I learned a ton from this guy, Oliver Brocato, who is the new face of GenZ entrepreneurs
The creator of the DTC brand, Tabs (aka "sex chocolate"), is just 21-years old and running a 10-digit revenue biz that is killing it.
So a couple weeks ago I was surfing through some Youtube videos when I came across an interview of this guy, Oliver Brocato.
He’s from Westchester, New York, which is not far from where I grew up. Note I was born in Queens, NY.
And he just had this style of talking that yells at you.. “ok this kid knows how to get shit done.”
Which is a breath of fresh air from the hordes of Youtubers who create videos flashing Ferraris talking about “How to be a millionaire with dropshipping”, when in fact that business is a massive red ocean these days.
Oliver is a 21-year old kid running a 10-figure revenue chocolate biz
Oliver created Tabs, a DTC aphrodisiac chocolate brand designed for two. He grew Tabs from 0 to 100k+ customers in his first year of business without spending a dollar on paid ads.
Off the back of Tabs’ success, Oliver’s set up a TikTok agency that helps brands go viral.
His story can be found online on many sites but essentially he started building online businesses from about 14 years of age and failed a lot.
But he started learning the important lessons that would eventually lead to success. Plus as a GenZer he was very familiar with Tiktok.
One day, when he was scrolling through it he saw a video of a random girl talking about sex chocolate. The video had 8 million views and 2 million likes. And so it gave him the idea for creating an “intrinsically viral product.”
He’s most known for how to kill it on Tiktok organic
Oliver realized something unique and different about Tiktok. You didn’t need to be a big influencer to go viral. Anyone could go viral!
And also… it didn’t really matter how many brand pages you have on Tiktok because nobody really pays attention to who is posting the video anyway.
So he came up with the idea of just putting together a massive network of no name folks to post their own UGC to hundreds of Tiktok accounts that were set up around his brand.
And he would pay them very little for the content he posted, but rather pay a high affiliate commission for making actual sales.
He even created Discord communities to cultivate this group of affiliates that began to number in the thousands. So that they would trade tips, create engagement for each other, as well as earn additional affiliate fees for syndicating ‘already viral’ content that others had produced.
As there is a little known fact about Tiktok that even after something goes viral once… if others re-post it… it can actually perform quite well numerous times afterwards.
I mean… this is very original and very genius. This kid is a hustler.
He represents the new attitude of badass GenZ entrpereneurs
Oliver tells his story of how he grew up in a good family that valued education a lot… and he got into a good school, University of Michigan, but realized this was a complete waste of time.
Why? Because you learn very little. And you learn from professors who often “ain’t done shit in the real world.”
He gives an example in an interview from a couple years of learning how to make a website in one class… but it looked like it was something out of the 90’s.
Also he talks about sitting in a dimly lit room in his frat house his sophomore year and kids just passing a bong around the whole day. And he thinks to himself… “Is this how I want to spend my formidable years?”
So he drops out of college and goes all in on his biz… moving to Miami in the process. And he goes on to meet lots of energized, highly talented entrepreneurs who now become his new friends.
This reflects the new GenZ entrepreneur
They don’t care about college and consider it useless in many respects.
They consider the ‘corporate’ route a rat race to the bottom. This is no longer a ‘safe’ way to have a good life in our day and age… and you make a fraction of what you’re worth while selling your soul.
He gives the story of how his dad was a corporate finance guy who always feared losing his job and made a decent living. But his friend’s father was worth multi multi-millions as an entrepreneur and had lambo’s and stuff…. despite the fact that the guy was probably not as smart as his dad. Just different life choices.
And he was gonna be like his friend’s dad. Sorry papa. lol
So what is the new GenZ playbook?
I’ve watched a lot of great Youtube podcasts and channels of this new GenZ breed of entrepreneur and you start to see a pattern for how they talk and think.
I’ll break these rules down here:
Rule 1: You learn by starting small & failing.
Start small on something like an agency business and learn the ropes of how a business runs. Often this can be as a solo-entrepreneur.
Then graduate to increasingly complex businesses.
Learn the ropes by watching the Youtube channels of successful folks that did something similar.
Rule 2: Content is king
Paid ads are expensive…. learn to master at least one channel so you get organic eyeballs. This can be Tiktok, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, etc.
Use those eyeballs not just to get customers but to get mentors, investors, employees, etc.
Rule 3: Use platforms that make it easy to create businesses
Apply AI to your business (eg. put a wrapper around ChatGPT)
Use publicly available API’s to grab the data to ingest into that AI
Use low code / no code platforms like Bubble to build and iterate fast.
Rule 4: Don’t hire ‘experienced’ corporate type people to grow your biz… they typically suck.
Rather find hungry, smart mofos with little to no experience
Rule 5: Build your own personal brand
Regardless that his business is doing well Oliver talks about how he’s investing a ton of time & cash into building his own personal brand.
On numerous channels like Twitter, Youtube, Tiktok, Instagram, etc.
Why? Because this network provides immense value in ways that are often hard to directly measure.
This is the new emerging GenZ playbook that is evolving in front of our eyes folks. Either learn it and evolve with it, or become a dinosaur. Do you have what it takes to be a ‘beast’ in this new world?