Rob Fraser, CEO of Endur, chats with Blaine and Ramon about how his career as an athlete enabled him to succeed as an entrepreneur and taught him the value of persistence, determination, and the ability to overcome failure. As an entrepreneur of a multi-million dollar brand, Rob discusses the power of bootstrapping & being scrappy (i.e., hitting the pavement & selling directly to customers, getting in-person customer feedback and transferring those learning to the online customer experience), creating a unique business model that allows endur to white-labels socks, maintain cashflow & reinvest that cash into endur or inline inventory, the power of ambassador programs, and how COVID propelled endur to new heights.Being an athlete… 0:56From athlete to entrepreneur… 7:30 - 10:19COVID’s effect on Endur 12:23 - 15:43Avoiding analysis paralysis 16:47 - 17:13Hitting the pavement 17:19 - 21:04Website tips 21:53 - 23:29Brand ambassador program 23:52 - 24:31Identifying brand super powers 25:00 - 27:39Making the first million 28:55 - 30:34The changes after one million 30:36 - 33:16Relentless pursuit of the mission 36:42 - 39:29Endur’s unique business model 39:47 - 43:22M&A 46:16 - 47:41Working in the office 51:13 - 52:07 This episode is brought to you by OpenStore:Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further? Shoot us a DM; we'd love to hear from you.Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates!DTCPod InstagramDTCPod TwitterDTCPod TikTok    Rob Fraser - CEO & Founder of EndurRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel

David Gaylord has had a multifaceted career in ecommerce. He started at Shopify in 2015 as a customer success agent, became an Ops Lead in the Office of the COO in 2020, and a Permanent Merchant in Residence in 2021 where he uses his knowledge & experience founding Bushbalm - a natural skincare brand focused solely on the bikini line - to inspire and advise aspiring entrepreneurs. David joins Blaine Bolus and Ramon Berrios at the DTC Pod and tells us what it’s like navigating the world of ecommerce. Rising through the ranks at Shopify 3:54Resources to learn about business 14:56How Bushbalm increased AOV 20:21Testing out subscriptions 29:21Getting customer feedback 32:51Advice on starting a DTC business today 35:29The anatomy of DTC 43:42Managing ads for wholesale/ retail channels 46:19Finding success in waxing salons 48:18Expanding the team 51:41 This episode is brought to you by OpenStore:Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further? Shoot us a DM; we'd love to hear from you.Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates!DTCPod InstagramDTCPod TwitterDTCPod TikTok  David Gaylord - CEO of bushbalmRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel

Shaun Brandt, co-founder of Oddit, is a designer and brand builder who is an expert at perfecting the customer journey and reducing friction points. His extensive agency experience (Shaun co-founded a product design agency that grew to 80 employees) helping brands grow enabled him to create Oddit. This first-of-its-kind CRO platform helps DTC brands boost conversion & strengthen loyalty. Shaun chats with Blaine Bolus and Ramon Berrios to discuss what makes Oddit unique and common CVR mistakes brands make. Building Trust 22:01 - 22:27If you don't have a ton of reviews, just pulling in one review, right up front and center, instead of even telling customers what it is what your product is just let a customer or a reviewer do it. So things like that, or, you know, instead of listing number of reviews, maybe list how many products you've sold. So maybe you haven't gotten a ton of reviews, because that hasn't been part of your roadmap yet, but you've sold 10,000 units. That's, that's social proof, you know, 10,000 people have trusted youClear Communication33:34 34:27There's so few users that read every piece of your site, look at a heat map, right? Like it's, it, there's there's a reason there's very specific points that are hot and cold. And it's just doesn't happen, very few users are going to read that entire flow. So I think communicating within actions as specifically as possible is really critical. Same thing with on your PDP, when you have a checkout button, or an Add to Cart button. You know, people are like, they always shy away from putting the price on the Add to Cart button. And I mean, maybe if you're if you're really worried about people being price sensitive, I mean, they're gonna ditch it in their cart if they don't know the price anyway. But I think the simple fact of showing that price and the add to cart, it all it does is it make sure the user doesn't have to look back and forth to the top of the screen. And that little millisecond, it has the smallest effect on conversion and the smallest effect on their drop off, because it's just one less thing that they're doing. Landing Page38:59 - 39:34What's unique about a landing page and where where I think brands could do a lot of learning is that by driving traffic to a landing page that's a little more flexible, a single page with storytelling, checkout. Kind of the full flow on a single page is you learn what works and what doesn't really quickly and you can split test a lot easier. And take those learnings back to your actual domain or your primary site and start to implement them on that end. I don't  think you need to test them on both. A lot of the traffic is the same and a lot of the places that people get hung up is going to be the same.Humanizing Products24:59 - 25:56For me UGC is meant to look like UGC, it doesn't always have to be this high produced  expensive video, it can really be an iPhone video of someone using it. Because when it's positioned the right way in that story the fidelity really isn't as important anymore. And the same goes with your ad strategy. So I think that's one of the main things is visuals. Like, there's something to be said about the brands that have this beautiful Apple feeling of  everything is so perfect and rendered  exactly with the right shadows and lighting and sizing. And that's great. It definitely makes the product look high end and does build a certain amount of trust. But I think you really can't have that exclusively. I think you have to find a balance of not UGC, necessarily, but just that more organic like hey here's the product actually in use. I think that's something that a lot of brands are missing on at least on the website.Alternative CVRs27:20 - 28:29What about the conversion rate of brand ambassadors, right? Like, you're gonna get a ton of people to your site that may not purchase, but if you make an impression on them there, they still might talk about it. like Graza olive oil is a perfect example. I can't even buy it. I can't order it in Canada, right? I can’t order it. I can't try it. But I know 10 chefs/ home cooks like I have preached that brand so many damn times. And I've never tried it. I don't know what the olive oil tastes like. I don't know how good the packaging is. I'm strictly basing it off of their storytelling on their site. And traditional CRO doesn't account for that. Right? That brand converted me into a brand ambassador without ever actually purchasing and I probably converted sales for them without them knowing or anyone knowing. But that’s CRO in the Oddit lens, right? Where you're telling a really unique story, you're showing a product really interesting. And you're doing it really organically in a way that converts people into brand ambassadors and brand believers without even ever trying the product. And I think that's a huge miss for a lot of brands where they're just like data, data data. This episode is brought to you by OpenStore:Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further? Shoot us a DM; we'd love to hear from you.Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates!DTCPod InstagramDTCPod TwitterDTCPod TikTok  Shaun Brandt - Co-founder of OdditRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel

Matt Mullenax, CEO of Huron, chats with Blaine & Ramon about his men's care brand offering A+ body care products for guys everywhere. This is Matt’s second time on the DTC Pod. The first time we spoke to Matt was during Huron’s launch, and a lot has happened since, including a global pandemic. Matt discusses how Huron evaluates their supply chain on a super granular level and how this informs their content and marketing strategy, selling on Amazon, and keeping a super clean & lean tech stack.   This episode is brought to you by OpenStore:Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your e-commerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further? Shoot us a DM; we'd love to hear from you.Follow us for content, clips, giveaways, & updates!DTCPod InstagramDTCPod TwitterDTCPod TikTok   Matt Mullenax  - CEO & Co-founder of HuronRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel

Kal Freese, co-founder of Taika chats with Blaine & Ramon about launching the functional coffee brand & how Taika leverages opportunities in Web3 to power brand, community, & product growth.Kal is a lifelong entrepreneur, YC alum, and multiple time VC backed founder who has always had a deep passion & appreciation for coffee. When he was 21, Kal opened a coffee shop in Helsinki and became a champion barista ranked no.9 in the world. Kal wanted to create the perfect coffee that provided people with energy but didn’t make them feel wired or jittery. He ended up creating Taika, a functional coffee made with adaptogens including L-theanine, lion’s mane, and ashwagandha.  There are many resources on the internet to learn about Web3. Some of the people and resources that Kal recommends checking out include:Gaby’s Web3 Reading ListTim Ferris’s podcast with Chris Dixon and Naval RavikantJohn Craven’s twitter spacesClub CPGEmily Elyse Miller of OffLimitsSnaxshot by Andrea Hernández Watch the full episode here:  This episode is brought to you by OpenStore:Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your ecommerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further? Shoot us a DM, we'd love to hear from you. Kal Freese  - CEO of TaikaRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel  

Episode brought to you by Trend & Finaloop.Ariel Vaisbort is the Influencer Coordinator at OLIPOP. After starting off as a part-time employee, Ariel quickly transitioned into running influencer coordination with OLIPOP full-time. Previously Ariel has developed social media for a number of companies including Her Campus Media, BANGS Shoes, and the Heritage School of Interior Design. She is also proficient in working with influencers and selling consumer products via e-commerce. OLIPOP is a beverage company that offers a healthy alternative to soda, focusing on microbiome and digestive health support. 6:48 – Don’t give people a scriptThe audience can tell when an influencer is just reading from a script. If you want people to engage with your product, you have to allow the influencer to speak authentically.“When we work with influencers, we don't give people a script. As a customer, when I see someone reading the script like, ‘Here's the product, I like the product. It is so good.’ Snoozefest. That sucks. That sucks to watch. So for us, as a brand, we don't give people a script. We give people, ‘Here's information about the brand. Here's what you could say, but we want you to talk about what is most impactful to you as a consumer of the product.’ And the biggest thing that we look for when we're working with new people is, does this person know about the product? Have they tried the product? Do they like the product? Because then it's going to come across so much more genuine and so much more real. And so we have people, and we want them to talk more about how the product works for them. Is it getting them fiber? Is it replacing a soda for them? Is it a healthy treat that they switch to instead of drinking wine? And we're trying to lean a lot more into this storytelling aspect and into more genuine stories about why the product is making a difference for people.”8:52 – Trust your influencersInfluencers know what their audience is going to engage with. Trust your partners to speak authentically to get the most interaction from potential customers.“At the end of the day, the creators and the influencers know best what their audience is going to respond and react to. This isn't their first time doing a partnership. They know what their audience is going to purchase, they know what their audience is going to be excited about. And we've had conversations with people where I've said to them, ‘Hey, we want to use this content that you've created on our pages, but I totally understand if it doesn't work out for your page.’ If it doesn't fit with your page and your audience, that's going to be weird. And that's how you lose your audience's trust is by posting things that you think, ‘My audience isn't going to like this.’ That's just how it is. And at the end of the day, the biggest thing obviously that we measure in this industry is your engagement rate, the realness of your audience. So if your audience isn't engaged, and you're posting constantly stuff that they don't care about, nobody's going to want to work with you.”11:31 – Approach influencers for specific needsNo single influencer can target your entire audience. Go to specific influencers so they can speak to specific audience types.“If you're this amazing graphic artist and you're like, ‘Oh, I have this cool thing I could do for the brand.’ And we want to work with you. I'm not going to say to you, ‘Okay, here's your link and your swipe app, post these Insta stories.’ Because that's not going to perform well. So I think a big thing of being a brand is you can't expect everything from everybody, and you can't expect every content creator that you work with to fulfill every single one of your needs. There are going to be people who will have different target markets, there are going to be people of different interests. You're not going to ask a fitness influencer to, I don't know, post a recipe. That would be a little bit weird. You would go to a food influencer for that. So I think it's just playing to people's strengths, and that's something that's super important for me when I'm having these conversations and seeing, ‘Could we do a partnership? How would that partnership look?’ I want to ask people, ‘What are your goals? What do you feel like you're the best at?’ Because if you feel like you're the best at something, that's what I want to work with you on.”13:31 – Work with a broad range of peopleDon’t just focus on high-profile influencers. Partner with interesting people who can broaden the scope of your target audience.“If we're only working with LA influencers or New York influencers, well, the target in Omaha, Nebraska, their sales are not going to be as good. That's just how it is. So we're working really hard to work with more people who are honestly just interesting people. We're looking a lot less than when we started, I think, at, ‘How many followers does she have?’ I look so much at, ‘What's her content like? Is this person someone I'd want to be friends with?’ I'm a pretty average Joe, I would say, I'm not buying $30 smoothies at Erewhon. I'm the Target shopper. I'm the consumer. When I'm looking at influencers, would I follow this person? Would I find value from this person? And so that's my biggest thing, especially as we work to expand and broaden our audience.”16:25 – Support your retailTracking conversions can be tricky, if not downright impossible. Make sure the marketing that you do is ultimately supporting retail.“That’s the trickiest part, tracking your retail conversions. We do a lot of podcasts then, too, and tracking podcasts can also be tricky because you don't know if, ‘Oh, I heard this on The Skinny Confidential Him & Her podcast.’ And six months later they're listening to that episode, they hear about OLIPOP, they go to Target, they buy it there. You have no idea where those people are coming from. So I think that that's definitely a tricky thing. It’s a tricky thing for us. A tricky thing for all brands is connecting the dots there. But I mean, at the end of the day, the marketing stuff that we're doing has to help support retail. And it's one of our goals. Obviously we want people to be coming to us on E-Comm and subscribing, we want people buying directly from us, and we'll do different things that will benefit the E-Comm specific shopper.”19:09 – Build an online communityTo connect with your audience, you have to build a community that they can reach out to. Building a community doesn’t mean spending a lot of money, it just takes time and energy.“I think that building a community is so important. I think building that community, and creating that trust, and being a friend to people. I want people, when they reach out to OLIPOP, when they DM us, I want them to feel like, ‘I'm talking to Ariel at OLIPOP.’ I want them to feel like they have a connection there. They have a person there. You can accomplish a lot with gifting and seeding. And I don't want brands to be like, ‘Oh OLIPOP, I see their ads all day. Athletic Greens, I see their ads all day.’ These big brands, it's not day one for these brands. And I don't want people who are just starting to get discouraged by that, because I think that there are so many ways that you can build based on creating a community. And honestly, creating a community is free. Yes, it takes your time, it takes your energy. Sure. But dollar spend? Not really. You can create a big, juicy, amazing community with relatively low dollar spend.”20:27 – Find brand evangelistsInfluencers who stick with your brand long-term are your best advocates. So make sure to treat your most loyal partners with extra care.“A lot of those people who started out as gifting with us from day one are still on the train with us. They're still fans of the product. They'll reach out to us and be like, ‘Can I get product for my kid's birthday party this weekend?’ Yeah, of course. Sure, I'm going to say yes to that. Of course. If you've been on the ride, if you've been on the train this whole time, at that point, those people are your brand evangelists. And if they want 20 coupons to pass out to their family and friends, I'm going to send them. It's pretty easy. I just feel like saying yes a little bit more, and seeing where you can stretch yourself, and saying, ‘Yeah, okay. I'll do it. Why not?’ It's a really great way to do it.”22:55 – Stay personalReaching out personally to influencers over an Instagram DM is the best way to connect with them. How you respond as a brand will inform how influencers and customers alike see you.“You can add all of the external platforms in the world. And we have added CRM, management tools, organizational tools. There is nothing that beats an Instagram DM. There's just nothing that beats the Instagram message. I have my affiliates, and I’ll send them an email, and then I'll send them a DM saying, ‘Hey, just sent you an email, check your email.’ I just don't think that there's anything that really beats that Instagram message. It's so easy to drop into people's DMs and just say, ‘Hey, how are you doing? How's it going? Let's chat. Let's be friends.’ It's so easy to do that. And I think that that's a really unappreciated art. And I think that the way that you respond to the stories you get tagged in, the way that you respond to people, that's what stands out. And there are some brands that do it really, really well.”25:08 – Keep your brand’s voice consistentHire people who naturally speak with your brand’s voice. If you can keep your branding consistent and authentic, people will be naturally drawn to you.“For official communications, our copywriter does an amazing job, but I think that honestly, for the most part and a big reason why I was originally brought onto the team, is because of my voice. The way that I talk and I interact is very similar to the brand and how we want the brand to interact. I'm going to send you a message that has emojis in it. That's just who I am as a person. And that's how the brand is. That's how we want the brand to be. We want it to feel like you're talking to a friend by removing that hoity-toity brand thing. It sometimes feels like a brand is talking down to you. And I really don't feel that with OLIPOP. And I feel like that's just because that boils down to hiring and who we're bringing onto the team, and are the people that we're bringing onto the team, do they have that same brand voice? Are they fun to be around? Do they send too many emojis? Awesome! That'll probably work for us.”42:28 – Learn from your lossesEven if a promotion or partnership isn’t as successful as you wanted it to be, you can still learn from your failures.“If you send someone two cases of soda and they don't post it on Instagram, how much does that really affect you? You still get to sleep at night. You're okay. Pick it up, move on. I totally get people who are like, ‘I spent a ton of money on this influencer and nothing came of it.’ That definitely sucks, but I think that you can look at that and you can say, ‘Okay, what did I learn from this?’ Maybe I shouldn't put all my eggs in one basket next time, maybe I should spend the same amount of money, but do it across multiple different people. I think there's so many different ways that you can play around with it. And also if you have someone who's listening to this and they're like, ‘Wait, this girl said some really cool stuff.’ Reach out to me, we can talk about it.” Watch the full episode here:  This episode is brought to you by OrderGroove and OpenStore:Visit  https://www.ordergroove.com/dtcpod/?utm_source=event&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2022q1_dtcpodpodcast_thirdparty_demo_us&utm_content=demo  today to receive 2-months off your first contract.Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your ecommerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further? Shoot us a DM, we'd love to hear from you. Ariel Vaisbort - Influencer CoordinatorRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel

 Colton Macaulay (@Coltyy), sits down with Blaine & Ramon to detail how he grew his audience to over 10 Million fans on TikTok, 3 Million+ on Youtube, and the creator's perspective on working with DTC brands. For Coltyy, becoming a TikTok star began with a passion for art, photography, and the outdoors. His wildlife photos were getting good attention on Instagram, but the engagement performed much better when he featured himself in the content. From there it seemed a natural step to start producing video, where he could be much less formal—and have fun in the process. Now, it’s not unusual for Colton to spend over 10 hours per day making content for his 10 million+ fans. 00:40 - The “creator house” vibeCreator houses are a unique space where popular creators gather to produce content. The fact that there is high expectation to produce contracted content for brands is a double-edged sword.“Obviously to live in these homes, you've got deliverables to meet. So maybe you’ve got to make a certain amount of videos with that caffeine bar, which is called the Nutrohaler per month, to stay and live in that house. Or you got to make a [inaudible], or we have that long format app that's going to be coming out soon, which is Flick. And we've got to make a certain amount of videos to help promote the launch. And then the last content before that would have been The Go, it was a reality show. That was also a shit show. They were just sucking every penny they could from every brand. And we had to like film six hours a day, and all these videos were heavily promoted with different brands.”08:37 - The first brand dealColton’s first brand deal resulted in a viral video with over 8 million views. He’s extremely thoughtful about which brands he will work with and the content he produces, as each video becomes part of his public profile.“Everything happened very fast. I was putting like crazy hours, like 10 hours a day. In the first two months I got to 72,000. This was 2018, I believe. Two months in around 72,000, and I had my first viral video series two days later. Another viral video series and I was at 450-450,000. I got my first song promo around like 800,000 followers. They just reached out to me. I had no idea what my worth was. I think I was still averaging probably at least 1.5-2 million views, and I think I accepted like $600 bucks, $800 bucks, which I was told was very underpriced. It was like yo, $800 bucks for being on TikTok?? All right. So that was probably my first deal, and that song promo got 8 million views on my video. I do put a lot of time in when it comes to brand deals and things like that. I know I usually can't remove these views from my profile, so I try to make it real good.”9:53 - Producing content organicallyEven when content is part of a paid promotion, Colton’s goal is to work the product or service in as organically as possible.“The last one that I did was one for Yubo, which is an app kind of like Tinder, but almost for friends. And then you play games and stuff on there. So I was like, all right, I'm in Florida. I’ve got to get this video done within like 24 hours if I want to do it. So my head’s just thinking like how can I incorporate maybe meeting a friend on this app, and doing something kind of crazy in Florida? I was like, okay. I just came from LA. I'm going to say that I was on Yubo and I met this other guy who loves wildlife, and he's in Florida. So I decided to go over to meet him and catch iguanas. So the video was just me and him catching iguanas in Florida. And then we both caught one where we brought them back to where like our Airbnb and were bonding with our iguanas, and then making jokes and stuff throughout the video to make it more entertaining. And that was kind of that promo. I just tried to make it feel as organic as possible. I don't want it to seem like it's forced.”11:30 - Vetting brand partnershipsAs a creator, Colton loathes email. He says the best way brands can approach creators is through DMs, where they should clearly state the type of engagement they’re seeking.“Most creators absolutely hate email. I'm sure some are pretty good at answering them, but I know a lot of my friends, including me. Super cluttered. I feel like I answer most of the DMs on Instagram. So if there's a company jumping in there, I'm on my screen all the time, including all my friends. Those are the ones I respond to the fastest, and it just seems more personal. I like texts. I like Instagram. I want something personal. The formal stuff, it's not really my thing. That's why having a manager would be awesome, because we're creators. We're not someone who's trying to do emails all day. So the ones that I respond to on Instagram for sure would be the ones that stand out, or they get straight to the point…I would like to know, like, are they just trying to get like a collab, like free product? Sometimes they won't even say. So you have to send emails back and forth to figure out what that is. Like, get straight to the point. Is it you're trying to give us free product for a post, which are very much are the ones I don't want to do. Or are you trying to do pay per download, if it's an app? Or is it a fixed price, where we pay you a certain amount per post? Knowing that it is pretty key for whether I respond or not.”17:28 - Giving every video 100%Colton is serious about content and wants every video he creates to perform well. His profile is like a living billboard that showscases high video views as a result of his effort.“I like having that clean profile. I'm not trying to give away my secrets here, but you know brands are going through your profile and they're looking at how many views you're averaging. I don't want a video on my profile that says 200,000 views, 300,000 if my average is like 2 million, 3 million. When you're making those post for brands, that’s staying on there. So that's why I always give 100% effort. I'll even sometimes redo them. And if I have a real relationship with them, then it usually leads to maybe a possible another deal. Or if I have other brands going through my profile, it increases my price too. It's like, oh, this guy's averaging maybe like 3 million views for brands.”19:37 - The importance of video editingThe more content Colton produces, the more he considers hiring a videographer to partner with him. The key is finding someone who’s the perfect fit for his style.“The amount of time that people spend editing is insane. I mean, Justice, the guy in our content house, that guy is on the computer morning till night editing. It's a full-time job. And if I was doing that, especially because my goal for this year is getting to long format content. I got like six videos ready that I'm going to post. If I spend the time editing those six videos, like I bet you I’d probably have 20 less TikToks out right now. So I definitely will have a team. I just gotta find the right guy that fits what I'm looking for. I've tried a few videographers, but it just doesn't match up at all. Like, I'll be in the middle of the woods by myself with this guy, and he just won't talk. I'd be talking and I think I'll say something funny or be like almost asking questions. Like the guy doesn't talk. I'm sure you probably see some YouTube channels where the videographer is almost a character too. You’re kind of like vibing with the person, it's gotta be the same energy.”21:38 - Why challenges perform wellVideos that include challenges typically get high views, as the audience wants to stick around and find out what happens.“My first [YouTube] Short that blew up was a challenge. I've done a lot of challenges. Challenges do very well on YouTube Shorts. Don't know why that is. But since I'm pretty athletic, we went to a gymnastics gym and I created a challenge. You know what a box is, like a gymnastics box? Well, it's kind of the same material, but it's a donut. So I placed this donut at higher and higher levels and you have to like dive through it and to the point where people would start knocking it over, and not making it. And then it was pretty much who could make it the highest. Those challenges seem to be really well. I think it's because the watch time on it really high, because everyone wants to see how high everyone’s going to make it to the very end. They want to see like how many boxes, how many levels they’ll reach. So I've noticed the challenges where it's levels, people want to see how high or what level they're going to reach before they eat shit.”23:06 - Mastering the algorithmUnderstanding the algorithm is perhaps the most important part of being a creator. Colton has developed a sixth sense for what will work well based on the rules of each platform and the elements that are valued.“I very much look at how things perform, and I looked at the watch time. And then based off how certain videos perform, I change my content and tweak it. It's the reason why I’ve made it up to this point, is I have came up with my own conclusions or ideas on what the possible algorithm was for TikTok or YouTube. Understanding that algorithm is the most important thing. And there's a bunch of different parts to how it works that are all evaluated higher or lower. Obviously one of the most valued ones would be watch time. But, for example, like TikTok it’s profile clicks. People that are going out of the way to go to the profile is very highly valued. And that's why you see a lot of people that do those videos that are cliffhangers. So they'll have a part two to them next, getting the same views. Because people are going out of the way to come back to the profile to see if part two is out.”26:08 - Moving to long-format contentCondensing a video down to less than a minute is hard. That’s why Colton is excited to start exploring longer content that allows for more creativity.“For me on YouTube, a lot of people make them 15 seconds, 20 seconds. Look at all mine, and they're almost all exactly a minute. I used to use the whole minute. I would totally do it for three minutes, if it was worth my time. Because I try to use that same video for YouTube shorts, so I'm still keeping everything to one minute. But it's hard for me to compact my videos to fit one minute long. I'm struggling to take out clips. So long format for me is like a little more relaxed. I just don't have to make it as fast-paced, or take out certain clips I don't want to take. So three-minute videos, five-minute videos, or even 10 minutes is not going to be too hard of a problem for me…now that challenge is gone. I don't have to worry about that. I can make it the way I want it.”41:41 - Any account can go viralMany creators have a big hit and then lose their mojo. But Colton says it’s always possible to find your stride again and see your account take off.“Some accounts can die off if like maybe you went viral once and got like hundreds of thousands of followers. And that was you're only following was one video, and you’ve had no viral videos since. I've seen it happen to a handful of people. Or maybe they blew up through skits. Now, skits don't work on TikTok. That’s also one of the reasons why I did try to diversify my content as much as possible, so I'm not relying on one niche. But for the most part, you can revive accounts, no problem. I know my friend Matt, he was, no offense, but his views were ass. They were real bad, like 8 million followers, averaging ver multiple months like 70,000 views, 50,000 views, 80,000 views for like the longest time. And then all of a sudden things started picking up again. He was getting a million, 2 million, 500,000, 2 million, 5 million.” Watch the full episode here:  This episode is brought to you by OrderGroove and OpenStore:Visit  https://www.ordergroove.com/dtcpod/?utm_source=event&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2022q1_dtcpodpodcast_thirdparty_demo_us&utm_content=demo  today to receive 2-months off your first contract.Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your ecommerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further? Shoot us a DM, we'd love to hear from you. Colton Macaulay - Creator on TiktokRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel

Greg entered the tech scene early in his career thanks to a friend who tipped him off on a sales job at a New York startup. He started out by literally sleeping in the office by night and making 150 cold calls per day. Unfortunately, his busy schedule and city lifestyle quickly led to burnout. After buying a one-way ticket to Thailand to decompress, Greg came back to the states and got a job at Twitter as a senior sales associate. Soon, he found himself falling back into his old bad habits, and starting formulating a nootropic beverage that would allow him to do his best work without negative side effects. Next, he worked at Stack Overflow on the enterprise sales team, which dried up during the pandemic. During 2020, he found the momentum he needed to finally become an entrepreneur and found NooWave. 17:56 - Find your “personal monopoly”Thanks to David Perell’s Write of Passage course, Greg found himself talking about his nootropics hobby over and over. A classmate’s interest provided the fuel he needed to get going.“There's this online writing course. I don't know if you guys know David Perell and Write of Passage….The very first week he has this section of the course where it’s called ‘your personal monopoly.’ So, I'm Greg Frontiero. I worked for these tech companies. I love nootropics. I am a professional wrestler. I do MMA stuff. And like, what is this zone where only I can talk about it and nobody else can touch me, right? What's my brand that nobody else writes about but me? And so I would say these nootropics things in these breakout rooms, and everybody had the same question, like what is a nootropic? I would tell that story I just told you, give you an example. Oh, I drink this coffee. And this guy, Robbie Crab who is like a performance speaking coach DMs me in the middle of me giving my speech about it and goes, ‘I want to buy this. Where can I buy this coffee?’ And I was like, oh, like I make it. And he's like, you should sell it. And it was like immediately. So when I tell you I had NooWave in my head for six years, I actually launched the company in six weeks.”21:30 - Tap your networkGreg’s first move was to write a letter about his new venture and send it to his network. The response was absolutely overwhelming, with everyone demonstrating interest in his product.“So I take this one blog post and I launch it to what I think is going to be crickets. No one's gonna care about it. I put it on my LinkedIn. I put it on like Twitter. I put it on whatever. It launches, and I swear to God, it's like a movie where every single person in my entire life like came out of the woodwork. Kids I haven't talked to her since kindergarten, teachers, coworkers, people at my MMA gyms, wrestler friends, everybody. Everybody in my life came out and. And I don't know if they necessarily gave a shit about like a nootropic coffee, but they were backing me and they sorta wrote it for me. It was just such a feel-good moment of, man. All that time in my life was for something, the connections and the people that you met. So we sold out our first run immediately.”25:49 - Cold call manufacturersMost companies require expensive minimums that are out of range for bootstrapped founders. Greg tapped deep into his salesman roots to find a coffee company that would work with him.“I'm also talking to all these manufacturers and how to do fulfillment and all that stuff. And it's a nightmare, right? Like when you're making this product and you have no money and resources and all these companies have giant minimums. And so now I'm looking at this and I'm looking at getting loans and small business loans and all that stuff. So this is what I tell everybody. I think if there's one thing I can tell people that is like the hardest part about starting a CPG brand is like the manufacturing process fucking sucks…The benefit of my experience is I'm so used to making 100 cold calls a day. I'm very used to that. And this is the old school of business. I am making like literally 10 phone calls a day to manufacturers in Seattle and talking to coffee people, talking to cacao people…That's how you have to do it. Honest to God. I'm telling you guys, this is not a thing where you can send an email and they're going to be opening your door, to maybe sell you 100 bags. You’re just not going to get a response. So you have to beat them down and you have to call.”28:31 - Pray for good luckAfter Greg identified a coffee partner, he started getting bad vibes. At the last second, another fulfillment option reached out to him. They remain his partners to this day.“At the fucking last week, we're going here. This company is just waiting for me to write them the check. And side note, I fucking hated our sales rep, hated this guy. Just every conversation with him sucked. He would just speak to me and he'd be like, ‘Yeah, so about the formula, like is this right?’ I was like, no, that's completely wrong. Like it's written down, you're responding in the same email. Just look! This is the person I'm gonna work with? We're about to launch and you fucked this up three times. And so we can't get on the same page. He's not responding for a week. And I was like, oh my God, this is going to go badly. I get this phone call. I won't say who we work with, because I don't know if they're big enough for me to reveal my secret sauce…so this angel woman calls me and she's like, Hey, I'm an upstate coffee roaster. And we really want to work with you.”33:55 - Monitor your pricingGreg’s goal is to eventually reduce the price of NooWave so that his 20-year-old self could afford it.“I can't wait to get our price down, by the way. I think we were we're definitely a premium coffee right now, and I don't want to be. I want to be like and get inspired by Chris Cantino and Jaime Schmidt. All they get is pitched by brands that are like, ‘we're like the luxury, you know,’ and it's awesome. By the way, at the time we sold a $30 coffee. So I can't throw stones at my glass house. But we had to, because I didn't have any money. And I was like, this is what it costs. I need to. I read Super Maker and it said to times it by three. So I'm going to do that. There's really basic stuff, but then I started doing it. And every iteration, we get a little bit cheaper and I'm going to continue to do that. Because I want the 23-year-old version of me to be able to afford this, and right now he couldn't. And that's not good.”36:59 - Find your true audienceGreg’s first run sold out thanks to friends and family. It dropped sharply afterward, but he was able to bring sales back up thanks to tapping into his true target market: tech bros.“Here's what the truth is. Everybody in my life came out of the woodwork and bought it. Let's say 90% of those people dropped off. Because they weren’t my target audience. They were like my mom, who's I don't need this. So then it's weird. It went immediately down, but I had this momentum of that Write of Passage, where all of my target audience are all these kind of people like me: these nerdy kind of tech-broey kind of dudes that are all now coming out of this course with their little newsletters that are all micro-influencers essentially. They all have like a thousand-person newsletters of all their friends and family. So I sponsor all their newsletters. They're all doing their unique projects. Word of mouth is a very real thing. So we started getting all these orders out of nowhere of people being like, this works. This coffee helps me focus, but it doesn't stress me out.”38:05 - Build in publicGreg writes a weekly newsletter rain or shine. It not only allows him to organize his thoughts on building the business, but has resulted in valuable feedback from his customers.“I do a weekly newsletter every Wednesday that is just like a personal blog. And I talk very openly about the business. And it's like very much building in public and saying, I tried this this week. It didn't work. I think I'm going to try this. What do you guys think? Hey, do you like this? So I'm like talking to my customers every week. They respond back. I have people I've never met that I have really deep-level conversations with on email. I've had phone calls with them afterwards. And actually, this is such a powerful thing for anyone who's listening. You know the whole like talk to your customers thing and nobody does it? I had a Google spreadsheet of everyone who bought this coffee. The first thing I did is I wrote every single person a personal letter, custom. If you bought it Ramon, ‘Thanks so much for buying this. I saw on your Twitter bio your DTC POD thing. I want to check out Trend too, let’s get in a talk.’ Handwritten…This is the crazy thing. At the end of every letter I was like, if you don't mind, please take a picture and post this. Even if it's not something you like, we need content. So now I have hundreds of bags. I have really roughly around 500 pieces of content. And I have enough to just post every day.”45:11 - Identify mentors who are one step aheadWhen you reach out to other product founders who were recently in your shoes, you can gain valuable wisdom that is fresh in their mind, without worrying about competition.“The best analogy is the ladder, where you don’t want to talk to someone who's like sold a Unilever for $100 million dollars. They’re not going to be able to help you. You want to talk to someone who's a year ahead of you. When I keep bringing up Chris from CROSSNET, that is a great guy to talk to because he's five years ahead. He did exactly what I want to do. He's already done it, but he's not far enough that he forgot what it was like to be where I'm at. And that's like a good sweet spot. There's so many people now, DTC has sort of exploded. And there's people 1-5 years ahead of me that I can chat with and I can trust. And it's always good that they're not competitive to me. So if someone's like candles, they're not going to like steal your shit. And you don't have to worry about like, oh, this person's going to snake me. They're not even in the same space. They're not going to start a coffee brand.”55:58 - Be prepared to grow slowlyWhen you are truly bootstrapped, you can’t delude yourself with visions of overnight success. Greg recommends keeping your business as a side hustle for as long as possible.“If you're bootstrapping this thing, you need to do it from your job as a side hustle, or you need to have a significant amount of cash. Because it's not going to truly make money if you want to grow the business for a while. And you know, you see these revenue charts that people release and it's pretty common theme that year 1-3, it kind of just sucks. And there's something about that second, third year, fourth year you start seeing I'm able to pay myself now. And honestly, when I look at our numbers compared to people that have released historical numbers, I'm like, yeah, we're there. We're at two. So we're at six figures now. That's it. It's not impressive. If I paid myself now, it'd be mediocre. So like I said, we tried to grow too fast and we tried to cheat, and it just doesn't work. Whenever you try to copy someone without understanding why they did what they did, or why it's relevant to that company and why they did what they did, it's just a disaster. And every time we've done this methodical, long, like you can tell when the effort's there, it pays off in spades.”59:28 - Don’t ignore AmazonYes, there are downsides to selling on Amazon, but the platform can also be an incredible option for bootstrapped founders who need revenue quickly.“So first and foremost, everybody who says I want to own the customer and the data and all that, they're absolutely correct. I would prefer that too. Who would not prefer that? I don't have that option. I'm a bootstrap person. I need to make money. And if I need to make money, I need to like suck at Jeff Bezos's tit and do the Amazon thing, it works really fucking well. Upon launch, it's like immediately now probably 50% of our revenue is from Amazon. Because it just kind of takes care of itself. Your conversion rate for Amazon is like 40% versus like 2% on your stores. And we have 80 five-star reviews. It's not unimpressive, but they're all five-star reviews. So it's great. And the testimonials there are great, it starts helping us with our copy. Don't discount Amazon. I would start it right away. It's a process to get on Amazon. It takes time and you got to do it. It's annoying and finicky and shitty. But I think building both in tandem is actually really great.” Watch the full interview here:  This episode is brought to you by OrderGroove and OpenStore:Visit  https://www.ordergroove.com/dtcpod/?utm_source=event&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2022q1_dtcpodpodcast_thirdparty_demo_us&utm_content=demo  today to receive 2-months off your first contract.Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your ecommerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further? Shoot us a DM, we'd love to hear from you. Greg Frontiero  - CEO of NoowaveRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - COO of Omnipanel 

Sean Frank was working at a local Los Angeles ad shop in his early 20’s when he and his friend Connor decided to start an agency of their own. The plan was to focus on a small team and high-touch client relationships. It worked so well that one of their clients, The Ridge Wallet, ended up absorbing their talented team entirely. At the time, Ridge was making a couple million dollars a year off Shopify and had accomplished a successful Kickstarter campaign. Sales were good, but they didn't have digital expertise in-house, and didn't want to manage a team. Instead of continuing to outsource to Sean, they ultimately merged. Sean has been CEO ever since. 4:24 - Diversify your ad strategyThe Facebook golden years didn’t last forever, and Ridge succeeded because they saw it coming and put resources into multiple ad channels early in the game.“Those first couple of years were the golden years, where we would just run Facebook ads driving to a Shopify page. The most complex thing was, we need better static photography. This is like 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, where if you were bad at Facebook ads, you got 10x ROAS. The thing that benefited us was we always thought it was going to get worse. I'm just a naturally paranoid person. So we were on the cutting edge of diversification away from paid media channels. So things were going great on Facebook. We were getting 10x ROAS. But it's like, we need to be on Snapchat. So we were the first Snapchat advertiser. If you read the Snapchat earnings report, when they launched ads we are named, because we were the first people doing it. We've been a TV spender for a year. So pre the iOS14 fuck-ups, we've been spending money on TV. We just always thought it was going to get harder. So one of our biggest tips was just diversify quickly.”5:49 - Prepare to pay taxesWhat makes surpassing the $10 million mark challenging for most brands is scaling quickly while also keeping up with your skyrocketing tax responsibility.“I think most businesses can get to that $10 million mark. If you're running right now and you have an ecomm product people seem to like, and you're running Facebook ads, you're doing the basic blocking and tackling, right? You're sending email campaigns. Maybe you're touching SMS right now. The $10 million mark is easy. We had the hardest time at $15-20 million, in that range, the post 10. SO we did $8 million one year, then we did $15 million. So awesome growth, near 100% growth. The next year we did $20 million. So growth slowed. That was the hardest year of the business. What happens is if you're a profitable e-comm brand, you have this problem where taxes are due every year. Specifically if you're doing accrual accounting, which you're supposed to now, I think. So you have this problem where you had a big tax bill, but you just grew really fast. So you need to buy inventory to keep up with that growth. And that's what kills those businesses. That's what really ends up fucking up growth past $10 million.”10:34 - Scoop up agency talentOne tactic to consider if you can’t find talent to support your brand? Buy an agency. That’s what worked for Ridge.“When we did the merger with Ridge, they were getting a full-fledged team, because we had email, search, whatever. But that was built up and subsidized by a functioning agency business at the time. So any advice for any really big brands listening right now is, if you've had a problem finding talent, just buy an agency. I think that's pretty good advice. Now, probably half the company has some sort of marketing role. We have six people, more now, probably have seven people who just do influencer marketing. So if you bought Ridge Wallets and you go on YouTube, or go on TikTok, you might see us sponsor a lot of content. We sponsor like 5,000 creators a year or something crazy. And all of that is done in-house through like seven people at The Ridge signing people all day long. Just to give you an example, we have two people who just do email, we’re probably going to hire a third person who just does email. We have a designer who just designs emails. So it ends up being very, very specialized, the bigger you get.”13:09 - Keeps things personalThe bigger your brand gets, the harder it is to personalize the customer experience. But it’s critical to remember that people buy from people.“Where I think big brands mess up is that people still buy things from people. So even if they're on their website or whatever, this whole idea of brand is like, does this product make me feel a certain way? And people are like the most centric part of feelings. I think one reason we’ve had so much success is our influencer program. And it's because people you trust are showing you this product. They say they love the product. And it mimics personal recommendations, to the highest degree. So I think it's a way we’ve captured a lot of success. And it's like, how do we continue to do that? How do we continue to personalize everything we're doing? And how do we act with intention so that customers understand who we are, and then they understand why they're buying from us? That's really, really hard to do at scale. I know it's a very fluffy, nuanced, almost bullshit answer, but that's what we're trying to capture this year.”17:18 - Involve execs in content creationIf you want your brand to excel on YouTube, you need to get a recognizable fact involved who you can rely on to continue to represent the brand indefinitely.“The reason why brands are gonna have a hard time with it, and the reason why Ridge has hard time with it is it’s something you can't outsource. Like our influencer content is influencer shot, influencer released, distributed by them. Studio photography is done by a studio photographer, their face isn’t in it. It’s not personal. But when you get to YouTube, it's like, I can't hire a guy to do it. Because then people want the relationship with that person. And they like the way that he delivers his style or whatever. And he could get a different job. He could get a Netflix show, you know what I mean? So I can't outsource it. And if it's an employee, you've seen that happen to G4 back in the day. They built up these employees, the employees leave, and it's because you're a faceless corporation. So it has to be one of us, the executives to do it. And it's just finding the time to do that.”23:26 - Make better organic contentFor true success, Sean says brands need to think like content creators, and distribute organic content across multiple platforms.“You have to sort of think like a content creator. Like how do you actually deliver not only a product that's a good value, that somebody wants to buy it. But to get that in front of somebody, you have to be so content first, right. CPMs are going to be what they're going to be. I talk to people all the time. They're like, what do I do to make Facebook better? And I'm like, do you have a time machine? That's what you need right now. Do you know someone at Facebook who will commit a crime to get your CPMs lower? It's never going to get better. But you as a brand need to get better. And people hate having that conversation, right? You need to make content better. You need to make this stuff better…we need to get better at creating organic content across every single platform, but right now we're spending money on paid media across every single platform.”27:26 - Bomb-proof your business with contentThere’s always going to be a “next era” of content. The key is to learn how to make the content itself, not just disrupt it.“How do you bomb-proof your business for the next change in the era? It's going to be content first...so figuring out how to make the content and not just disrupt the content is a huge piece of that…Everything's a golden secret until it stops, you know what I mean? It's like, that's what Facebook was. There's something else somebody's doing that’s driving amazing results. There's always something like that, and it gets brought to the mainstream. But by the time you hear about it, it's too late. There's a golden rule. I was reading some Vice report thing, and they were talking about that it's like, by the time you see it in the news, it doesn't matter anymore. It's like everyone that knows about it has already acted on it, already knows about it. Nothing's breaking, as long as you're in the industry. So just take that with a grain of salt. So by the time you're hearing about something, it's too late to act on it. So just keep living your life.”33:10 - Keep improving your productMaking new products every year will keep customers engaged and coming back for more. Everything should feel fresh and current, from your products to your ads.“The community feedback is important. But the big thing that brands don't want to talk about, and this is like if you're an agency, they're paying you. So you don't want to rock the relationship too much. But you need to make better products probably every year, right? It's like, Apple is worth $3 trillion. Every year, there's an iPhone that comes out. And every year, they need to give you a reason to buy. What if they said, yeah, there's no updates this year. It's just the same. Maybe people would still buy it. But no, you need to deliver a reason. An improvement. That’s the cost of getting better. And no one wants to hear that. They want to have a website from 2017. They want to have a product from 2016. Then want to have ads from 2018. And they still want to be successful in 2022. And if that's your playbook, it's not going to work.”35:36 - Hire before you need toIf you stumble across a top performer, get them on your payroll. It’s worth feeling like you are jumping the gun than risk stifling growth later when you’re short on talent.“Probably the best advice I can give if you're a $10 million brand who thinks they have a bunch of growth ahead of them is hire the best people before you think you need them. So if you find someone who's actually - everyone uses the term “A player, right. But really think about that. Is it a top 10% of all people, or is it in this specific field? Because a specific field is a lot narrower. So if you're really finding a top 10 digital marketer or a top 10 CFO, make that hire. Even if you don't think you can afford it, even though it's going to cut into whatever and you don't get to fucking buy a new car or whatever, make that investment. Because if we had more people and more guidance earlier, we would be a billion-dollar company now, you know what I mean?”36:56 - Get your accounting rock solidHiring a firm, getting audited, and paying sales tax is painful but absolutely necessary if you want to be ready for big opportunities, like incoming capital.“Figure out your accounting way before you think you need to. If you're not collecting sales tax in every single state, start doing that right now. If you ever want to exit, you will get fucked so hard if you do not. Forget about the nexus, forget about whatever you fucking hack you think you have. Just collect sales tax in every single state. Customers are going to pay it, conversion rates won't go down. You're just hurting yourself. And then figure out the rest of your accounting stuff. Get a real firm, get gap compliant, get audited. And the reason why you have to do all that type of stuff is when you actually want funding from a bank, the people who give you loans, or a VC or private equity group or a family office, it's way better to have your ducks in a row before you go to meet with them, then look like a fool and take 12 months, 18 months, 14 months, however long it takes to get your shit together. So do all that stuff when you don't think you have to. Find the time to do it.”Here's the full interview:  This episode is brought to you by OrderGroove and OpenStore:Visit  https://www.ordergroove.com/dtcpod/?utm_source=event&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2022q1_dtcpodpodcast_thirdparty_demo_us&utm_content=demo  today to receive 2-months off your first contract.Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your ecommerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours. Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further? Shoot us a DM, we'd love to hear from you. Sean Frank  - CEO of RidgeRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - COO of Omnipanel

Caroline McCarthy is the Co-Founder at Starday Foods. She started her career at Google in the AdWords arena, worked with clients like ClassPass on marketing strategy, and helped build out the performance marketing function at Slack. She also worked for a data science firm that worked for the Obama campaign, followed by working for the banking app One Finance that has since merged under the umbrella of Walmart. Throughout her tech journey, she has been exposed to strategic branding and design initiatives that aid her current work with Starday. Starday is focused on building a next-gen food conglomerate and has two current products: Gooey and All Day. 1:48 - Taking a data-driven approach to CPGStarday’s data engine uses first and third-party signals to identify gaps in the CPG market.“One of the things that is really important to our model is we have what I call like an in-house data engine that we've built that parses through third and first-party data signals to help us understand where we think that there are gaps in the market, based on either existing or ‘not popular’ foods that we think we could build a really strong brand and product around, that also is able to meet sustainability principles. And also, frankly, something that we think will taste good. We don't want to make a healthy product that no one actually wants to eat. With Gooey, without going into too many of the details with the data model because I don't want to bore everyone, we saw a fair amount of signal around a couple of different attributes. Low-sugar being one, dairy-free being another, sustainable, eco-friendly, plant-based in some capacity as well.”4:51 - Seeking mass-market appealMost CPG brands are led by strong founder stories. Starday is taking the opposite approach: foregoing the emotional appeal in favor of pure mass-market appeal.“There's often a really strong founder story behind a product that has really spoken to people. And I say this as someone with a nut allergy, I've always been very passionate about creating a nut-free cookie brand. It will happen one day, I swear. But the idea was to take a little bit of that sort of emotion out of it, and actually be like, okay. What does a wider swath of consumers want? Because the idea behind our products is that they should really be mass market. We're not trying to be in a really niche group…Part of that plays into it as well when we're looking at these products and the different data. Do we think we can actually build a product that's going to appeal to a larger mass of humans? Is this something where when we talk about going into retail, we're saying we can talk to Kroger, we can talk to Target? Or is this really a product that would only make sense at an Erewhon or a Whole Foods? If it's the latter case, there are plenty of amazing brands that are being developed and incredibly successful in that sort of arena. It's just the approach that we're trying to take.”5:44 - Keeping a similar consumer profileFocusing on products that cater to similar demographics has helped Starday avoid starting from scratch each time they launch a new product.“I oversee all aspects related to growth and marketing. So as you can imagine, I spend a lot of time thinking about our brands and the efficiencies that we can find between them. I would say first, we've maintained similar consumer demographics between our first two brands and expect to do so in the future. It's not just in terms of the cross-branding opportunities, but also in terms of how we are understanding our own data. We're not starting from scratch every time, and that's something that's really important and does go back into how we choose our products as well, back to that sort of consumer demographic that we're looking at. If we launch our third brand and we are talking to a completely different type of audience or consumer, that's a whole lot of work and learnings that we are going to have to start from scratch really. And I would prefer to sleep at night. So I would like to actually be able to learn from our last brand launches.”13:26 - Taking a lean approachKeeping overhead low means foregoing bells and whistles, but allows Starday to confidently repeat their design & launch process.“We have a very lean approach to developing and launching. And while that does mean that some of the bells and whistles that come with a lot of launches in this space, whether it's tons of press coverage or it tons of seating or it's a big influencer or celebrity founder, whatever it may be. We're not necessarily going to be having that on every launch. We might try it out for one or two launches, but we've been able to keep a really lean budget. And so I think that the efficiency that we have there is something that also a huge part of allowing us to keep doing this multiple times over. Because we didn't go and blow a bunch of money on launch A, and now we’ve sort of got to wait for revenue to catch up for another six months.”24:39 - Pitching investors on the platform vs. productStarday’s platform and vision are ultimately what attracts investors, not the individual products themselves. Not every investor will be able to picture the ROI, but Starday found investors who did.“What folks were investing in is the platform that we're building. The brands, while I love them deeply and I'm very fond of them obviously, because I spend all day thinking about them, they are really the product of the platform and the data models and the process and the strategy and the technology that we're building, it's that approach. And then also having the right team members in place, that was what folks were investing in…ultimately we were able to raise successfully and with great and investors on the vision that we were trying to build and that strategy. That said, I also realized that's not a very common approach and it's also one that I feel to a certain extent, we were very lucky to have been in the right place at the right time. We raised really from more tech-type investors, and traditional F&B investors maybe would've really been waiting for specific retail data, and certainly a product and market. So at the time that we raised and how we raised I think is, you do have to require a certain type of mindset on the investor side in order for them to see that vision, and understand where those returns are coming from.”28:26 - Bringing in F&B expertiseOnce they had capital to work with, next Starday focused on bringing in food and beverage insights that helped them obtain a holistic perspective and prepare for a retail launch.“In some ways with this many launches and having committed to doing certain things, it allows us to form closer relationships in some ways with our investors. Because there's always a brand to give feedback on. There's always a product idea to sort of bounce off. We're not sort of sitting on the sidelines waiting and then two years later we come back asking for more money. There's always something new to talk about. And so I think because of that, we've been able to blend their perspective, our perspective, and then also bring in some of those folks that are more traditional F&B that have that perspective of, ‘Hey, when you're in retail, here's what you need to do. Run these types of TPRs. Don't work with that vendor. Make sure that you have shippers in by P6. There's all these things that folks on the more traditional F&B side bring in.”30:17 - Stocking up on inventoryWhile the initial plan was to order-as-you-go, Covid-19 made the Starday team quickly realize that they should over-order stock and keep it rather than risk selling out.“We were playing in this world of like, we're not going to overpay for inventory ahead of time because we want to be able to sort of produce as we go, and manage according to costs and margin and make sure that we're constantly adjusting. That sounds really great. And is great, if it works out. It does not sound so great in the middle of COVID when there's crises at the plants. Folks aren't able to come into work because of COVID. There's delays in shipping times. I think that's a strategy we will go back to when things sort of settle down. But for our second brand, we purchase a lot more inventory ahead of time, just to make sure that we were not getting into any sort of situation where we were experiencing any shortages or out-of-stock situations. We also, because we're working really with shelf-stable products, we don't have to worry about expiration dates. So we are able to purchase inventory ahead of time.”33:03 Prioritizing DTC before Amazon and retailStarting with DTC was a no-brainer in order for Starday to develop a relationship with their customers. Amazon and retail remain secondary strategies.“We launched DTC as that place where we can say, all right. Here's where we’re gonna go. We're gonna run a bunch of growth tests. We're going to do site testing. We’re going to do pricing tests, we're going to do free shipping, threshold testing. And most importantly, we're going to build relationships with our consumers. And then the next step is sort of expanding to Amazon. So you get like one step out, right? You still have some consumer data, but you don't own that data. Amazon owns that data. And then the third step is really going into retail. Where we haven't explored as much so far is sort of on that marketplace. So the Thrives, the Gopuffs, things like that. So that's probably an area that we'll continue to explore if the economics make sense. But in the beginning for every one of our launches, we are going direct to consumer first. I don't see that changing at any point. And we'll sort of continue to layer in those additional levels of retail and go to market strategy in the coming months.”35:29 - Focusing on organic ads and social mediaBuilding a community online has meant investing in strong social content for each brand in order to scale and develop an authentic brand voice.“We did not scale any ads. We had some minimum stuff that we were just using for pure testing, but I wasn't running conversion-optimized landing pages or doing a ton of lead gen. It was really more for creative and messaging testing. Really the other aspects are on that social and organic and community building side. We work with Kendall Dickieson on all of them. She's our head of social for both brands and all the brands to come. She helped us build a really strong social strategy that sort of dives in from the beginning of building brand, even when you have 14 followers and it's my mom and all her friends, and sort of understanding how you can scale that quickly without losing the validity of the brand voice.” Watch the full interview here:  This episode is brought to you by OrderGroove and OpenStore:Visit  https://www.ordergroove.com/dtcpod/?utm_source=event&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=2022q1_dtcpodpodcast_thirdparty_demo_us&utm_content=demo  today to receive 2-months off your first contract.Visit https://open.store to get a free, no-obligation offer for your ecommerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours.Have any questions about the show or topics you'd like us to explore further? Shoot us a DM, we'd love to hear from you. Caroline McCarthy - Co-Founder of Starday FoodsBlaine Bolus - COO of Omnipanel