Still kind of in shock so bear with me.

I started this brand in my apartment, packing boxes between day jobs and Googling how to build a Shopify site. It’s been a long few years, lots of wins, lots of losses, and lots of burnout. We eventually reached a point where I felt like we were actually growing, and I wanted to do something bigger. We had been doing the usual stuff like ads with meta and google as well as organic social but recently things had been popping off and I wanted to take some of that extra cash and test something new.

So we tested a small TV campaign… I was nervous to even try but after doing some research, I found out I was able to start small and measure the outcomes more than I had previously thought. In my mind TV was only useful for massive brands like Apple and Amazon. But last night, sitting at my parents’ house between my mom and dad, our ad aired during a local TV broadcast. Like, actual real live TV. On their old living room TV, surrounded by takeout and laundry.

I didn’t think it would hit me like that, but it did. Idk if it was just the nostalgic kid in me remembering all the crazy commercials from the 90s or seeing my spot sandwiched between two larger than life brands but I just sat there frozen, and then I cried. My mom teared up too. It’s only been a day and we’re already able to see some initial performance in the platform we’re using. It’s too early to tell if the campaign will be a home run or not, but seeing something I built on a screen like that felt real in a way it never had before.

If anyone’s on the fence about testing TV, this is your sign. You don’t need to be huge. It’s doable. And damn, it’s surreal.