DTC POD: How The Best Brands Are Built

4:47 - When goals make senseGoals can be a waste of time at a young company. But once you grow, you need to figure out what to prioritize.I think to start off a company where you're at zero and come up with this master plan and all these OKRs and goals, I think it's just a huge waste of time. You should just spend more of that time talking to customers and figuring out building something that they need enough. Because if you don't have product-market fit, what's the point of goals? The point of goals for us was just, you have a lot of people. There's a lot of demand. How do we prioritize our time on the things that are most important? And how do you coordinate? Last year we had maybe seven director-above people, and now we have like 22. So if you have all those types of people leading different initiatives, how do you make sure that they know what's important at any given time? How are we measuring the success of that? How are the things that they're doing gonna impact other teams? What are the dependencies? If they say, Hey, we want to build X, Y, and Z. But if the engineering team doesn't have the people they need to do that, there's just so much more coordination as you get bigger. And without having clear goals, it's just really tough.9:57 - The forecasting breakthroughAs a bootstrapped business, SwagUp felt like it was starting each month as a blank slate. Michael took on the job of building a model that could accurately predict business.Every month, I would build out the model for that next month and the next quarter and stuff. And then I’d track like, what was the variance? What was the actual revenue? What did we end up doing? What is it looking like for the next few months? And it started to be very accurate. In the beginning it was like, plus or minus 20%, which was still really helpful. And then it started to get into like the plus or minus like 5%, 6%, 7%. So in the past we went from not knowing anything to now like, oh, we'll do $2.2 million next month. And then that was super helpful with the pandemic because when the world was kind of melting down, we weren't sure are people going to buy swag, or this or that? By like April and May, we saw enough early signals that would say, Hey, actually we're going to have our best month ever in this next month. So we just started to think much more from a machine standpoint, like, okay. What are all these inputs, and what's the output going to be? And that kind of changed my thinking around this stuff in general and try to find other areas of the business that have the same dynamic.13:32 - Pursuing a SaaS look & feelThere’s no doubt that SaaS tools are very intuitive to use. Michael wanted that same look and feel for SwagUp, so that tough tasks and decisions could become simple.I wanted it to feel like a SaaS tool. Because if you were like Twilio or Plaid or Stripe or any of these interesting software or platform-type companies, the people at those companies who are buying swag, they're going to these websites that feel very 2000s, very 1990s. And I was like, I want them to feel the same buying experience that they would feel buying some piece of software that they're using, and have a brand and positioning and design that resonates. So design was super, super important to me from the very beginning. Because one, it gives you credibility, and it tells you right away like, Hey, they take pride in what they're doing. It looks really legit. They've probably been around for a while. And we had to appear bigger than we were, but also wanted it to feel natural to them. Like, oh, if we're going to buy swag, this would be the type of company we would buy it from. So we've always been thinking about how do you productize the experiences as well, and make it really, really simple and eliminate decision fatigue…and it became like this mouse trap for us, where we were able to acquire so many customers because we just do this one thing very specifically.17:18 - The benefit of swagSwag is a big business for a reason. Many companies want swag to build a relationship with employees. When you don’t have a good resource, this can take a lot of time and energy.The whole idea of like a swag pack is first off, whether it's your new hires or you have community members or your new customers or partners, building a bond and a connection between you and them is super important for companies now. There's so many more companies that you can work at or buy from. And the people that choose to work at your company or buy from you, they have a deeper sense of connection. And that's what I kind of saw happening. I saw that if you do swag well, it does a great job of kind of solidifying that connection and kind of physically embodying it. But how do you easily get something into those people's hands? And if you're hiring people remote all around the world, how do you easily get a consistent experience as well? That was one of the issues I saw in the beginning is you have people that start at a company, in the office, and they have one experience. And they have people that start remote, and they have one experience. So it's like, if you can make the process of creating one of these kits and distributing it really simple, then everybody will have a really consistent, scalable experience.24:55 - Learn what you will & won’t doSaying “no'' seems like a foregin concept at a startup. But as you solidify demand, you have to start articulating what you will and won’t do for customers.In the beginning, it's just like, do whatever the customer wants. Just say yes to every single opportunity, make money. And then eventually if you're lucky enough to be successful, then you have the option to be like, oh, I'll be picky. But when you're just starting, I don't think you can really be super picky. Because you don't even know what the business is going to be, or what parts are going to be successful or where are you going to really scale it. But then over time, it starts to get to a point where that “just say yes” attitude comes back around to haunt you, because that becomes the mentality that people are used to, and they're just like, oh, we just want to do whatever's in the best interest of the customer at all times. Which is noble in a way. But at the same time, it means you're inherently not providing a good experience to other customers, because you're spending too much time on this other stuff. Or we have to hire too many people to maintain those levels. So we started to do some things the SwagUp way, and really articulating to people and documenting what are the things that we do or the things that we don't do.27:59 - The right time for capitalSo far, SwagUp has never raised money. But Michael thinks bringing on capital soon will help them grow much quicker, faster.We've never raised money. We still own 100% of the business. We have very minimal debt, just some little lines of credit that we have access to. But I'm definitely at a point where I think we're ready to start bringing on capital. Because it's just too clear, the opportunity and how big it is and the different areas that we want to build out, and get the team that we need and stuff. We’re just wasting time by sitting, because there's too many tradeoff decisions on a daily basis. It's like, well, Anthony wants this person on his team. Well, this person wants that. So we have to say, oh no, you're not going to get that person right now. We're going to get this person. Or this is revenue-generating, so that gets priority.40:02 - Focusing on customers over marketingSwagUp only spends about 1% of their budget on marketing. That low number is due to the fact that repeat business is huge.70% of our traffic is direct and organic. And the majority of that is people just going to SwagUp.com right in their browser. So that's the most valuable thing you could ever have, is just people that know the brand itself and go straight to it. So that's why we don't need to spend too much on marketing…The bigger we get, the more vitality there is, because more of our products are in people's hands around the world. Our growth is really a function of how many customers we have. Because 70% of our revenue comes from our repeat customers. So we think of it as like, okay, we want to get as much of our traffic and leads to turn into new customers, because new customers turn into our customer base. And then a certain percentage of our customer base is going to order on a given month. So that's like a whole kind of growth flow. How do we optimize that? How do we get as many people going from lead to conversion? How do we get as much percentage of our customers ordering on a regular basis? How do we get them reordering, the time between reorders lower? So we spend a lot of time on our existing customer base.42:52 - Seeking out good dataData can be your friend, but Michael says that it can also be your enemy when used improperly. That’s why he learned how to crunch the numbers on his own before trusting others with the job.The worst thing you can do is start making decisions off of bad data. Because I'm all for being data-driven, but I'm also very annoying to people about making sure that the data that they have is actually correct at its root, and like that they dive into the raw data and check manually, like, is this right? Check some assumptions. Because ideally if you set up the infrastructure right, then you just go with it. Then you start making decisions and you adapt and stuff and you trust it and you can move quick. But I've also seen horror stories where people think they know what they're talking about or they have data and then it's really saying something totally opposite, and they don't understand the business or why. And that's why it was really valuable for me to do all of the data modeling myself in spreadsheets before, because I could manually go in there and really understand the data. So now when somebody comes to me with a report, I can usually gut feel and say hey, there's something wrong with that. You gotta dig into the data and really look at it before starting to build strategies and plans from this information.51:02 - Building in automationThe process of ordering SwagUp items is already easy, and Michael’s team is making it even easier to preview item designs thanks to AI mock-ups.You upload your logos. You say, okay, I'm going to want 100. Here's what I need it by, and submit it. And then on the backend that goes into our system. It alerts our design teams that they have a new project they need to work on. And then the customer then gets invited to the dashboard. So they make their account. And then once the design team, probably within plus or minus like six hours, you'll get your fully branded mock-ups done for your brand, with those products that you picked. We even have a little bit of lightweight AI that we built. If you go to grab one of our sample packs, that's like another lead channel that we have. At the end of it, we'll use your email to then showcase your custom mock-ups of what it's going to look like. So we'll pull your domain, and then we have some APIs that run to look at what branding you have, what color. And then we'll show you what that could actually look like in real-time. But when you're picking all these custom items, for now we have a design team that does all that. Eventually, we'll probably use AI to automate all the mockup processes.57:18 - Selecting the right swag productsThe best way to decide what to sell? Ask yourself if you and your team members would buy it. Michael goes for a mix of brand name items and high quality generic goods.The first thing was like, one of the philosophies was pick products that people would actually use themselves. Like if I was going to get a hat, which hat would I want? I always use myself as the barometer of like, is this a good product? And then we'll buy them and hang out and use them and see if people like them and stuff. But there's like a 70-30 kind of rule of like 30% of our products are brand retail names. And we try to find interesting companies that people at startups are using anyway. Like there's a drinkware company called Fellow that makes really cool stuff. And a lot of times our customers will suggest brands. They'll be like, Hey, I love these mugs that my wife just bought me, would you guys ever offer them or something? And we'll reach out. So I try to strike the balance between having cool brands that people know that they would want themselves, but then layering in these generic items that are of higher quality.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 contractVisit https://open.store to get get a free, no-obligation offer for your ecommerce business from OpenStore in 24 hours.Full video interview: Michael Martocci - CEO of SwagupRamon Berrios -CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - COO of Omnipanel

1:26 - Rebuilding the vitamin categorySara realized that traditional vitamins weren’t built in a way to truly optimize health.“I was starting to struggle out of nowhere really with chronic inflammation, digestion, sleep issues, you name it. And I've always considered myself a relatively healthy person. I had a healthy diet. I didn't really know what was going on. Went through a lot of allergy tests and blood tests and found out that I had a lot of gaps in my diet. Because even if you eat a well-rounded diet, even if you eat perfectly, actually 90% of Americans are micronutrient deficient. We're not actually getting the nutrients that we need. And so like many of us, I turned to the supplement aisle to try to fill the gaps. Started looking at all these vitamins and pills and complicated and expensive sort of supplement routines, and cobbling together swallowing handfuls of capsules. And the more that I looked into it and questioned it, the more that I found that a lot of these things are built wrong. They're made with a lot of artificial fillers, synthetic binders, just a lot of dirty things. You don't actually question where your vitamins are coming from or how it's made. And so I set out to create an entirely new solution. One that's actually real food. And that's how it was inspired and Gem was born.”9:27 - Organizing a beta groupSara’s first step was to organize a Facebook group of diverse women to help understand if there was interest in replacing multivitamins with something better.“At first I didn't even think about it as the anti-vitamin, as an entirely new idea of a vitamin. I just thought of it as this daily health essential that really worked for me. And I wanted to share it with more people. And so I started a beta group actually, and I joke, on a complicated platform called Facebook Groups. And I had people kind of refer in, so it wasn't just a bunch of my friends, over 300 women across the US. And at first I just formed this community really to see if it was something of interest, to get people's feedback. And I kept iterating on it to address other people's needs, to see what would work. And I got an overwhelmingly positive response of, wow, this is something that could really replace my multivitamin. This is something that really works for me. And that's when really I had the aha moment of, wow, this could be a business and really be a product that is impactful on people's lives. And that's what led me to ultimately raising my first round of capital and then going to market in late 2018.”12:07 - Forming a panel of advisorsNext, Sara surrounded herself with experts who could serve as the scientific backbone for GEM’s products.“I have a team of scientific advisors that I brought together. And our approach and my approach in building this has always been to have a kaleidoscopic array of knowledge and expertise. And so we have an herbalist, a functional medicine doctor, a neurologist, a biochemist, registered dieticians. And bringing these different perspectives together in how can we look at our health in different ways? How can we actually look at it holistically, and not just through this band-aid lens of a pill for this and a pill for that? And so it took kind of bringing them together, getting their input, and then really co-developing it with this community.”15:25 - Embracing a minimalist brandToo often, design eats up a startup’s time and money when it should really be focused on getting the product right. That’s why Sara packaged GEM in black & white until its recent rebrand.“I started out really almost with a brandless platform. So they actually came packaged in a recyclable PET container, a small plastic container. And so it was really nicely designed and had a simple white label on it. It was like white and black. And the idea was I didn't want brand to distract from the core product. I think there's a lot of, and I've had these mistakes too in my own past of building companies, where a lot of people will spend a lot of money on these beautiful brand books and invest a ton in brand before they even know their target customer. And that's not what I want to do. I want the product right. I wanted to understand who my audience was. I wanted to understand how to build the right thing for them. And so I started out with a very simple and scalable brand packaging system that was really super minimalist.”17:06 - Prioritizing scalabilityTo stay lean and agile, Sara set up manufacturing and production systems that she knew would be scalable as GEM evolved.“As a food company, it's difficult to kind of have that quote-unquote ‘lean’ startup method. Because it's harder to iterate on obviously a physical product than it is maybe if you were a software company, or something where you can make more methodical smaller tweaks. So I set up a supply chain and I set up a manufacturing and a production system with this packaging and brand that allowed me to do that in the most minimal way possible. And I always thought about scalability in my mind, too, when building out unit economics. So from day one, I made sure that we sourced things that I could scale with, that I could iterate on pretty quickly, so that we could get to that product market fit faster.”20:23 - Bringing investors onboardGEM didn’t have fancy pitch decks. Instead, Sara invited potential investors into her beta group so that they could see all of the feedback and interest firsthand.“It was about a month into that beta group that I realized the potential. And I actually invited investors to this group. So I actually used the group as my beta. As my product market fit potential. So that was really my prototype version, if you will. So I had the product for people to taste, it continued to evolve obviously from there the next six months. But I had the initial product. I had the initial community. And I had the initial feedback as well. I did a lot of surveys within this group, asking questions. We had different dialogue conversations happening. And so I just invited these investors. They could see transparently what people were saying. Good, bad, ugly. And that was my approach. I don't even know if I had a pitch deck in the early days. I mean, that was really it. It was about the product. It was about our mission and vision of building this future of nutrition. And that's really how we actually raised that initial capital.”25:15 - Competing in the superfood spaceToday, GEM doesn’t just compete with vitamins. They also go toe-to-toe with superfoods, powders, and other players in the health space.“We're really indirectly competing with so much more than just traditional supplements in gummy or pill form. We do get a lot of switching behavior from consumers who don't want to eat a candy, who don't want to swallow pills and capsules, and who want to have a whole food solution that's more natural to get their vitamins. But also we were getting a lot of vitamin-skeptics, people who've never taken vitamins before because they don't believe in it, because it’s scary. You don't really know what's inside of it. Now, the landscape has changed so much where we're this convenient all-in-one daily nutrition. And so even like powder companies now, there's all these superfood powders and things like that where people are trying to get all of their essential nutrients. Gem also helps satisfy that need. And so now, I think the landscape has evolved where when you actually look at the supplement space, it's so much more than just supplements. You're looking at functional food, you're looking at functional powders. You're looking at a lot more players in there. And we're an entirely different form factor, but we're kind of evolving that even more with that form factor, and really disrupting and displacing a lot of those players.”43:35 - Keeping a simple tech stackThere’s no need to reinvent the wheel in DTC. The only unique tech that GEM uses is an SMS program that allows them to regularly check in with subscribers.“Our tech stack is super simple. We're built on Shopify and we use a subscription plugin within Shopify called Recharge. We use Klaviyo for our email system, and SMS as well. And we also co-built our own SMS for helping manage your subscription. So we text our customers three days before your monthly subscription, asking you how everything's going, if you want to swap flavors, if you want to pause or anything. And so we have a super communicative strategy there through SMS. And of course we have the data side as well. We use Looker. I know there's a lot of different data platforms out there. But what's amazing about the direct to consumer world obviously is that you can really get to market quickly with a pretty simple tech stack. And there's a lot of tools where you don't need to reinvent the wheel necessarily from the ground up.”46:13 - Optimizing health 30 days at a timeThe next step for GEM is to grow their community of users and enlighten more people on the value of using the product every single day.“Consistency is so important. And that's why we're a subscription model. It's about one bite a day. In order to optimize your health, you really do need to be consistent. And so that's why we offer a subscription. And we hope through the structured experience that we provide you that that becomes something of a habit. It’s shipped to your door conveniently every month so you don't have to think about it or worry about it, in 30 bite packs. So it comes in 30-bite compostable bags. And then we offer you a big tin, an eco-friendly tin that you can refill and have on your counter. And then we also offer you a travel tin for on the go. And so we give you three different packaging systems in your starter kit, so that you can always have it with you wherever you need it in the house. And you can take it with you as well. So hoping to provide different levels of convenience.”Episode Contributors: Sara Cullen - CEO of GEMBlaine Bolus - COO of Omipanel

4:36 - Embracing clean beautyA long-time advocate of health and clean ingredients, Bobbi Brown founded Jones Road Beauty. The challenge was to make clean versions of all the best products.“Bobbi parted ways with her company that she founded and had a non-compete. And most people would be retiring at that age, but she just didn't feel done. And she felt like she had so much that she wanted to teach and so much that she wanted to continue to do. And part of it is throughout her journey she has gotten super into health and became a certified health coach. You know, clean beauty wasn't really a thing back then, but obviously now it's much more common and people care so more about what they're putting on their faces and also what they're putting in their bodies. So I think there was just a little bit of a challenge in there, and  obviously makeup and the trends are changing, but also what ingredients people care about is changing. So usually people didn't think that clean products were that good. And there was kind of a challenge of how can we make the best beauty products in the world, of all products, and let's just also make them clean.”8:50 - A soft launch that hit hardCody and the Jones Road team did zero pre-launch announcements, and the launch still surpassed all expectations.“I think because we knew that there would be some initial demand we had to invest for that and kind of prepare for that and start building the team. Versus if you're going to start things from scratch, you have to obviously do it super bootstrapped and do it super lean and maybe start fulfilling orders by yourself. But we knew that that wasn't going to be sustainable. So we had to invest ahead of time for that. And I think we knew that on day one we hit something pretty special and pretty serious. We didn't really do any pre-launch because Bobbi’s non-compete was up and she didn't want to wait at all. So she wanted to launch it on that first day that she could, which means we couldn't announce it ahead of time…So we really didn't do any teasing of, and we didn't have time to kind of build a list or anything like that. But we had some press hit that day. And once people started talking about it, I think we knew it that first month and that first day just surpassed expectations. And that's when we knew we really had something.”13:21 - Making investments in ad spendCody says that steady ad spend and good growth KPIs should result in increases in traffic and brand awareness.“I think you have to just trust it a little bit. Look at audience growth, look at like, yes, they are vanity metrics in terms of looking at your reach and your followers. But I do think that is an important thing to look at. And having growth KPIs that you're growing 5% or 10% a month, I think is super important. And obviously I don't think you can look day to day and like, ‘oh, we spent this much, this was our return on ad spend.’ But I think if you invest in it over a quarter, you obviously should see your overall traffic pick up. You should see your organic search, your direct, and your branded search pick up as well if you're getting some more brand awareness out there. And you should see your overall revenue quarter over quarter go up.”14:28 - Doubling down on social mediaThe next step for Jones Road is to focus on building community through social storytelling, such as putting resources into TikTok.“Obviously influencers and UGC are huge. Especially in beauty, on Instagram, just being able to share what our products look like on different people and obviously doing some storytelling around brand pillars as it relates to building a community. I think that's something we can do a way better job of is building a community on social, on Instagram. That's kind of our main focus and I think something that we can do a way better job of. And then we're really not doing much and a good enough job on TikTok. So that's going to be a huge focus. And that's something I know you asked, like, how do you calculate your return on investment of organic? I mean, we're going to find out. Because we're going to invest quite a bit of resources into TikTok, because I really think that's where the attention is. And we'll see how that plays out.”15:37 - Building the marketing teamThere are many new roles that will be up for grabs soon at Jones Road, most notably a growth associate who can work with creators on fresh user-generated content.“We've got one senior to manager level of marketing operations. We are about to hire a director of influencer marketing, that's something we're hiring for right now. We just hired an associate manager of retention marketing. So email and SMS. We have a social associate, and then a marketing coordinator. So that's kind of what our marketing team looks like right now. But again, we're looking to grow upon that quite a bit. We're looking to hire another person on the media buying side, maybe somebody else to help with our ad creative. So somebody like a growth marketing associate, where they work with content creators, work with these platforms, write briefs, communicate with creators to get UGC, and then work with an editor to kind of turn that around.”22:36 - Finding content creatorsA critical part of Jones Road Beauty’s growth has relied on getting products into the hands of influencers. The key is getting them to then create content that will help grow the brand.“We haven't done a lot of like pay-to-post. We've done a lot of seeding, so I think that's something that's been super successful. I think the more we do of that, the better. It’s just getting our products out there, it's kind of a little bit more of a brand awareness play. And then we've used a lot of influencers for paid social stuff. Just using it. Getting content is really the name of the game. It's how much content can you get? And it's very expensive and time-consuming to do it all in-house. I was talking to somebody the other day who is a consultant for this. But you know, UGC is not like an add-on thing anymore. It really has to be an essential part of your marketing. On Instagram, on TikTok, it's super important. And you have to have a budget for it. You have to dedicate, even if you're a really small brand, you have to figure out what your budget is. You have to figure out how you're going to find content creators.”29:07 - Growing a personal audienceIn addition to growing the audience for Jones Road, Cody is buy networking and growing his own personal audience so that he can more effectively hire.“My main motivation right now is I'm trying to build our team. So if I can get on podcasts from it, if I can maybe speak at some events, just build an audience there, hopefully whenever we need to recruit somebody I have a network, I have an audience. I really think it's just the biggest leverage that you can have, that almost everybody should be building an audience, even if it's not a big one, so people know who you are. Because if you're looking for a job, like I would much rather hire somebody that I'm familiar with, that I've engaged with, and kind of know a little bit more about them. If we were raising money, I'd much rather raise money from somebody who's in my network and my audience. So there's just nothing bad that can really come from it.”33:34 - Sticking with DTC over retailCody says that for now, retail isn’t a focus. He would much rather continue to fully own the revenue, customer data, and customer experience.“We have one of our own stores, but we're not in any retail. We're doing a pop-up right now in Creedo, but I don't think that that'll be long-term. And we're trying to hold off on that. At least I am trying to hold off on that for as long as possible, just so that we can own all of our distribution and all of our data. Part of the value of being direct to consumer is obviously you get to keep your margin, but more importantly, you get to keep your relationship to your customers. When you're in retail, you have to launch products for retailers. You have to make specific SKUs for them. Sometimes you don't get to make what you really think is going to be best for the customer. So that's why we're choosing not to be in it for now.”36:12 - Building a media companyThe key to DTC growth for Jones Road lies in growing organic traffic. They plan to achieve that by essentially building a media company that will invest in content and support the product company.“We want to double our growth. We want to do so essentially keeping our ad spend 15% or less of our total revenue. So to do that, we've got to figure out organic distribution. Most people go into retail for distribution, but you lose margin, you lose equity. You no longer own the customer data. We want to keep all of that. So essentially what I think most people do, they either go to retail for distribution, or they go to venture capital for distribution; stay direct to consumer but then it's all just spent on ads. We want to do it profitably. Keep all of our data, keep all of our equity, not dilute at all. And to do that, we've got to learn how to grow our organic traffic. So what we're going to do is we're going to build a media company. We're going to build a media business. So we're going to invest in building a team and invest in content. I don't exactly know yet what the form is going to look like for that content, where it's going to. How are we going to distribute it, that's kind of all in the works right now. But that's really going to be our overall goal is building a publication company, building a content-first company, that lives alongside our product company.”Episode Contributors: Blaine Bolus - COO OmnipanelCody Plofker - Director of Ecommerce of Jones Road

Key Takeaways3:35 - Starting with KickstarterJarod and his partners knew they could have gone through the formal fundraising process, but wanted to get market validation first.“Having some startup cash to kind of get going, especially when you're talking about a CPG brand, it definitely helps a lot for a lot of levers. For us, sure, we could've gone out and raised money. But you know, that's like a 3-6, maybe 9-month process to go get a full round of fundraising. And we just don't want to do that. We just want to make sure the idea was worth it to other people. And so for us, Tyler, my co-founder, he started in his mom's kitchen just making samples, making things, making sure that it was a good product and so on and so forth. And for us Kickstarter was this channel where we could put up a campaign. And for those that don't know, Kickstarter, if you don't hit your goal within the 30, 60 whatever day campaign you want to do, you just don't get the money. So for us, it was like, okay, let's put it on Kickstarter. If it does really good, great. We'll get the money. And if it doesn't okay, then we'll go back to the drawing board.”9:49 - A viral launchAll of Muddy Bite’s original sales were completely organic, and they sold out of product before it was even produced. This meant manufacturing was the biggest blocker.“We launched on Shopify and really from day one, I think day one we launched, we did like 25k in sales. And that was really just kind of all organic. And really from there for the next four to six months, it was like every single bag was sold before it was ever produced. We never really did Facebook ads, because it just organically every bag was sold before it's produced. And so it really was kind of this process of manufacturing. How do we increase the manufacturing? How do we speed up the manufacturing? And so it was really kind of a different kind of journey so to say, because most brands it’s like, how do I go out and market this better? How do I get more customers? And it really for us, it was kind of flipped.”10:58 - Keeping customer transparencyIn the midst of constantly selling out of product, Jarod and his team made sure to keep customers in the loop so they knew what was happening.“There were some points where we maybe had 2,000 orders in the hole. And for us to catch up on those that take maybe two to three weeks. And so number one, we had full transparency with customers. The message was, Hey, we got all these orders. We can't keep up. You guys are amazing. We just need some time, please be patient. And we were really transparent with that for two to three years as we kind of got into better manufacturing for our process. And really because of that, we built a really strong foundation for customers that have followed us from day one.”11:33 - Making a small facility workMuddy Bites upgraded to a new facility…but it was still too small. They made it work as long as possible by creating night shifts and staffing with local college students.“Going from like 400 to 2,000 (square feet in facility space) was a fairly smooth process, because it was kind of that transition from Kickstarter to Shopify. But after we kind of gotten our 2,000 square foot facility and really kind of got going, we had boxes up to the ceiling and we had 30 plus employees in there. And it was jam-packed within a small facility to where after six months, whatever it was like, we needed a bigger space, but we were locked in this longer contract. And managing cash flow was super tight. So we just created a day shift and a night shift. And this was in Ames, Iowa. So we found college student. it was really easy for us to find college students that are willing to come in and work for that. So it was really kind of good for us just being in Ames because of that, finding know easy workers, so to say. But we quickly outgrew that space.”15:28 - Launching retail in the midwestIt turns out that midwest retail chains have great volume. Starting there quickly opened more doors in other regions.“Being here in Iowa, we've got Midwest chains like Hy-Vee, Fairway Foods, just to name a couple. And so that's where our starting points were for retail were, in a word, pretty nice. Because Hy-Vee, I think they have about 110 locations, like decent volume for a Midwest chain. And really once you start kind of expanding into retail to where you get maybe 500 to 1,000 doors, it's almost like a chain reaction. Because different category buyers go to different stores just to see the market and stuff like that. And so it just kind of opens up more doors. And so really from the Midwest, we expanded east, west, south, north. And it just made it a lot easier to expand.”16:34 - Using DTC to strategize with retailThe Muddy Bites online sales demographics helped the team know where retail product should be sent. This had a beneficial snowball effect on both the DTC and retail side.“Anybody in the US can order from us and we could ship. But after a while we really saw more demographics out in California and New York and Texas. Really, those are kind of the top three. And so what's nice is as we really kind of expanded to retail—we really, really expanded retail here in October, and really here in Q1 and Q2 of 2022—it's like we know where the customers are. So if we can get it in retail stores near them, it makes them go to the stores and buy it, versus paying online and paying for shipping. But also, if they can go to store, it helps us move more volume within stores. And obviously if you can move more volume, you get more doors. You get more sales, it’s just kind of a win-win.”23:07 - The DTC-Retail mixUntil now, DTC and Amazon have accounted for almost all Muddy Bites sales. Jarod expects that to flip going forward.“As we finished up in 2021, our mix was like 97% DTC and Amazon, and then like 3% retail. This year it’s going to be probably 75% retail, 25% DTC and Amazon. And that's without us decreasing the budgets for DTC or anything like that. It's just we're ramping up retail really, really hard. So, over one to three years or whatever, retail is kind of our end game, and we want to be everywhere that we can. And obviously that's going to mix up with the DTC side. If we could be in every single store across the country between Walmart and Target, 7-11, I would say DTC might slow down quite a bit, just because if you can go to your store and buy it for cheaper than online, then sure. But either way, it's like we get sales. Because then the stores reorder, the distributors reorder. But for us, it's really just getting in more doors and creating brand awareness.”24:27 - Growing the teamJarod and his co-founder used to wear every single hat, including running social media. Now, they’ve leaned into delegating to others and following there lead when it comes to innovative content, like memes.“In the early days of Muddy Bites, it was me running our socials, Tyler helping out with socials. I mean, we were wearing a million hats. We eventually got to the point where one, we can't do that. It's not sustainable. Burnout's real. And so we started just hiring key roles. Like we brought on Emma and Jessica under our social team and now they run everything. We don't tell them to do XYZ. We kind of give them full control and they've done an amazing job. And that's been a learning curve for us to hand that off. But really from there, one kind of key strategy that works really well for us as memes. If you were to tell me a year ago to post a meme, I’d think you were crazy. And our social team was like, let's just try it. And so we did. And now if you go look at our Instagram, every one of our meme posts probably gets anywhere from 500-2,000 likes. And every other post gets anywhere from like 100-400 likes. So we get a big engagement when we do memes, and we're kind of learning that like meme culture.”31:49 - Seeking funding to improve productionJarod knew it was time to pursue funding so that they could match production with demand, and grow the company into a business that can someday be acquired.“The biggest problem with our bootstrapping was that production’s always gonna be kind of a holdup. It's going to kind of tie us down, so to say. We got to the point where we’re like, okay. Let's get some money into the business. Let's improve our production a little bit deeper to where it's not really a production issue. It turns more into a sales and marketing issue. And so we raised some money. We did that. And really the other piece of that with raising more money was that way we can increase that production capacity, but also then expand into retail. Really for us, if we could be everywhere, that's our end game. Get acquired someday. That's kind of our goal versus just a DTC company.”39:28 - Standing out from the snack crowdDTC snack companies are all the rage, but most of them aim to be healthy. Embracing the fact that Muddy Bites is a dessert has actually served the company well.“The biggest thing with DTC right now is there's companies popping up left and right between organic, vegan, super healthy type stuff between snacks. And what's kinda nice about us, and especially when we pitch to investors or anything like that, or even retailers, it's we're not like a better for you product. We're sweet, we're not healthy. We're not trying to pitch it like we're better for you. So it actually makes retailers happy. Because we're seeing that in retail space and also DTC is like, everything's better for you, and we're not. And so that makes us a little bit different there. The other piece that's an advantage for us is we're basically creating a new category of snacks. We're not another cookie bar, we're not another Oreo. That's a big question we get from retailers is what category do you guys put us in? Are we in the crackers? Are we in the cookies? Are we in the chocolates? And so for us, it's like we're almost creating a category. So that allows us to be different.”Full video interview:  https://youtu.be/gWfyIpe_QyIJarod Steffes - CEO of Muddy BitesRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - COO of Omnipanel 

During this episode, you will learn about;[00:05] What’s in for you in today’s episode[01:36] Who’s Shane Rostad and his area of specialty[06:34] Typical mistakes that brands make[08:44] Tips to improve your site’s conversion rate[12:48] Things to focus on when brands are collecting customer’s data[16:54] The different ways to gather qualitative data from your customers[19:41] Commercial Break[20:38] Upselling and cross-selling in the business[28:30] How to do the A/B testing for your site[33:52] Do these things to improve consumer conversion [35:09] Shane’s three favorite brands [36:33] Connect with Shane today Notable Quotes Customer experience is the most significant lacking catalyst in most brands.Understand the game of numbers in a business.When complexity hurts, focus on simplicity. Contributors: Shane Rostad - shanerostad Jay Desai - @jayd3sai

9:56 - From bio major to builderDaniel’s journey into entrepreneurship started as the desire to make money for weekend college fun, despite the fact that he didn’t have time to work a traditional job.“I was a biology major. I was actually going to school to be a dentist and. I always knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. And that's what drove me. That was interesting. And doing new projects, stuff like that. Obviously, as a 19-year-old kid, I just had no idea what I wanted to do. And the online landscape was nothing like it was today. There's so much information you can find out there, and it's so accessible, there’s communities and all that stuff going on. When I was in sophomore year of college, I had no idea you could even make money online. I had no idea that was even a thing. So it's a lot different than it is today. But what inspired me at the time was just a conversation. My friend was telling me he was making $45 a week on his phone. And I couldn't get a job, because I was focused on my studies. At first that's just what inspired me. I was like oh, I can get some money to go to the bar on the weekends. But what allowed me to really gain motivation was really I became passionate about it. Passionate about being able to grow a following, being able to engage with other people in this community, being able to learn all this new information that was solely reliant on me building something.”15:19 - The decision to ditch dental schoolDaniel’s first ventures were doing well enough that he decided they sounded more exciting than dental school.“I started that platform May going into my senior year of college. I was going to the library every day to study for my DATs. I started the platform, it started getting traction and all this stuff. So you could say I was getting distracted very often. And I would say one month of studying and I knew that, number one, I was absolutely miserable. I hated the stuff I was studying. I never really wanted to be a dentist anyways, but it was just literally torture. I was already committed and whatnot. So I knew essentially by the time I was going to take the test, which was I think in August, that I didn't want to be a dentist for sure. And I didn't get a good enough score to get me into the right dental school anyways. So that made my decision very easy. With the platform getting so much success, I decided I'll take a year after college, see what happens. And if things keep going, I can still go to dental school. I can do whatever. But there's too much of an opportunity right now.”26:31 - Hitting the ground running with GOATcaseThe phone case company GOATcase was an immediate success. The major challenge was on the fulfillment side.“We went from literally zero to a hundred in one week. How do you fulfill that? That was the biggest thing. Within one week I remember we ordered 15,000 phone cases. Where do you put them? We should've gotten a 3PL. We thought about doing that, which was definitely the biggest mistake. And many people told me I should do it, but it seemed so expensive at the time versus what we could potentially do it for. And decided not to do it, which was an awful mistake. But like you said, in the first six months, we moved four times. Imagine how much time that takes, and stress, and all this other stuff. So logistics and fulfillment or a complete shit show.”29:30 - Getting a 3PLOnce GOATcase and Daniel’s next brand, Perfect Sculpt, gained even more momentum, they were able to get a 3PL and ditch their nightmare of a warehouse.“It took us a year and a half to outsource our fulfillment. And that was when we launched our second brand Perfect Sculpt, which was substantially bigger than GOATcase even. And ended up taking more space because we went from phone cases to bras and waist trainers and shapewear, which just take a lot more space. So now we moved into a legitimate warehouse, 8,000 square feet, and had a legitimate kind of fulfillment operation going. And we just dealt with so much bullshit. Employees stealing, weird stuff going on from the security cameras, and all the stuff from managing warehouse workers that you might imagine. Just crazy stuff. And number one we weren't doing a great job from an accuracy standpoint on fulfillment. And because we had leverage because of just the volume of the business, we were able to find a 3PL that would pay. Because I got to the point where now we had substantial costs. We had our warehouse, we had a team, we had all this, we had some equipment and stuff like that. So because we had the leverage of our volume, we were able to get the 3PL to pay for the entire move, and to pay for our lease, to buy us out of our lease.”32:24 - The early days of ShopifyAt the time Daniel started his businesses, the online ecosystem we know today was in its elementary form.“We were on Shopify day one. But all of stuff that we take for granted today with Shopify was nowhere near it is what it is today. And all up and all the partners on it that you mentioned weren't anywhere near as capable and mature as they are today. Klaviyo at that time was a startup. $10 billion company today. So it was a bunch of startups just getting started, and obviously their tools just weren't as mature as they are today. But it also provided a lot more opportunity, because there weren’t as many players in space in terms of competition yet, so costs for everything were cheaper.”34:04 - The decision to ignore AmazonAt the time, Daniel and his team didn’t have the bandwidth to explore Amazon. It worked out fine in their case, but today Amazon is much more attractive.“We always dabbled a tiny bit into Amazon. I never gave it a ton of mental bandwidth for myself to figure it out, so to speak. And I would say that looking back, that maybe I regret that. Just because we always had so much success with what we had in front of us. And there was always moving and change and all the stuff you need to do to operate a business day to day. Amazon is a completely separate beast itself. So it's like, to stop what I'm doing to learn it myself seemed like an arduous task. Versus where we were at and the scale we were at, you may as just hire someone to figure it out. So we never put a ton of focus into that. I think looking back it might've been a mistake. But it also just wasn't our business model. We were trying to build brands, not just sell forks or dishes or whatever. But the M&A activity in the Amazon space is a lot more active now.”36:49 - Founders shouldn’t do it allDaniel made the mistake of trying to hold all the cards in his business early on, when he should have been hiring and delegating sooner.“To build a great company, at least at the time, I felt like I had my fingerprints, so to speak, on everything. I had to manage everyone, I had to tell everyone to do anything, they were extensions of me. That's not right. Today I realize that's not the right way to do things. To build something that’s scaling fast and efficiently, you need to find great people and get them to do that stuff. And if that trust isn't there, then you can't build a real company. Now that's how I approach things, and trust in my leaders and managers and stuff like that, who are able to bring the company tons of value that’s not reliant on me.”39:34 - Why you need to be on marketplacesMarketplaces are where your customers are, pure and simple. With very few exceptions, such as subscription-based brands, Daniel thinks everyone should be on them.“The overwhelming majority of brands should be on Amazon. And you should be on every marketplace you can get on. Why? Traffic is so expensive today that unless you are wherever your customer is, it's now harder more than ever to generate profit. So customers simply go from Facebook ads to Amazon to buy products today. That's what happens. That's not questionable at this point. And if you're not there, then your competitors are there. And if your competitors are there, they're winning off your traffic and getting revenue and getting your customers. So for that reason alone, it's my opinion that you should be on every marketplace that you can get on.”43:27 - Subscriptions are the winning modelLong-term, Daniel thinks subscription-focused brands will win out due to the element of streamlined and sustained customer acquisition.“In my opinion today, if I'm launching a brand or I'm thinking about launching a brand, if it doesn't have a focus on subscription, I’m not even considering launching it. Because just like I touched upon before, it is now harder than ever to acquire customers profitably. And unless you have a really good metric for LTV and retention of your customers, it's just so hard to build a brand today. Pre iOS 14, it was extremely easy. You could for almost any type of stuff, if you had a good idea of what you're doing from an ad standpoint and creative and influencer, you could make it work. You could typically scale it pretty quickly. But with how tricky it has become since iOS 14, it's the brands that are able to focus on subscription that are thriving more than ever. Because typically the LTV is higher, they're compounding every month, and they don’t need to focus on day-to-day.”50:11 - Know your marginsIf you don’t have a high enough margin on a product, you can’t be successful.“I tell brands it would be ideal to have at least 75% margins on a product. If you’re under that, it just becomes really tough. Just from a marketing standpoint let's say advertising is 50% of your expenses. Which today a lot of brands are in that docket. And let's say, like I said, you only have 50% margin on the product. Now you're zero for everything else. You can't hire employees. You can’t pay for software. You can't you can't invest in anything like influencer content. So unless you have a good enough margin, it’s tough to really invest in a lot of things you need day to day. So roughly that's what I’d say, because then a lot of the numbers start backing out.”51:05 - You need a killer content strategyFrom working with influencers to ads, a good content strategy (or lack thereof) can make or break your business.“Having a good content strategy is the most important thing. And I think influencer marketing, leveraging that kind of goes hand in hand with that. Especially when it comes to building a brand, because a lot of time brands that have brand equity from the influencers you are working with, from the celebrities you are working with. Because that's how people remember a brand. It's like Nike, do you remember it was Michael Jordan. A lot of times you don't say, ‘oh, I love this brand because their ads I see on Facebook.’ It might acquire the customer, but unless you are getting the likeness from a lot of people along the way, I think it's tough to have that brand equity that a lot of people aspire to have.”Full video interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mDY_VLkWS0Daniel Snow: CEO of Snow AgencyRamon Berrios: CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus: COO of Omnipanel 

During this episode, you will learn about;[00:16] What’s in for you in today’s episode[01:43] Bailee’s career background information[03:57] What is branding and the areas of business it affects[07:28] The importance of brand guide during the branding process[09:49] Branding your brand in a way that resonates with people[12:16] Validating your branding through social channels [14:01] Promoting your brand in Tik Tok when branding [16:01] Commercial Break[17:04] The secrets to a high performing landing page [21:21] Bailee’s strategy for optimizing their landing page[22:29] The elements of building a strong brand identity [24:27] Brands that keep Bailee motivated in her course [28:30] Takeaways from the guest [29:38] What next for Sharma brands and how to connect with Bailee Contributors: Bailee Cooper - Sharma BrandsJay Desai - @jayd3sai 

4:47 - The night CROSSNET was inventedChris and his friends were throwing ideas for a product invention at the wall to see if anything stuck when someone mentioned four-way volleyball.“ESPN was on in the background. Not sure if that motivated it or not, but Mike wrote down four-way beach volleyball. Mike’s one of our other co-founders, grew up playing soccer and basketball. Four-way volleyball net. And we're like, yeah, no shit. That'd be sick. Jumped on Google, and nobody had done it before. And right now it was like four in the morning, you're in your hometown farm town. It’s cool, and nobody does it, and we’re like, this is it. That's the game. So we went to bed and then the next morning we woke up, went to Walmart, got two badminton nets, cut up the center, staked them on the side of my mom's garden shed. Texted all the boys, like yo come over. And we just started making a game in the backyard, like you did when you're 12 years old.”7:47 - Building a brandChris had previously worked with his friend and brother on a startup during college. He knew that when creating his own company, he wanted to create a true brand.“I graduated with a film degree $100,000 in debt. And I was making like 40 grand a year. It wasn't sustainable. So I couldn't go home and focus on e-commerce. So I left. And my brother invented the GLUNT, which is the glass blunt, which is famous, probably the most famous glass blunt that went on for like millions of dollars in sales. It was really, really successful. And I gave up on the cane and I could have gotten involved in that. So when I started CROSSNET, I'm not giving up. I don't care how long this is going to take. It's going to work, just stay patient. So that was the e-commerce history kind of to set us up for good success because I knew I did not want to drop ship this thing. I wanted to form a brand.”12:53 - Balancing Uber and CROSSNETChris was still working in sales at Uber when he moved to Miami, juggling both his full-time job and experimenting with CROSSNET.“We started getting the proof of concept down. We had 50 units coming to the States, started selling them. And people started to take interest a little bit. I went to my boss [at Uber Eats] and I said, Hey, I don't know if I’m making the right move, but I’ve got a damn good idea. I'm going to move to Miami in two weeks. You'd either let me work remote—and this was before COVID. This is before everything—I was like, either let me work remote because this job is easy as hell and I can do it from my apartment, or I'm done. And he was so cool. And he's like, yeah, go work remote and lead the team. And I had a team of 12 people reporting to me. I led the team for six months working remote in Miami, on the beach playing CROSSNET during the day and answering emails from my phone for Uber.”16:08 - When your product is your billboardBy setting up live games in Miami and elsewhere, Chris and his team got an incredible amount of exposure that was better than any billboard.“What ended up happening was we go to the beach every day and set up the net. Get there at nine o'clock. And 20 minutes in we’d have everybody looking at us, every single person at that beach was staring at us taking photos. It was like a billboard, but it was just our product. I always say it's really hard to market a product that nobody gets to see, unless it's just one on one. When I set up a CROSSNET, hundreds of people see it. So people would start playing. I would film ads on my phone and go home and run Facebook ads at night. Eventually what would happen was you'd be on vacation in Colorado. You'd go home. And you sell nothing in Denver. And all of a sudden we started getting sales with Denver. And I'm like, oh shit, you must be out there playing, right. So it just started snowballing. We had 50 out, and then 250, and now there's 100,000 out there. So when summer comes, it's just that perfect storm.”21:14 - The first factoryAfter nailing down a prototype, Chris and the team went out in search of a factory. They negotiated a small starting quantity for about $20,000.“At this point we typed in Aliexpress Volleyball Nets. Found a few factories, sent over an NDA, sent over the blueprint. Our co-founder Mike was an engineer, so he was good at AutoCAD and we saved the cost there. Lucky. Sent it over, said yo, we have an idea. Immediately heard, ‘sure. $500 grand.’ $500? Who the hell do you think we are, $500 grand? No chance. Found one lady that was like, all right. I can do 50 for you. And we're like, please, we promise one day we'll be the biggest company. And now we outgrew our factory. We had to find a new supplier because it became so big. But to your point, negotiate. 50 units. Okay. We’ll wire over the check for $20 grand or whatever it was. We literally had $20 grand for this whole company to start.”25:06 - The video that went viralThe best growth moment came when Chris agreed to send a free sample to someone who ended up being on an Olympic volleyball team.“Yo, let me get free samples. I'm sure you guys deal with that all the time. But it’s like you know this stuff costs money, right? Would I just light $60 on fire? Or would you give me $60 for free? Hell no, you're not giving me $60 for free. So why should I do that for you? But there's one guy, I guess he was compelling enough. And he said, send me out a sample. I said, okay, I'll send it to you. You pay for the shipping. So he pays like $200 to ship it to Latvia. I don't know where Latvia is, we just ship it. Nothing happens. Four months go by. Crickets. I’m moving on to the next thing. And my phone just starts spazzing one morning. I wake up, I got like 5 million views on this video. 10,000 comments, a quadrillions shares. And it’s these dudes in Latviaplaying on the beach. It ends up being the Latvian Olympic volleyball team. So they're on the beach, palm trees. Spike it, dig it, doing everything I can't do on a CROSSNET. And that was our first banger piece of content.”28:19 - The trouble with shippingShipping container costs have skyrocketed, but if you need product you have little choice. Chris hopes to see container costs stabilizing somewhat going forward.“Everyone talks about shipping containers. I just found out our team paid $25,000 for a container. There was 350 units in that container. My cost on these just went up $70 for this damn thing. It's just like stupid mistakes that we're making. But also we really have no choice. If we want the products here, you have to pay it. But if you're losing money on the product, you have to shut it down. Don't even sell that product. It’s a loss here at this point. Chill out until the containers come back down. So those are all things we're dealing with right now...I have seen lately that containers are coming down. A lot of boats on the water are landing, now looking for their charges from six months ago. So now I'm dealing with the billing, which sucks. But moving forward we’re seeing containers hopefully being a fraction of that $20K. So if we can get down that $12-15K range, I'd be pretty content. I don't think we're anywhere close to that $3 grand that we started at in 2018.”30:42 - Taking CROSSNET internationalToday CROSSNET has warehouses and 3PLs in Canada, Australia, and hopefully will add a greater presence in Europe soon.“I have a warehouse in Kingsville, Ontario, Canada. We opened up that last year. A warehouse in San Diego. Just opened up a 3PL in Australia, which took about a year of work. And then we're opening up a 3PL in Europe somewhere so that we can fulfill some of those countries. But it's a lot of legal work right now. You have to pay VAT fees for all the countries. And it's just a lot of headache to even deal with Europe right now. I'd love to get to Europe tomorrow, but Australia seems like it's going to be a rocket ship for us. There’s great weather, beaches. And the nice thing I'm pumped about is when it is freezing cold in Connecticut in October, November, January, February, March, go sell in Australia. Shut off all my ads in the east coast, throw them over to Australia.”34:33 - Getting off the ground in AustraliaWhile getting set up in Australia has had its challenges, Chris knows it will be well worth it.“You cannot get an Australia website without having an Australian registered business, which is crazy to me. So it took us about eight months to get a registered Australian business. You can get a domain in 30 seconds here. You have to have a registered Australian business, which took forever. So eight months of planning, we vetted a ton of 3PLs and found the one that we liked, CP3, great company. And then essentially from there, it was just lining up shipments. Trucking that directly from China to the 3PL in Australia, them unloading, making sure our SKUs are right. Product photography, making sure the Shopify is duplicated but also speaks the language, which is important. And then from there, it's finding the relevant content that sticks.”41:11 - Becoming a legitimate sportFrom partnerships with legacy players to selling at a high level, Chris’ background has allowed him to help take CROSSNET to the next step.“It's one thing to say all right, cool. We have a cool sport we made up. But it's still like, it's just a sport that you made up, it's not a real sport yet. So how do we validate, how do we make it real? So we did stuff with USA Volleyball, with Wilson, and we'll go on doing cooler brand partnerships. And for me, being 24 at the time, what better way to legitimize your sport and product than to put yourself into retail. Knowing nothing about retail, but knowing from my corporate days at like Contently where I was selling SaaS software. I was literally 22 years old. Had my nice little tie on, going in to see the CMO at like AIG, some 65-year-old lady, like Fortune 500, Fortune 50 companies. And they're talking to me in person. Like that doesn't even add up. So the way I got good at that was through LinkedIn, and that was the only way. It was crafting good messages, not the shit that you get every day.”Full video interview: https://youtu.be/D1gyFhOKQAUChris Meade - CMO of CrossnetRamon Berrios - CEO of Trend.ioBlaine Bolus - COO of Omnipanel

[00:16] What’s in for you in today’s episode[01:20] Stephanie career backstory[02:39] Ekster’s customer service before and after Stephanie joined the agency[03:39] The strategy that Stephanie followed in building a scalable team [05:18] The metrics you should focus on to meet customers’ support demands[06:27] Understanding customer psychology when selling to multiple markets  [08:56] Lessons that Stephanie learned while building a customer service team[11:08] Qualitative and quantitative measures to look into to scale tour business[12:23] Customer journey touchpoints and customer experience[14:49] The importance of customer experience in the COVID-19 era[16:47] How to differentiate your product with customer service and experience[19:05] Driving brand growth through customer experience, acquisition, and retention[20:29] Takeaways from the guest[21:39] What next for Stephanie and Ekster based on customer support[23:03] Where to learn more about Ekster and connect with Stephanie  Contributors:Stephanie Robilliard - EksterJay Desai - @jayd3sai

“As you discount your product, you could potentially see better ad conversion.” @jayde3sai #DTCPOD“Sometimes when you discount to both new and returning customers, and your margin ends up going down. ” @jayde3sai #DTCPODWe Speak About:[01:17] DTC discounting twitter threadLearn more about how and when to discount  In today’s episode of DTC Finds, we’re looking at a Twitter thread by David Rekuc, discussing discounting We’ll dive into this thread and breakdown what he has to say about it as well as our take on the pros and cons of discountingStay tuned as we learn more about this marketing strategy and its effects.If you’d like to learn more about Trend and our influencer marketing platform for influencers and brands visit trend.io. You can also follow us for tips on growing your following and running successful campaigns on Instagram and LinkedIn.Mentioned Links:David’s Twitter thread on discounting: https://twitter.com/DaveRekuc/status/1458841785292234754