, when you started, did you just plan on this being a core strength of yours or did you just realize at some point that marshmallows really lend themselves to social media content?

03:25
Lindzi Shanks
It's a little bit of both. So you have to keep in mind that our business has been around for 10 years. So when we first started the brand, the idea of social media as we know it today, we wasn't as big. Instagram was the primary platform and everything was focused on highly curated, very visual photos. And when I started the brand, I knew because I had a background in social media, I had been an influencer and a blogger for a few years, kind of experimenting with social media, that if we could create some very compelling and visually stunning photos, then we could start to generate that following. And that's exactly what happened.

04:07
Lindzi Shanks
So when were creating the brand, I knew from day one we wanted to create a brand that was going to be social media, shareable, something that people not only would want to engage with our photos on, but as they purchase the item, would want to post their own photos 10 years ago, so, you know, create these beautiful flat lays or what's in my bags. And as video became relevant, especially as we started moving into 2020 and the era of TikTok, we started experimenting, filming with our behind the scenes process and realized that the manufacturing process of marshmallows really lent itself for social media. So in a wonderful way, as social media has evolved and as our strategy has evolved, it's really aligned well with what's working on the various platforms.

04:55
Daniel Scharff
And I really recommend, everybody, if you're listening to this, you're obviously interested in this story. I recommend going right now to check out some of the XO Marshmallow channels. And we will put the links here in the show notes to make it nice and easy for you. But I want you to see that content, especially on TikTok, the behind the scenes. It's beautiful. It gets you. Imagine if you're not watching it yet, just a full sheet of marshmallows in all of their fluffy, gooey glory, and people like kind of manipulating them so it comes off of this big grid that they're on and bending them and you just. It's incredibly, visually appealing. And knowing that it's all edible and delicious at the same time makes it even more compelling. So is that a good way to describe it, Lindzi?

05:38
Lindzi Shanks
Yeah, I think that's a really good way of putting it. You know, our mission statement at EXO is to spread joy into the world through marshmallows. So as we are creating content to your point, it's gotta be visually stunning, it's gotta be joyful, it's gotta make you happy. So, you know, if anybody goes and looks at our platform and the first thing they do is smile, I've achieved my goal.

05:57
Daniel Scharff
Okay. I think you're doing that a lot of the time. I certainly was smiling looking at those videos. Like, for those of us who don't know a lot about the social media platform, I'm not really on TikTok. I gotta be honest, I don't know how to do it. Can you just tell me a little bit about the. How the logic works of that? Like, how do people actually end up seeing your video? How do you amass such a following like that?

06:16
Lindzi Shanks
Yeah. So part of it is creating for your community. Right. So we're fortunate that since we've been around for so long, I understand who our customer is, I understand who our community is. And so I'm able to create content that hits that algorithm. So for us, it's sweet treat lovers, it's dopamine, decor lovers, it's ASMR lovers. So I can create content that gets to that customer. The main way you start figuring that out is simply by experimenting. So to your point, we've got this great video that's got 20 plus million views. We've got a 20 plus million views video on TikTok, we've got one on Instagram, we've got one on YouTube. They're not the same video. They hit different moments of virality across different platforms. And that's because the different platforms are looking for something different.

07:08
Lindzi Shanks
So the only way to kind of figure out what that is as either a founder or you're hiring somebody to take over your social media is to experiment. We didn't get that video from day one. It took us trying option one, option two, option three, what was going to connect with our customers and what was going to connect with the platform. And when you find that thing that hits, let's say you're used to getting a thousand, two thousand views, and all of a sudden you get a video that's got 100,000 views, that's viral for you. Take the time to really dissect that video, what worked, and create that style of content again and again until it doesn't work. Because that happens. That happens to us all the time.

07:51
Lindzi Shanks
You find this perfect thing that works and works until it doesn't, and then you have to go right back into experimenting mode. And I think the thing a lot of founders kind of run into moments of frustration with is, you know, in our businesses, we constantly talk about having to pivot and adapt to the different things in our environment, like sales and what's working with SEO. Social media is the same way. You have to constantly be evolving and changing your content. So don't blame the algorithm, blame your content. Like, it changes all the time. And it's not its responsibility to adapt to your content, it's your responsibility to adapt your content to it. So if your content stops working, you gotta go right back to that experimentation process.

08:36
Daniel Scharff
Why do you think it stops working? Is it because you've saturated your audience with that style of videos or something in the algorithm changes, or your algorithm knows that you just have been hitting it too hard on those kind of videos?

08:48
Lindzi Shanks
Yeah, I think we as consumers crave newness. Right. We're constantly looking for something different. And let's face it, if you create a style of content that's doing really well, chances are your competitors or other similar creators are going to start creating a lot of content that looks similar to your content. So now your customers aren't getting that content just from you. They're getting it from their favorite creator. They're getting it from a potential competitor, maybe more than one potential competitor. They get tired of seeing the same thing over and over again. They crave newness. So it's our responsibility to just find them something new.

09:26
Daniel Scharff
I totally get that. I think we have a cool social media. It's a very different kind of objective that we have since we're a B2B company. But for sure we take inspiration from people who are doing cool stuff out there. So that makes a lot of sense to me in the context of your answer. So can you also just break down the different platforms for me? You mentioned that they play a different role for you. What have you learned, at least for you? I don't know if it you would say it's true for all brands, but what is the style of content or the differences for you with TikTok, YouTube and Instagram?

09:54
Lindzi Shanks
Yeah, absolutely. So it's actually changed a little bit, I would say. In 2026, it used to be that TikTok really rewarded lots of behind the scenes, lots of very authentic, very raw content. And Instagram rewarded a lot of video, but beautifully curated video, lots of color. And YouTube always rewards like a younger audience and anything that's like a little bit bolder, a little sillier, a little goofier. So for us now that's kind of changed a little bit. Instagram is really rewarding that behind the scenes content. I feel like the Instagram algorithm is just really driving founder led content right now. So how we approach those three platforms is a little different. So for TikTok, we're right now focusing a lot on our ASMR content.

10:44
Lindzi Shanks
If you think about the person who's scrolling on TikTok at like 2am, 3am because they either can't sleep or they're trying to look for something soothing, you have to think about the type of videos that work for them. And for us, that like ASMR content, the visually pulling apart the marshmallows, the pouring, that's what's doing well. And then those people find our TikTok shop and just go ahead and place an order. In fact, we get a lot of notes in people's orders that are like, hey, remembered, you ordered this at 1am and you were really tired. Because people are, you know, they kind of zone out and scroll a little bit. So you kind of lean into that and we give them kind of zoning out type content. For Instagram, we are really leaning very heavily into our community.

11:29
Lindzi Shanks
We're doing lots of founder driven content. We're also going through a rebrand right now. So we are taking our Instagram customers along that rebrand, letting them vote on. Do you like this logo or this logo? This is the direction we're going with our colors. Is that good? Here's the kind of merch we're doing. We also have found that clickbaity type content does really well on Instagram too. So we are a dedicated gluten free facility. We have a very strong celiac community that is like a die hard from XO for Day one. So every now and then we'll get a snarky comment from a customer that'll say, oh, gluten free. Give me a break. Goal. That's goal for us.

12:12
Lindzi Shanks
We immediately turn that comment into a video and we talk about how great our celiac community is and how important it is to be allergy friendly. And they come out of the work like crazy and start commenting. And I can take that step, same comment, over the course of six months and turn it into six different videos each month, kind of reiterating the same thing but with different visuals. And it pops off every single time. The most recent time I posted it last month, I think it's sitting at right about half a million views because that's really tapping into our community. And then our YouTube customer likes things a little sillier. So we'll do like, we pipe our marshmallow fluff by hand. So we'll do like employee versus employee pipe racing contests. You know, see who will finish and like, we'll sabotage each other.

13:03
Lindzi Shanks
That's what does really well on YouTube. I would say that customer doesn't convert as much. It's more brand awareness. But yeah, it's about tapping into what's different across each platform. And then to be honest with you, for Facebook, we're just reposting content because I who knows what works there? And then we don't do X or threads or any of the quick, pithy comment. It just doesn't work for us. We're a visual brand.

13:27
Daniel Scharff
That makes so much sense. Wow. I honestly, I was listening to every single word you said there. That was really interesting. I especially like that one about taking a negative comment, which I hate it when we get those on our Instagram. Just, it makes me a little crazy that there are people out there in the world who just can say such negative stuff for no reason. But I'm like, no, that was a lost opportunity. I should have been using those and to make content. And it sounds like you're so effectively using it to really just gather your community and get them around your cause. Like, yeah, how dare you say that to like, no, this is our community and like really support you. That's so interesting. I wanted to ask about that conversion.

14:08
Daniel Scharff
So you're obviously really good at doing content and building a huge following. How does that translate into sales? How's the conversion? What does it mean when you do a video that does half a million views one of the platforms? How does that impact the dollars of the business?

14:25
Lindzi Shanks
Sometimes it impacts it a lot. And sometimes it doesn't do anything at all. Right. And I think there is this assumption that if I get a viral video, my sales are going to spike. And that's not always the case. So typically when we get a video that's over half a million views on TikTok, we do see a direct correlation between those views and our TikTok shop performance. And anytime we see our TikTok shop performance go up, our Shopify goes up. Similarly, because we're part of the TikTok Shop affiliate program and we'll work with affiliate creators to send them samples. When we have a video do well, we see an influx of requests for free samples. We'll send those out, then a bunch of creators start posting about us.

15:11
Lindzi Shanks
And it kind of creates this halo effect of now all of a sudden it feels like we're everywhere because, you know, maybe from one video we get X amount of orders, but we also got 50 requests for free items, 40 of them posted. Ten of those videos did well. Right? And it kind of just like starts building this momentum. So we typically find if we have a video that does well on TikTok, typically the next three to four videos also do well because we've now created this system where multiple people are talking about us at once. Instagram is interesting. Sometimes we've had a video get 21 million views on Insta and I don't feel like it really translated to sales.

15:58
Lindzi Shanks
It's a lot of brand awareness and it's a lot of people get a lot of followers for our brand or we'll get a lot of people sharing about it. But because people, while you can purchase from Instagram, it's not built the same way that TikTok is. You don't see a lot of that straight conversion. It's more community building. I mean, YouTube's the same way. Again, you can purchase straight from the videos on YouTube when you get a certain amount of followers, which we have, and again, we just don't see that immediate purchase. It's a lot of brand building. It's a lot of community awareness. What we're hoping it does is drive people to our email list. And once we get people on our email list, then we start moving through the funnel of how to turn them into customers.

16:44
Daniel Scharff
I mean, I wanted to ask you, like, okay, what's the video that actually drove the most sales for you? What kind of content was it? And what's one that wouldn't really do that, but would, you know, just kind of get a lot of views, but maybe could Be good for some brand building. But it sounds like you're saying like maybe you don't even focus on that as much as really is more about driving them to your email list.

17:02
Lindzi Shanks
It's a little bit of both. So one of the things that we found does really well for us from a strategy perspective is if we do have a viral video that generates sales and also generates a lot of comments and a lot of engagements, we will take that video and turn it into an ad. And those ads definitely generate a lot of sales. So we have a video we posted to TikTok maybe three years ago and it was again, it was how do we turn a negative comment into a positive? And somebody had commented on it and was like, oh, I ordered from another marshmallow business and my order never arrived and they never answered me. So like, how can I trust that you're not a scam? Cause you know, we're all the same, right?

17:47
Daniel Scharff
Big marshmallow.

17:48
Lindzi Shanks
Yeah, big marshmallows out to get you. So I think I literally created the video in like less than two minutes. And it was kind of like not a snarky rage post, but it was me responding and basically saying, hey, I'm really sorry that happened to you. That sucks. We're a legitimate business. We're real. Here's when we started, here's our story, here's why our marshmallows are better than anybody you're ordering from anyway. So you should definitely order from us because we're grained. And that video on TikTok ended up getting 26 million views and generated a lot of sales for us. And the funny part about that is, you know, you're talking about your better customer service all of a sudden. We had to extend our processing times in order to fulfill fill all of those orders. But you have to stay true to that promise.

18:36
Lindzi Shanks
So we're over communicating with everybody, showing them. That turns into additional videos of us showing the process of what it likes to looks like to go viral on the back end and like our team staying until 2 o' clock in the morning to fulfill their orders. Because we do everything in house. We don't have a 3 PL, we don't have a CO man. Everything is done in house. That also means we're able to capitalize on virality so we don't have to worry about running out of product. We'll just make more product. And so that video we've now turned into an ad on meta. I mean that video's three, four years old at this point, but it just continues to drive a 12x roas every time we post about it.

19:16
Daniel Scharff
I know this goes against everything we both believe about cbg, but weren't you just a little bit tempted not to send her order as to fuel her conspiracy thoughts?

19:24
Lindzi Shanks
No. So actually a particular commenter, so because she was talking about a different company and had never purchased from Islam, we actually ended up DMing her directly and offering to send her a free package.

19:36
Daniel Scharff
Oh, that's so smart.

19:37
Lindzi Shanks
Yeah, we have a couple of competitors and again, because I think it's such a niche product, people get confused and end up reaching out. So sometimes we'll get customer service emails for not us. Makes sense being like, where's my order? What's going on? And we always end up sending those people discount codes and if you kind of ever get your order and you don't like it, come back or if you never get your order, try again. So we've converted a few people that way.

20:03
Daniel Scharff
So what's your zooming out? What is your overall business plan and what is the role here? Are you, what's the current breakdown for you for online sales? Is it 100%, is it less? Are you planning to do retail? How what is the role of all of the social media content if you are going into retail as well?

20:20
Lindzi Shanks
Yeah, of course. So right now we are primarily DTC. So about 90% of the business is directly from our website or from TikTok shop. But part of the reason we're going through a rebrand right now is we are looking to expand into retail. So actually from our social media videos we've been reached out to by Sprouts, by Target, by Whole Foods, as inbound, if hey, we want to carry you in our store because we see you've got this virality, we've got the ability to we get our product on the shelves, activate our community to help create some velocity to move product off shelves which as the brand that's your responsibility and I think a lot of people don't realize that. So as part of our rebrand we're redoing our packaging to extend our shelf life.

21:07
Lindzi Shanks
So right now we have a shelf life of four months, which doesn't work for retail. Our new packaging will have a shelf life of 18 months so we can start saying yes to some of these buyers, get the product on shelves. So what we're doing with social media right now is twofold. One is that sort of behind the scenes founder led content. The strategy behind the rebrand, taking our customers along the process of this rebrand, right? I think there's this notion that if you've been in business for a long time, you can't do founder led content. That's not true. You're constantly evolving as a business. So created a video, literally it was like, watch me restart my 10 year old business from day one.

21:49
Lindzi Shanks
And that video did really well on both my personal account and the XO account to drive engagement for this rebrand. And then we're also using it as an opportunity to create brand awareness, to also tap into our affiliates in our community. So once we do get on those retail shelves, we can activate them. Hey, instead of ordering on our website, go to Target, go to Sprouts, go to Whole Foods, purchase from there and then that way we can create that velocity. Because right now our customers biggest complaint is the cost of shipping. I'm never going to be able to solve that problem. The only way I can solve that problem is to meet her where she already is and that's at the grocery store.

22:29
Lindzi Shanks
So it's kind of trying to increase that retail presence and have a community that's already ready to purchase by the time we get there.

22:36
Daniel Scharff
I imagine they're asking for it because it seems like especially when you're talking about an indulgence, a treat, a lot of that's sold in the grocery store is sold as immediate consumption. Right? That's why you have to check out Stan, because people just, it's an impulse buy. They want it, they want it right then. Right. I just think about it a little bit differently. Like I'm not the kind of person who's going to buy like a week's worth of candy and keep in my house and have it there. Like, no, I'm just going to like grab it when I want it right then. So it makes sense that your audience would be really excited to have it available in retail. So it doesn't surprise me that you're getting that kind of outreach from people.

23:07
Daniel Scharff
And by the way, if you need some people to be in one of these videos, I would love to bring my team to the Marshmallow Factory and participate.

23:15
Lindzi Shanks
Yeah, we would love that. Next time you guys are in Chicago, stop by and we'll create some fun content.

23:20
Daniel Scharff
Okay, talk to me about how you carve out the time that it takes to actually film all of this stuff. Because for me, even I like to post on LinkedIn a lot, very different content from what you do. But this is real time that it takes. For me, I probably on a morning when I'm gonna Post I probably spend 30 to 45 minutes just really trying to craft a thoughtful post that I'm gonna do that day and then a lot of time throughout the day trying to engage with people who are nice enough to comment on it. That is very real time that comes out of growing the business, doing a lot of the, like getting through my emails that don't get through themselves and building and coming up with new ideas, all that stuff.

23:59
Daniel Scharff
And that's just for me, doing like a written LinkedIn post. So for you, I can only imagine, because your posting frequency is way higher than mine and probably, I mean, I don't think you do stuff that's really highly produced. You know, it's not like you're hiring a professional crew to come in and film the stuff because I wouldn't work on these platforms anyways. But I mean, overall it's a lot of effort to like brainstorm the content and cut the content and do all these iterations. Right, so how do you plan all of that out? When do you do it? How do you think about it?

24:26
Lindzi Shanks
First of all, we've got to get you out of in the moment content. We've got to get you over to batching. So batch style content is what works for me. So I post on my personal account between four to five times a week. I post to the xo account between five and six times a week. I post to LinkedIn three times a week. I'm very engaged in the startup CPG Slack. So, you know, part of it is creating batch style content. So I have about one day a week where all I do is film content for the majority of the day. So I know ahead of time what I'm going to film, what needs to be filmed, kind of an overall outline of what that's going to look like.

25:03
Lindzi Shanks
I typically plan my notion calendar at the beginning of the month of what that content is going to look like for the entire month. So I know on each day what to film. Now, obviously we allow room for pop culture moments, changes, you know, if all of a sudden we get invited to a great event and we want to showcase that event. Like there is flexibility to film and create content in the moment, but you can't rely on that being your primary content or it will burn you out very quickly. As someone who burnt out very quickly doing it that way, I had to switch over to batch style content. And even now one of the things that I've started doing is I hired a freelance video editor in the last two months.

25:49
Lindzi Shanks
So I literally send her all my raw content and she edits it and turns it into a video for me. And that has been a game changer. So that my mental focus is on creating beautiful content and creating that idea and not slogging my way through Capcut, which was miserable because I'm not a video editor. And the amount of times I like had a two hours worth of edits that somehow got erased and I had no idea how to fix it. Right. It's about focusing your time on what you're really good at and hiring people to take the stuff that you're not good at and that's time consuming off your plate. So it could take me between an hour and two hours to edit some of these videos. And this girl gives me four videos in an hour like it's wild.

26:37
Lindzi Shanks
Hire the experts to do what they do. And then we're starting to look at hiring UGC for the first time. That's something that's very different for me right now. We create all of our UGC content in house and that's becoming. Filming recipes and stuff like that's becoming a little time consuming for me. I will also say don't underestimate reusing content. So we've been in business for 10 years. I have, I mean, thousands of videos in a Google Drive. And sometimes all I do is create a new voiceover and pull from all that B roll and create a video. And for the viewer it looks like a brand new video because it's different clips in a different order with a different voiceover. But I didn't have to go out and film any additional content. Like the video is already there.

27:30
Lindzi Shanks
And that type of content's doing well for founder content too. You know, you're telling the story of your business. If you have all these B roll clips of like you packing orders or visiting your manufacturing facility or doing a trade show or anything like that, save those videos, just upload them to Google Drive. And even our editor, I've had a couple instances where I literally just sent her a voiceover and said, you find the videos. I don't have time for it this week if I'm traveling. And that's been great.

27:58
Daniel Scharff
I totally hear you on a lot of those points. Especially, yeah, shout out. Our podcast editor, Sarah J. Thank you for taking this, all the editing stuff off our plate as well as our managing editor, Caitlin. Thank you guys. Shout out our social media team who does this all day as well. It's definitely a lot of work. By the way, do you catalog all of these videos that you have or are they just all dumped in a drive? For me, that's one challenge I think is we, I just have so much content. We hire a professional photographer for all of our events and I'm like, I want a photo of this one brand. Like when was that? Or do I even have one with this one buyer that I would love to have a photo of Just trying to find all that content.

28:38
Daniel Scharff
I feel like we're almost at the point where AI can actually just search all the folders for me and tell me, but do you have a system for that or is it all just lumped together?

28:46
Lindzi Shanks
No, it's separated out. So for me a lot of stuff is separated out by flavor and product. And then even within there's subfolders within there of, you know, let's say it's strawberry cheesecake marshmallows. I've got a folder for strawberry cheesecake marshmallows. And then inside that folder there's a folder called pulling, there's a folder called pouring, there's a folder called packing, there's a folder called recipes. So and then I do have one that's called random old content. That's you know, just like super easy B roll clips. It might be me like walking around the space or something and I have no idea where put that but for the most part it's hyper categorized. Otherwise I would spend too much time looking for it.

29:28
Daniel Scharff
I wish I had a folder called strawberry cheesecake marshmallow. That's awesome. Good for you for being so organized. That makes a lot of sense given how much of your focus is on the content. So maybe just two last questions. One is, can you just talk to me a little bit about the repeat purchase business because you're so effective at reaching people and building an audience and building your email list. What does it look like on in this world where you've generated millions in TikTok shop sales of actually getting the repeat purchase, the consistent customers over time versus having to constantly be out there growing on social and finding new customers.

30:04
Lindzi Shanks
Yeah. So we focus a lot of time on repeat purchases to try to keep our customer acquisition costs low by focusing our overall lifetime value of our customer. So I'll separate it out a little bit from TikTok and not TikTok. So one of the very frustrating things about TikTok Shop is you do not own that customer. You do not have their email, you do not have a way of directly communicating with them. So getting Repeat customers through TikTok shop is very difficult. One of the things we've done to offset that is whenever we send out a TikTok shop customer's first time purchase, we have an insert that goes in their order for a discount code for our website. Because again, we're trying to move them over to where we own the customer. So at least we have access to their information.

30:53
Lindzi Shanks
And then if that customer hasn't placed a new order within three months, we work with a post pilot who does mailers. And so we'll send them a postcard in the mail reminding them like, hey, come over to xo and we'd like to be able to bring you in and purchase directly from our website. And we have found that's been really effective for getting those TikTok shop customers back. For our online customers who were trying to create new customers, we've tried to continue to get repeat business. So for our Shopify we have a reorder rate of about 41%. So it's high. And I actually, as we celebrated our 10 year anniversary of our business in January, one of the things I did is I went and created a profile of customers and I called them OGs. So who ordered from us in 2016?

31:48
Lindzi Shanks
Who is still ordering from us in 2026? And then I sent them like free like massive baskets with like handwritten notes from the founder of like, oh my God, this business would be nowhere without you guys. So we try not to do a lot of discount codes or anything like that to get people into the business. We'd rather focus on rewarding our repeat customers. So we'll give them limited access to early drops, we'll give them limited access to merch. Once you've ordered with us five times, you're part of our VIP group which we call Camp Cap. So we call our fans Troop XO in honor of like the girl Scouts. And then our VIPs are called Camp Counselors. And so we even turn. Once you become a vip, even if you are not a content creator, you still become an affiliate with us.

32:36
Lindzi Shanks
So we'll give you a referral code because they're shouting out you more than a random affiliate or influencer that you paid. And we've seen a lot of success with that. Anything we can do with our community that makes them feel like they're part of the process is really what generates a lot of reorders that and we do a limited flavor that comes out and it's only available for the month and then when that month is gone, it's gone. So I also think having a product that's new Every single month. Unlimited does kind of help drive that reorder rate.

33:08
Daniel Scharff
All right, Lindzi, this has been so helpful. Honestly, just what an interesting area to learn about. And I don't know anything about it. And this is just so great just to wrap up. I wonder, because I know people come to you all the time like, hey, how do I do what you did? How do I grow? So if you're talking to somebody who's trying to get their socials started now, let's say they really do want to have a good D2C presence. What are you gonna tell them? Just like, okay, you're getting started. Cool. Here's what you need to start doing right now.

33:36
Lindzi Shanks
Film everything, truly everything is content. It's one of those things. You know, I'm often asked, you've been in business for 10 years, what's the piece of advice you would go back and give your 10 years ago self? And it's the exact same advice. It's film everything. Video wasn't as big of a thing and it really wasn't much at all. Just long form YouTube when we first started the company. So there's so many things about starting the business I don't have any video or content for. And I wish I did because I wish I could show that leap from 10 years ago today. But I think we get in our heads that everything has to be this beautifully stylized or people aren't interested in what you're doing. And that is so not true at all.

34:21
Lindzi Shanks
People are so nosy and voyeuristic and so fascinated by the ability to access other people in the world that they wouldn't be able to normally. So when you are receiving your first pallet and you're unloading it off a truck, film it. When you are setting up your trade show booth, film it. When you're going to your manual, your co man to like test out new recipes, film everything. Because even if all you end up Posting is an 8 second B roll with some text over it, which by the way does really well on Instagram, like you didn't do any extra work, you just filmed yourself doing your job. Like, let's work smarter, not harder. So I'd say just start filming everything and, you know, don't wait for it to be perfect.

35:09
Lindzi Shanks
The same advice you would give to somebody for your product itself, like, don't wait for it to be perfect. Put it out there and then make it perfect.

35:17
Daniel Scharff
Well, thanks for letting us film you today, Lindzi. Really appreciate it and just want to thank you again. This is such a great chat for people who want to connect with you and follow you guys on social media. We'll have a couple links in the show notes here, but could you just shout out the best ways to connect with you in the business?

35:33
Lindzi Shanks
Yeah. So for the business, we're XO Marshmallow on every platform and my personal account is Lindzi Shanks or you can also find me on LinkedIn.

35:44
Daniel Scharff
All right, thank you again. This is really wonderful information for our community of brands and experts out there. So thank you for just sharing everything that you've learned.

35:53
Lindzi Shanks
Yeah, thanks for having me.

35:54
Daniel Scharff
All right, bye, everyone. Well, my friends, we've now arrived together at the end of another episode of the Startup CPG podcast, the top globally ranked podcast in cpg. As you may know, we're not just a podcast. We're a community of brands and experts and you should join. You can sign up @startupcpg.com you'll then get an invite to our online Slack community. You're going to hear about amazing events near you, all of our special opportunities to get you in front of buyers, investors, brands and more. It's a free community. So what are you waiting for? I will see you there or on our next episode. Bye Bye.