Lindsay McCormick, CEO and co-founder of Bite, chats with Blaine and Ramon about her zero-waste company that makes personal care & hygiene products. Lindsay started Bite with $6,000 dollars and originally hand-made and packaged Bite's toothpaste tablet from her living room in L.A. In 2019, Lindsay went on Shark Tank and turned down offers from Mark Cuban and Kevin O'Leary. Bite has experienced tremendous growth and continues to be completely bootstrapped and profitable.  9:18-10:12 Visualizing facts11:03-11:45 Pretend your pitching to the sharks 22:28-23:03 Talking to your customers25:33-26:23 Pitching your product in-person to consumer45:50-46:41 Start super niche then expand  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 Lindsay McCormick - CEO and Founder of BiteRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel

Better & Better recently raised a $4M seed round, Blaine and Ramon got the chance to talk to Vlad in-depth about his entrepreneurial journey, the difficulty of pitching a DTC product in a trend-driven VC climate (note: many investors are interested in investing crypto, NFTs, traditional SaaS, etc), competing against legacy brands like Colgate, using customer feedback to relaunch SKUs, and more!RocketHub and Meural 3:08 - 7:20Inspiration behind Better & Better 7:47 - 10:51Proof of concept 12:05 - 14:13Pitching a DTC to VC 14:34 - 15:33Better & Better seed investors 15:36 - 16:47The questions VC’s ask 17:55 - 21:30Advisors, prototypes, and employees  27:24 - 30:34Decreasing CAC for Better  Better 32:37 - 33:23Bottom-up pitch vs. Top-down pitch 33:24 - 35:57Challenging legacy brands 41:15 - 43:26Improving the product 49:13 - 50:55   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 Vlad Vukicevic - CEO Better & BetterRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel

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