DTC POD: How The Best Brands Are Built

Mid-Day Squares is the healthy chocolate bar company that’s built a name for itself through its bold content. Today on the pod, Ramon and Blaine are joined by the architect of Mid-Day’s brand voice & content strategy, Jake Karls, better known as the “Rainmaker” at MDS. As a Rainmaker, Jake is out there developing critical relationships with multiple stakeholders (i.e., press, investors, customers, etc.), cultivating the brand’s personality, and getting people excited about MDS.1:17 - 4:27 Idea for Mid-Day Squares4:55 - 7:38 Forming Mid-Days Content Strategy10:07 - 10:55 Creating a Personality11:48 - 13:32 Highs and Lows of Documenting Everything14:00 - 17:55 Turning customers into fans18:24 - 20:37 Celebrity Package Goods20:58 - 23:42 Jake’s background and being a Rainmaker25:14 - 30:46 Misunderstood and Hershey’s lawsuit31:26 - 34:00 Getting everyone on board and therapy34:45 - 38:00 Financing Content38:13 - 42:33 Motivating young people43:12 - 47:42 Evolution of MDS & DTC sales 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 Jake Karls- CEO of Mid-Day SquaresRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel

Chris Bernard AKA “Bernie” joins Blaine and Ramon to discuss Mindright and working with Rob Dyrdek, learning from previous business mistakes of growing too fast, the importance of building your brand’s community before utilizing celebrity ambassadors, how TikTok is helping Mindright grow, and more. Buff Bake 2:07 -3:03Story behind Mindright 6:44 - 10:12Pitching to Rob Dyrdek 11:03 - 14:12Celebrity investors 16:35 - 17:33Leveraging celebrity investors 18:19 - 19:42Getting into retail 22:31 - 24:01Brand ambassadors and influencers 24:34 - 26:27Building the team 30:14 - 32:15 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  Chris Bernard- CEO of Mindright Ramon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - COO of OmniPanel

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