Bette Bentley’s first TikTok Live had four viewers and led to zero sales. Six months later, Skimpies—the world’s first liner designed specifically for leggings—was the No. 1 brand on TikTok, and pulled off a 10-hour warehouse livestream that brought in $60,000. Bette did it all organically, never paying the platform a dime. Before Skimpies, she was a comedy writer in New York, performing at the Upright Citizens Brigade alongside future household names. That performance background turned out to be the perfect training ground for live selling—a format that rewards authenticity, stamina, and the ability to read a room in real time. Here, Bette breaks down exactly how she built a brand on TikTok Live, what it cost her personally, and what she’d tell founders thinking about trying it.
On the 8-second video that changed everything:
I was putting all my best content on Instagram and throwing my scraps on TikTok. I had this before-and-after video—a really close-up shot of what you look like in leggings before Skimpies and after Skimpies. I cringed at it on Instagram. But I thought: I’m going to edit this specifically for TikTok. All the fun right upfront. No instruction, no information, no brand name. Just before and after, boop, eight seconds long.
I woke up the next morning and thought my phone had malfunctioned. The video had six million views and our sales had doubled in 24 hours. People were obsessed with this 40-year-old woman talking about leggings. And I was like, Oh, TikTok people have their credit cards out.
Instagram is a billboard. TikTok is the group chat. And I like the group chat. So my next thought was: How can I talk to these people every single day? TikTok Live.
On what she studied before going live for the first time:
I started watching other live sellers—just scrolling through lives, Googling top live sellers, then going to their streams and paying attention. How long are they on? Usually more than two hours. It’s a big time commitment. I noticed that if you’re sitting down selling me something, I’m out. Stand up. Be energetic. Talk to the camera. You don’t need a fancy set—I actually prefer not. I like being in someone’s home, in a well-lit room. It feels real.
And consistency matters for the algorithm. So I took what I learned from other live sellers and from classic QVC. I’m a millennial; I grew up watching QVC. I love flash sales, fun facts, when they talk to people who call in. You get to do all of that on Live through real-time comments and engagement. So I announced to my family, "I’m going live every single day for six months."
On her first Live—and what four viewers taught her:
That first Live was a total snooze. Zero sales. I was on my feet for three hours. Four people were in that Live when I ended. But two of them stayed the entire time. TikTok sent me this little notification: “For duration of watching, you’re beating 90% of other creators.” And I was like, OK, there’s something to that.
They liked that I was telling stories. They liked that I was bringing people in. So I just kept testing—testing time frames, testing what works. The key thing about live selling is that it will reveal what your brand story really is. You get to tell everyone what you’re all about, do product demos, handle customer service, problem solve. “You have this issue? Let me show you how to fix that. Let me show you how to properly put this product in.” You completely collapse the sales funnel.
On what she’d tell founders who don’t have a performance background:
If you’re camera shy, take an improv class or any kind of class that requires you to get in front of people and express yourself. If you’re already a content creator but live selling is new, meditate before you go on. Visualize how you want it to go. Imagine your ego getting into a really small little ball and throwing it out. Say out loud: “I’m here to play. I’m here to have fun. Whatever happens, happens.”
Don’t use a filter; it’s distracting. Keep it real. And be willing for the first few Lives to just find yourself getting comfortable with the tech. Navigating the seller center, doing flash sales. It’s going to be clunky—embrace that. Tell everyone: “This is my very first Live. Do you know how to do a flash sale? This is weird for me. People want to build in public with you. They want your origin story. Bring them into the process.
On sharing her mastectomy story—and what it unlocked:
When I first launched Skimpies, I never talked about my mastectomy. I thought that would be my little secret, because it isn’t the ideal glossy picture of health. I run a brand that makes people feel beautiful and comfortable and confident in their leggings, and I thought: They don’t want to think about the fact that I lost my breasts.
One day during a Live, I just started talking about it. I noticed how people responded. They felt like this was a real community—women who were actually there for each other. They wanted to be there for me. My Lives taught me that this wasn’t something to hide. It wasn’t embarrassing. It was a way we could all come together.
On what 6 months of daily live selling cost her:
Definitely my relationship with my husband. Live selling is beautiful, and it’s really draining—especially if you’re an empath, because millions of people are coming through your space in a couple hours, and it’s a lot of energy to process. Before every Live I needed time to prepare. After every Live I needed time to decompress. And you’ve got girl math going on in your head: My Live starts at 11, so I need to shower at 9:30, do my hair, do my makeup, set up—which means I need to walk the dog at 8, which means I can’t do carpool.
I was leaning on my husband, who was the breadwinner, to take time from his schedule to help with the kids, and I wasn’t making any money yet. That caused tension. I had to tell myself it was OK. He loves me unconditionally. He can be a little annoyed right now. We have a beautiful, over-a-decade marriage. If you think you’re never going to be annoyed with your spouse, get out of town.
But at the end of those six months, we were the number one brand on TikTok. We ended with a 10-hour warehouse Live that made $60,000. It let me hire my first full-time in-house employee. It made us a household name—for free. I did no paid ads. I never paid TikTok a dime. I really feel like I earned the right to start doing paid media by putting in the time to build real trust with our community in an organic way.
On the burnout that followed:
That amount of virality—I wasn’t ready for it. After the six months of Lives, I started my first in-person tour with a statewide tour of Texas. I came back from Texas and had what was probably a nervous breakdown. My legs went numb; I was lying in bed and couldn’t move my toes. I was having a total anxiety attack and felt really tired for days after, which is not like me—I’m the Energizer Bunny.
I realized I had to prioritize my mental health. I had to make sure I had playful, fun energy in my life, because that’s part of what keeps me going. It’s important to the brand, it’s important to my family, it’s important to my little body that houses my soul. So I made a vow to start prioritizing my health. The number one thing I can do to reground is to be playful and in the moment with my children.
Listen to Bette’s full conversation on Shopify Masters to hear about the $25,000 mold that launched a new product category, hand-delivering orders wrapped in rosemary to her first 10 subscribers, and why she went back to finish her college degree mid-launch.
