The Kentucky Teenagers Making $500K on TikTok
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The Kentucky Kids Who Made $500K
Here's how two Kentucky teenagers made $500K on TikTok
There’s so many Gen Z entrepreneurs using TikTok to build startups.
And Kentucky high school seniors, Daniel Greenberg and Sims Wilson are no exception.
As the co-founders of ViralLEDS, they have grossed over $500K in sales selling LED lights exclusively through TikTok.
We interviewed Daniel and Sims on the podcast to learn the backstory behind their wild success in pushing products on social media.
“We took AP computer science together and our teacher was a little spontaneous. So we did a lot of random projects, and one of them was actually how to code LED lights. So I posted a TikTok of how I make them and it got a million views. So I told Daniel, the next million we’re going to start a business selling these lights,” said Sims.
After realizing TikTok could provide all of the sales and marketing necessary to sell thousands of products, Sims and Daniel needed to streamline their operations. But how could two teenage co-founders and a couple of friends manufacture lights all day and film videos? There wasn’t enough time.
A $600 loan from Daniel’s father jump started the company, and while the pair originally started ordering programmable LED lights from Amazon, they soon pivoted to sourcing products from Alibaba to nail down the economics of their business.
“It's not profitable to order off of Amazon because you're just buying it from other drop shippers. So if you cut out the middleman, you can really save some money. We were lucky enough that there's a local fulfillment company called HJ supply chain solutions, which we worked out a deal with to package and manufacture our lights for us and shipped them out,” said Daniel.
Once they solved their supply chain problems, Daniel and Sims expanded the operation to produce and sell more products, including a “galaxy projector”, a viral “cloud” (cotton balls hanging from the roof with LED lights inside), custom signs, and merch.
As Daniel and Sims started to grow their social media presence making viral videos showcasing their lighting inventions (Sims now has over 360K TikTok followers and the company page has over 25K), something crazy happened.
Social media influencers Bryce Hall, Addison Rae, and Griffin Johnson took notice of the lights and asked the co-founders if they could purchase them. The stars ended up reposting the ViralLED’s on Instagram and earning the page several thousand followers off one story post, a moment Daniel and Sims describe as one of the most “surreal moments of running the business”.
Having been accepted to their dream schools (Daniel is going to Brown and Sims is going to Cornell this fall), the two are figuring out how to run the business in college and begin selling on channels like Amazon. The pair left us with some career advice to young entrepreneurs.
“I would say don't put off doing any idea you have. If you are where we are in high school and you're like, oh, I'm going to need that college experience. I'm going to need that one professor. You do NOT NEED that college experience. You can get started literally whenever you can make time. And whatever you think you can't do, you can do it right now,” said Sims.
“I feel like everyone has an idea of a business that they would want to start. I think they should just try it in and learn on the go, and know they can make time for it,” said Daniel.
Want to consume this full interview? Watch on YouTube or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Check out ViralLED’s website or their TikTok page here.
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