Shopify Happy Hour

Marketing Strategies for New Shopify Brands with Greg Rollett of the Grommet

• Dan Cassidy • Season 1 • Episode 2

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In today's episode we interview Greg Rollett, head of brand growth at Grommet and an Emmy® award winning producer and discuss:

  • growth strategies for new Shopify brands and products
  • an underrated content strategy all founder-led brands should use
  • how to generate sales without paid advertising
  • one type of asset brands should invest in
  • coffee and nootropics
  • and lots more!

Products mentioned in this episode include:

Dan (00:03)
All right, welcome to the Shopify Happy Hour where every episode you will hear from Shopify founders, operators, and experts on growth marketing strategies, lessons learned from the trenches and other nuggets of e -commerce wisdom, shared over a drink each episode. Today, I'd like to welcome Greg Rollett, head of brand growth at Grommet and an Emmy award winning producer. Greg helps makers, inventors, and e -commerce brands go from undiscovered to unstoppable. Greg, welcome.

Greg Rollett (00:32)
And I am so Happy to be here. Happy Happy Hour. You know, this is gonna be fun.

Dan (00:35)
There we go, I love it, I love it. Well, let's kick,

that's it. Well, let's kick it off. What are you drinking? What do you have going on? I know you're a coffee guy, so let's hear what you have to.

Greg Rollett (00:42)
Yeah, so I told you I

usually do Cups and Pups I am out. So my wife picked up these today. So I'm not a drinker drinker. I'm a coffee drinker. So these are some High Brew Nitro caramel cold brew. So it's a, we're recording this later in the afternoon, but I have a full night of two baseball practices after this. And so I will be needing all the caffeine that I can get to get through the end of the day today.

Dan (01:05)
That's awesome. are you, is your coffee of choice, is it cold brew when you're drinking coffee?

Greg Rollett (01:10)
Yeah, I'm cold brew like 99 % of the time. I try to stay away from the milks, even the alternative milks. it's crazy. You see like the barista, he pours like this much espresso and then there's like this much milk. And I'm like, that's probably, let's just give it, just give me the good stuff. Like just inject the caffeine right into my veins.

Dan (01:25)
Yep.

Yeah, it's like a lot of Starbucks now. They're more like sugar. It's pure sugar with like a little bit of coffee. Well, Nitro is great. I remember the first time I had Nitro coffee years back where it sort of changed my coffee world. You for anybody, if I ever am chatting with somebody who wants to move from a creamy sugary coffee and they want to start drinking black, I always recommend Nitro because Nitro is creamy. It's a little bit sweetness, but there's no extra calories from it.

Greg Rollett (01:31)
Exactly.

Agreed.

Dan (01:52)
So it's a nice way to dive into the world of coffee.

Greg Rollett (01:56)
Yeah, there's a guy on Instagram, my favorite Instagram coffee guy. His name is Macro Barista and he's a former Starbucks barista, but now he just makes all these cold brew coffees at like Starbucks and Dunkin and Barneys and like all your major. And he just shows you how to make all these cold brews, but macro friendly. So, all right, if you want like a vanilla Twix.

you know, cold brew. Like here's how to do it with the sugar free vanilla, the sugar. Like, and I'm like, my God, like every day there's just a mouth watering cold brew to try. So that's a, he's my go -to whenever I walk into a Dunkin or Starbucks and I just, literally have the app up and I'm just like, whatever this guy said, I want it that way.

Dan (02:35)
That is great. I gotta check them out. all about, yeah, I'm a bit of a coffee snob, so I love anything like that. So I took your inspiration with coffee. Same thing, so it's a little bit later in the day. And if I was gonna drink straight cold brew right now, I wouldn't sleep till tomorrow. So I'm kinda meeting in the middle. I actually just found, so, well, I love coffee. I'm kind of a coffee snob. The challenge with coffee is like, if you drink too much, you get jittery.

Or you have trouble sleeping. Like I know for me, the caffeine sensitivity can be a thing. And I'm always trying to level up my focus and just attention throughout the day. So I've been diving down the world of nootropics and like coffee alternatives. And my most recent purchase, I just got this last week. By the way, none of this stuff is endorsed or promoted. We're just talking, we're just talking products. It's called Everyday Dose. Just started taking it a couple of weeks ago. It's sort of like instant coffee, but to add some

Greg Rollett (03:20)
yep.

Dan (03:30)
some goodies. read a quick little thing from the package and it says, every day Dose drastically builds on the benefits of regular coffee with added supplements. Our next gen coffee provides functional mushrooms, nootropics and collagen protein to give you calmer energy and sharper focus with added gut brain and immune support so that you feel balanced and find your flow. The taste better than your baristas with 80 % less caffeine than regular coffee. No crash, no jitters and no coffee bloat. Welcome to the future of coffee.

Now I will say there is a nice little focus benefit I get from this. It's not better than really good coffee. So if you're like super into like, know, roasting your own beans and doing all that stuff, you know, this isn't gonna compete, but it's certainly much better than regular instant coffee. And there is some nice focus benefits with it and also like less jitters because there's just less caffeine. So later in the day, this is pretty nice.

Greg Rollett (04:25)
Yeah, I love it. So we got these guys, they're actually everyday Dose. They're on Grommet, which is super cool. So they're one of the brands that we've launched. Super cool guys. And I agree with you. Like I'm, I like to be as honest as I can have. Like if you're looking for that coffee cold brew, like jolt of like, it's not that, but it's smooth. You know, it's a good taste. It's a good afternoon, you know, two, three o 'clock. Like I don't need the full IV of caffeine, but you know, you want that end of the day energy kind of focus, like lock in. It's, it's pretty good stuff.

Dan (04:29)
awesome.

Nice, I had no idea they were a Grommet brand, so that's awesome. Well, that's a good transition. So first of all, thanks for inspiring me to get more focused late in the day. And instead of having a beer and getting tired, a little extra energy is a good thing. So I got some stuff going on later on as well. So yeah, let's start talking marketing and e -commerce. You know, I definitely wanna get into Grommet and talk about.

Greg Rollett (04:56)
even better.

Dan (05:15)
everything around Max. I the platform is super cool. You we've had different clients that are on the platform and we actually got some feedback from our more recent clients about it that I'll share with you later on. But before we get into any of that, you know, doing some research for the podcast and just looking up your bio, Emmy award winning producer, tell us a story about that.

Greg Rollett (05:36)
Yeah, so I'll go a little even further than that because it makes it even more fun and interesting because it is Happy Hour is in high school my senior year they let me out of school at like noon every day to start a business and I started a record label because I loved all of the hip -hop moguls at the time like Puffy and Bad Boy and Dr. Dre and Cash Money Records and No Limit Records and I'm like this is awesome like you sign yourself as your favorite artist then you just sign all your friends and so that's what I tried to do and I released my first album when I was in high school we sold thousands of copies

at like Friday night parties and things like that. It was awesome. Did the whole music thing for a really long time and got out of that world and started helping business owners do all the things that we did in the music world, which was we were big on MySpace. We had millions of fans and followers there and businesses were like, how do we do that? And this is like, this is pre -Facebook. This is pre -Shopify, like all of that stuff.

You know, just started doing a lot of video work and media work, helping business owners to grow their businesses. And led me to a former business partner of mine, Nick Nanton and we traveled the world doing documentaries and high -end media for all kinds of celebrities and influencers and experts and nonprofits. And so the Emmy, which is over in this corner, because you have to have it in the back of the shot, like that's the whole point, right? It was from a documentary we shot down in the Dominican Republic called Return to Esperanza. And Esperanza means hope.

it's an organization that does micro loans and micro lending for female entrepreneurs in the Dominican. They didn't want to give it to men because as guys, know, if somebody gives us money, what do we do? We go buy gold chains and beepers, right? Like that's what we do. And so they decided to give it to the women because they would take the money and reinvest it back into their family and, you know, give it to their kids. And it became generational. And we shot a movie down there and it was just so impactful. And that's what the Emmy is for, is for that documentary. So it's called Return to

Esperanza, I believe it's on Amazon Prime still and return to Esperanza if you just put it in the Google machine It'll return some results there. But yeah and super fun man. I I've done other TV stuff. I've hosted shows for Amazon I've done documentaries that are on Netflix like it's just it's a fun media world and then you're like how the hell you get into e -commerce which I'm sure we'll get into next but like It's been a wild ride, man

Dan (07:50)
That is awesome. I definitely have to check out that documentary and hopefully while I'm watching it, my beeper won't go off and my gold chains won't make too much noise. I tucked it underneath the shirt today so you can't really see it. But well, that is awesome. That is awesome. So, okay, so let's go from there. Let's transition into e -commerce. So yeah, why don't we just keep it going? How'd you get into e -commerce from there? Cause that's quite the transition.

Greg Rollett (07:57)
If your gold chain doesn't blind everyone around you.

Yeah. So the first.

real business that I ever started like outside of the record label, but the first like legit business I had was actually an e -commerce business and this is 25 years ago now. was I went to like this internet marketing seminar and they were pitching these e -commerce stores and I'm like I want one of those and so I learned all about like drop shipping and I found this site that sold handmade hammocks in Canada and I started drop shipping them. I had backyard hammocks .com and I was running Yahoo and MSN ads back in the day and

you know, just, you know, old school e -commerce, right? Yahoo ad, someone searched for a hammock, boom, went to the site. And it was amazing. It got me into the, then into the affiliate world. And then I started doing more of the agency stuff on the media side that I was talking about earlier. And then come full circle, when COVID happened, I was doing a lot of the media stuff, the agency stuff, and literally overnight, obviously, flights stopped, we stopped traveling. People didn't want to spend, you know, 100 grand on these big productions, like budgets tightened. And we had to figure out like, what's the next move?

Like you very similar to what you talked about earlier is like I was super into like nootropics and high performance and like during this time I'm working from home and so I dove down that rabbit hole and I started a supplement line Which is I think in this corner this brand right here is called rise It was a it's a nootropic based coffee creamer So think like bulletproof coffee, but without the butter because I think like that's crazy to put butter in your coffee I've tried it I've did it for a long time and I gained more weight than I lost But I loved like the MCT oils. I love you know a lot

Dan (09:41)
Yeah.

Greg Rollett (09:45)
the mushrooms in Lion's Mane and then we had some collagen protein in there and it was just delicious and got me back into the e -commerce world and it just realized how one how much I loved it because you would sell a physical product it would get into someone's hands they would use it they'd shoot you an email and be like Greg I just tried your creamer and it's amazing and it's you know starts my day there and like that feeling is so cool but then it comes with so many challenges as I'm sure you talk to you know folks all the time of like you know inventory and budgeting and figuring out now I got to figure out ads now I got to figure out like all the

million challenges that come with an e -commerce business and I realized that a lot of the people I were talking to were e -commerce entrepreneurs having so many problems so many issues and had an opportunity to team up with the giddy up folks and bring the Grommet back to life and it was an opportunity for me to how can I at scale help all of these brands and not just sell them another course or a coaching program or a mastermind because that's not what they need they don't need to spend a couple hundred bucks on some videos to watch they needed real help and

And the Grommet was an opportunity to do that where we help you and we teach you things and we share cool ideas and we get other entrepreneurs together and it's like a group and it's a community and it's amazing. But also we've got millions of shoppers who will actually just buy your stuff, right? So instead of just teaching you how to do it, how about you just launch on Grommet and we'll sell a bunch of your products. And it's just this really cool win -win where I get to take this media background, take this commerce and marketing background.

and give back to this community that is, you know, I think needs a lot of help. Like it's, hard, you know, especially the time that we're recording this, it's real hard, right? Like Zuckerberg's making it real difficult, you know, to, run ads these days. And so we need more options and opportunities out there.

Dan (11:27)
Yeah, that's fantastic. Well, thanks so much for that background. Sounds like, you know, you're not just living a really cool career life, but you've got some really cool life experience, which is fantastic. And lots of really good e -commerce experience too. I forgot how I, I forget how I came across the Grommet, you know, probably over a year ago and.

What's really cool, so for anybody listening, if you're not familiar with the grommets, we work with a fair amount of e -commerce brands who are just starting up. So let's say there's an entrepreneur who's got a product idea and they go through all the stuff you're talking about, right? Where they go through, they've got an idea for, let's say, a new type of drink container, right? And like this innovative bottle where we're...

for clients has like a really cool innovative bottle where they can kind of smuggle alcohol on one part and you can have like some other stuff on another part and it's like you can kind of make yeah you can make your own cocktails with it so it's like super cool so anyway so client like that where somebody's got a really cool unique product idea and you know there's

Greg Rollett (12:19)
I think I know those guys.

Dan (12:31)
Instead of just sitting on their hands and being one of the people who have an idea and never do anything with it, they're like, hey, we want to go after this. So it's, it's amazing. There's a lot of bravery required for that. A lot of courage to go from having no experience in e -commerce to saying, I'm going to build this thing. So what do they do? They have to get the product designed. So they're typically going to work with a product design company. Then they have to move to manufacturing. Then once they get to manufacturing, they learn all about logistics. They probably need a three PL. They have to get stuff shipped. they're, if they're, manufacturing overseas, they have to figure out freight to come over to the U.

If they're manufacturing the US, they still have to figure out getting product out of the 3PL. Once it's there, how do they ship it to the customers? and by the way, once you know thousands of units have landed, how are you going to sell this? Because you don't know anything about marketing or advertising and maybe your brother's girlfriend's cousin is a 19 year old kid who took a marketing class. He's like, here's what you need to do. And you have no idea what to do. So maybe go to Google or Facebook and you start dropping all his money and you have to pay the tax where

You spend all this money with some of the platforms and if you don't know what you're doing they will happily accept those funds very quickly and

Greg Rollett (13:37)
yeah.

Dan (13:39)
It's tough for, you know, there's a lot of challenges right now in the world of e -commerce, but especially for early stage e -commerce brands. And the reason why I'm having all this buildup is because when I came across Agramit, I thought it was awesome because basically it's a platform where new brands can launch products and there's already a welcoming group of potential customers who can upvote your product or purchase the product right from it. And from some clients on the platform, somebody

we haven't worked with in a bit just hit me up last week and she was just like yeah Dan thanks so much for the recommendation to get on Grommet because we just sold a bunch of products we had a really good launch I was like hey that's awesome because because when we parted ways I was like by the way here's one thing you should check out you know on your own and didn't know if she ever did it but that's cool that she launched so that's quick overview with Grommet but I'd love to hear from your perspective just like quick overview of what is the Grommet for everybody listening.

Greg Rollett (14:19)
sweet.

Love that.

Yeah man, that is it. It's these, it's how do you go to market in 2024, right? And we wanna be the first thing you think of when you go to market in 2024 is that yes, should you be figuring out an ad strategy? Of course. Should you be figuring out a content strategy? Of course. Should you be figuring out an Amazon strategy? Probably, but.

If you want that initial traction to say like, man, I spent a lot of time, money, energy, effort getting this product ready, built, I'm ready to go to market. How can I validate it? Get those first sales and create some momentum. I think you read it in my bio. was like going from undiscovered to unstoppable. It's that initial inertia, that initial momentum, because after you go on Facebook and you're like, hey guys, I launched a new product, go buy it. Then it's like, what the heck do I do now? And we want Grommet to fill that void of, you know, we're not ready to hire an agency that's 10 grand a month and then we got to spend 25 grand.

a month starting ads and you're just like, I don't have that kind of cash or that kind of capital. How do you get that first thousand sales? That's where gromit plays. And whether you're a brand new DTC brand, like just going to market for the first time.

Or you're an existing brand and you have maybe a new line. You have a new product you have and it's untested It's unproven. We want to be the place to do that. And the cool thing that you mentioned is we have this amazing audience that Has been around for years. And so when I say years Gramm has been around since 2008 which in internet years is like forever And so they were very early helping makers helping early stage inventors get products to market. They were acquired by ace hardware we

acquired it from Ace Hardware just over two years ago now. Started as a newsletter, was kind of our first foray to bring it back to life. And then a year ago, almost to the date we're recording this, in two days, it'll actually be one year, we launched the platform that you see now, which is kind of like product hunt for D2C, where you can discover these new products, you can upvote them to get them higher up the charts, and by upvoting, as a shopper, you're actually rewarded with an exclusive discount code, coupon code, to go and purchase that product. And it's really cool because every single week, we launch

15 to 20 products that fight to get to the top of the charts. And the products that get to the top of the charts, guess what? They get more exposure. The more votes you get, the more sales you get. The more sales you get, the higher you go up the charts. The higher you go up the charts, the more votes you get, the more sales you get. And it's just, man, it has been so cool seeing these brands. We just had someone last night on one of our shows who I didn't even realize they were like, when did you launch this product? And they said, about two months ago. And I was like.

Holy crap, like you just went to market two months ago and in two weeks on Grommet, they've done six, 700 orders and just, there's no way they could do that with Meta or anything like that. the cool thing is the first week you're on Grommet, you don't pay anything. There's actually no rev share, no commissions. You keep a hundred percent of the revenue that comes in and you keep the customer unlike Amazon and Walmart and these other platforms. They actually check out on your Shopify site. So you get all that customer data so you can remarket to them and you can send them some emails.

and you can get them to buy more stuff and really grow your business. And so, yeah, we think it's just, we want to fill that void of how do we go to market in 2024?

Dan (17:41)
That's awesome. Thanks for sharing that. know, it used to be years back if there was a brand that wanted to have a new product launch, sort of the easy answer was, okay, just go to Kickstarter, or maybe Indiegogo, or, you know, one of the larger auction -based platforms. But the challenge is to be successful at any of those platforms today.

You need to do a ton of marketing in advance. can't just launch a product and expect to be super successful. You need to have a list. You need to have people already excited for it. And so at that point, it's kind of like, well, why don't you just start selling because you're going to have to do all this stuff anyway, right? Like why don't you just take that ad spin and push it into your Shopify store or build brand and then go to retail or whatever that is. yeah, does seem, and I've gotten direct feedback from clients and we've seen this where you can actually sell units without dropping

dropping

lots of money and posting it on the Grommet platform. So we love that you're helping out the little guys and brands that are launching a new product to get the word out there and to get some initial traction. So speaking of that, because you are seeing, you you're seeing lots of different products launch. Some obviously are doing better than others, like any platform. What do you see as being certain attributes of products that have done well versus maybe some products that have fallen flat?

Greg Rollett (18:59)
Yeah, so the two things that immediately come to mind are the

products that do the best on the Grommet, especially early stage brands are founder or maker led and they are front and center in their business. They're not hiding behind the curtain. you know, they are out there being like, I created this product. This is why I created this product. This is the problem that I solve. This is why I do it. This is why I'm, you know, sweating blood, and tears over this business. And they are taking folks on the journey with them. There are some amazing brands in the Grommet community doing this. SubSafe is one of them. They ended up getting a big deal on Shark Tank.

from Mark Cuban and Charles Barkley, but almost every day she's like, here's the truck that's coming, you know, into our warehouse and we're unloading it and here's the inventory and here's the first look at the new color. And, you know, just again, taking people on this journey with them and you fall in love with the person almost as much as you fall in love with the product. The product obviously has to solve a problem that you have in your life or a need or a want, but it's like with all the products that are out there in the marketplace today. And now we see it. have TikTok shop, we have Temu, we have all of these like knockoff, very

cheap vendors out there, do I trust who I'm buying this product from online? If I'm gonna take my wallet out and put my credit card in this weird internet website, right? Do I trust that the product is gonna come as advertised? That it's not just gonna be in a brown box from China and I'm gonna open it and I'm like, is this the right product I ordered? Is this the one I ordered? And so,

being a founder or a maker or someone who is out in front of your business is the number one way to build trust with an audience. Why do we watch Shark Tank? It's because we fall in love with the people who are pitching their stories about why they created their product. And then we're like, and yes, that's a cool product, I would buy it, right? But it's the story behind it. So I think in those early days, getting in front of your brand, bringing people behind the scenes, taking people along for the ride is one of the most important things that you can do. The second thing that I'm gonna say is

develop assets for your business. The brands that have, you know, that do the most have great photography, have great videos. If you are gonna spend money early in your business, I can't recommend it more that that is where I'd be spending the time, the money, the energy, the attention. I mean, this thing is great, right? Like the phone, right? Like are you shooting, you know, product videos on a regular basis? Are you doing, and if you can't afford UGC and people to do like, then it's you, right? But the better the asset.

and showing people using your product, enjoying your product. Great example, we have this, there's this really cool, man, we just did them yesterday. It was a shower curtain product, I gotta find it. Such a cool product. It keeps your shower curtain to your wall so the water doesn't spill over in your bathroom. But there's literally just a picture of the thing, and I'm like, I don't know what it is. It's just a white circle.

I'm like, why don't you have gorgeous bathrooms? Like call a real estate agent who has a listing and like a million dollar home and be like, Hey, can I just sneak in the bathroom really quick and like take pictures in this awesome bathroom and take like amazing images? So now I'm like, I get it. I can see myself using that product with so many amazing dog products that they show the dog Happy and outside and smiling, eating the dog treat instead of just a picture of the dog treat. I want to know that our dogs Happy when they eat this dog food or this dog treat or you know what? So I think

developing those assets that can transpose the person looking at it to be like, yeah, I get it. I want that product. I can see myself using it. This is how to use it. To me, like those are the two big things. Be, you know, be in front of your business, be front and center and two, have assets that really show people what your product's all about.

Dan (22:35)
I love it. You know, when we're onboarding clients and helping them build a brand story, it is so much easier when we can talk about the founder and when the founder had a good background story that ties into product development. You know, if it's just the case of somebody had an idea and they want to make some money in e -commerce and thought it was cool and that's kind of it, it's like, okay, we can figure out some, you know, unique selling points. can build a story, but it's not gonna be

as strong as somebody who's dealing with a pain point for years and they went through the struggle and they finally built this thing and they went through years of testing and finally they are giving birth to this product and the emotion is there and I love that you you've got the example of the owner operator founder showing the behind the scenes because you know it sort of seems right you know I kind of look at e -commerce right now where you've got these giant platforms right and Amazon has been going down this path for a long time

and now Temu and other large overseas platforms where, know, Shein with kind of very low quality apparel manufacturing, where you've got these sellers who are just selling a product and there's no story around it and they're just going after unit economics and trying to sell as inexpensively as possible. And is there a market for that? Of course. But then you've got this other side where it's this brand connection and, you know,

Greg Rollett (23:42)
Yeah, black fashion. Yeah.

Thank

Dan (24:04)
People

want to, I think a lot of people, everybody's a little bit different, but a of people want to associate with the brands that they are using and they want to connect and support founders of businesses because every business, it's like their own little hero journey. And we see it all the time with early stage product developers where there's a lot of challenges. So when they can go through that journey and come out on the other side successful and consumers can support them.

That's amazing. That's where commercialism and capitalism is really great. It's not just great for the business owner, but it's also for the customers who have supported them along the way. So that's great. Thanks for sharing that. So what have you seen? So are you connecting with brands? as they're launching on the platform and they're seeing success, you mentioned brand story being super important. Is there anything else after they launch?

launch on Grommet and let's say they see, I've gotten traction with this. I know that there's a market for my product. I know that there's something here already selling, you know, in the example where you mentioned they sold hundreds of units within a couple of weeks. What are they doing after that? What is the next step? So if you're, you know, for anybody listening now, say they've got a new product idea, they launch on Grommet and they're thinking, okay, what's after this? Once I get some traction, what's the next step? What do you see as brands who are

succeeding, what are they doing?

Greg Rollett (25:33)
Yeah, so there's multiple things that we recommend to them post launch. one is talk to the people you just got. like, this is like, this isn't rocket science. This isn't something that brands probably haven't heard before. But if we just sent you three, 400 customers in a week, are you emailing them?

Are you asking for reviews? Are you asking for them to do reorders depending on what the product is? So like Everyday Dose the drink you're drinking right now, well probably 20 days after they purchase, they should be getting another email like, hey, it's time to reorder another bag. Are you leveraging the people that you already have in your world? That's email, that's SMS. There are millions of experts out there that can help you out with that. if you're not, especially if you're Shopify, just connect to Klaviyo and boom, have these things in place. think that's the easiest thing that you could possibly do.

The second thing is, obviously if you have additional SKUs, well we want to get them on Grommet and like let's keep the train rolling. On Grommet itself, we have additional opportunities. Like if you do well during that launch week, we're going to keep putting you in our newsletters, right? Because now after launch week, we do earn commission on sales that we generate and we're in the business of making money like everybody else, right? So if you sell a bunch of stuff, we're going to keep selling your stuff. And then we also have a really cool partner program where we have some of the biggest publishers in the world who are running articles that are like the 15 weird

pet gadgets you can only find on the Grommet 15 weird and these are some of the biggest publishers on the face of the planet that are running these ads that are driving hundreds and hundreds of more sales which is why launch week is so important at Grommet on your own though when you see the stuff that we're doing right so the ads that we're putting in our newsletter the copy that we're running in our newsletter things like that if you know that that will worked and that was successful well let's double down on it right so potentially an ad that was running the Grommet where there was a headline maybe two lines of copy and there was an image

Thanks

That's a meta ad, right? That's an ad that you can be running in a different channel. Let's start testing the waters. Let's reinvest some of the money that we just got in these sales and let's double down on that. Let's also, I think, especially if you have more time than money, right? There's two options. You have more time than money or you have more money than time. If you have more money than time, hire the agency, throw money at Zuckerberg and all the other platforms, but if you have more time than money, I still believe that partnerships are the best

way to go on the face of the planet. And there are so many untapped opportunities. Grommet, I look at it like we're a partner, right? Like that's in one instance. But if you sell like dog products, who are all the people that have dog communities that you can go jump into? And like, this is like basic one -on -one stuff that I've been doing for 10 years, but if you've never done it before, it's like brand new. Go to Facebook.

and look for all the Facebook dog communities. Look for a local one, a Apopka dog owners, Longwood dog owners, Winter Park dog owners, know, Winter Park, like who's the admin of that group? Hey Dan, I just saw you're an admin of the Winter Park dog club and you've got like 400 members. Do you think we can maybe do a webinar or a Facebook live to your group? And I can teach them about three, three, three ways that your dog can live healthier and longer. And at the end, I'd love to talk about my really cool Tucker CBD oil for, for pets.

And if we happen to make any sales, I'll give you 50 % of all the sales or 30 % of all the sales. What if you did one of those a week, right? And now you didn't pay any money upfront.

you got introduced to a brand new audience, you created an asset, like a piece of media. So like this podcast that you and I are doing today, it's a great use of my time, A, because I get to blab about all the stuff that I love talking about. You're an awesome dude and we've connected and it's been super fun. But now I have this piece of media that I can email out to people. I can send it to people. Hey, you want to know more about Grommet? Check out the Shopify Happy Hour podcast, man. This thing is awesome. here's a minute clip where I actually said something smart that I want to repurpose and I'm sharing that on YouTube. Like, so imagine if you do one of these like live streams every single week. Are there

podcast out there in your community. So these partnerships to me is like so untapped because that guy running the apopka dog group, you know how many times he's gotten hit up to do like something like that? Never.

Like ever, you know, like he's never gotten asked that. And he's like, cool. And you're going to pay me to do this? Cause I don't make any money running the Apopka dog group. And so those to me are just ways to continue to great, you know, create that initial inertia and that initial momentum, get through your first thousand pieces, your first 2000 pieces, your first 5 ,000 pieces. And by doing things like this, by word vomiting, you start to figure out, when I said this, or when I answered this question, we made more orders.

When I talked about our blue color, we sold more. When I talked about this feature, no one cared, right? Like it was crickets. Now, that's ad angles. Now, that's an email that you can send out. Now that you're starting to learn just by actually going out there and doing it. So hopefully that little rant there made sense, but that's, it's such an untapped opportunity. If you have more time than money that I would be doubling down on like every single day.

Dan (30:28)
I love that. there's a couple of things I want to pull out of that. first off, you know, I've been in digital marketing a long time. You've been in the digital world for a long time. It's easy for people to just think digital all the time. But the challenge is when we're in a digital world and we're only just running, let's say paid advertising, you're missing an important feedback.

Think back in the day before, even well before MySpace, which was a fantastic platform back in the day. I've actually saw somebody else post about that today because of the Google Monopoly suits and how they were pushing down MySpace and their ratings, but that's a whole other conversation.

Greg Rollett (31:05)
I'm

Dan (31:06)
But yet back in the day, you would have a conversation with somebody you would sell in person or you would sell one to many, but still in person. And you could see what messaging would resonate immediately. There was an immediate feedback loop, know, did certain words you say, were there certain phrases or hooks that got the audience's attention. And now you can do that with, you know, CTRs and you know, engagement rates on video, but it's, there's nothing that's going to beat that in person.

selling. So by doing the webinar in front of like a Facebook group or some type of one -to -many sale, if it's an in -person group, that's amazing. The feedback you're going to get is going to be so invaluable. And then you can take that and pull that and weave it into the rest of your marketing. And so that's one thing that I think is fantastic is just getting that sort of in -person one -to -many feedback. Then the other thing is, you you talked about investing in assets early on. You also talked about content as being important.

and repurposing it.

I think that's a missed opportunity for a lot of people. A lot of people, they'll spend time generating an asset or building some type of marketing creative and then they use it once and that's it. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no. You just built this thing. Let's say if you're working with an influencer or a content creator and they create some content for your brand and they push it out, that's the beginning. Now the real work happens where you now have to amplify that as long as your agreement allows for it. have to amplify it on your

organic. You have to send email out with it. You have to send out on your SMS. You have to promote it on your website. Is there are there certain images you can leverage where you can now put on your post purchase insert to show it as some type of social proof? Like do you build a social wall on your on your website where it's all the testimonials from different content creators or customers? So once you have one piece of content like you need to repurpose the crap out of that because the hardest part is getting it. But then you've got to use it in as many places as possible, especially for

Early stage brands where they need to be hyper efficient with their marketing spend and with any spend for content creation. So Yeah, I think those are those are fantastic tips. So let's keep the rants going. Yep. Yep

Greg Rollett (33:18)
I wanna go deep on this really quick, because

this is my favorite thing to talk about on the planet, is media, content, all of that. It's also why think being a founder -led brand is so important, because then you don't have to have the influencer and the contractor. Look, there's a time and a place for influencers, they're great, I love it, but in those early days, if you can create, I love creating a show that's repeatable and that's recurring, but that also feeds multiple purposes. So I'll go back to the dog example, is.

Every week, can you interview a dog owner, right? Someone who just has a dog. And we just want to talk about your pet journey and how much you love your dog and all of this. Even better if they're a customer of your product. So you're just, you you don't, and you bob it and you weave it in. Like it's just one question maybe that you ask in a 20 minute interview. But now you have a format. So every week, you know, you have to do an interview. It's 20 minutes. It's on the calendar. You're searching for this person. You're sending your emails out. Hey, if anybody wants to be interviewed about, know, how much they like Tucker's gold, just let me know. And now.

You have this 20 minute show that you have which could be a podcast beyond YouTube It can be on your blog it can be on your website you pull clips from that you got probably a testimonial from that because no one's gonna get interviewed until your product sucks right there gonna be like Greg man yeah, I love Tucker's and it was awesome and blah blah blah blah blah well now you have a testimonial that you can pull out and use and so you've You've used this one piece of media for four or five different purposes now. That's an email Hey, make sure you guys should go check out the new episode that I just did with Dan and then next week Hey guys check out the new

Like now you have because everyone goes well, what do I write in my email? Well, just send them to the thing you just made right? What do I post on social a clip from the thing you just made? What do I post like the thing you just made right and you continue to use that over and over in a 20 -minute interview you could have three four five short form clips and so I love finding what is the format that you can create that is going to like Stampede and create a snowball for you that is going to cover all those look we're busy as founders. I don't have time to well

I gotta create a TikTok just for TikTok and I have to create this and I have like how about once a week for 20 minutes you just do an interview show or you just do whatever your thing is and then repurpose the hell out of it. To me that's the ultimate jam that knocks off all of those dominoes in your content side and creates that asset that you can continue to roll with and yeah anyway I'm I'm such a fan of that and I think that so many early stage brands don't do that enough.

And you realize that, if I just did this, if I do that every week for a year, I'd have 52 episodes. If I did four clips from each of those, I'd have 200 short form pieces of content. If I did that for two years, I've got a hundred episodes. How many of your competitors have a hundred videos on YouTube have four to 500 videos on TikTok, Instagram reels, YouTube shorts? It snowballs in compounds so fast and you will be light years ahead of what everyone else is doing. And that's a really simple

strategy that's simple doesn't mean that it's easy, right? But it's a simple strategy for early stage brands that have limited funds. Dude, zoom, it's free, right? Like jump on zoom. You don't have to like we're using something fancy right now. We're using Riverside. But what is that like 30, 50 bucks a month? not, it's not super expensive, right? And now you have like Descript and these AI platforms that can repurpose your content for not like a hundred bucks a month. You can have your whole content farm, you know, from digital tools doing this for you. And so

Dan (36:29)
it.

Greg Rollett (36:41)
Anyway, I can talk about media and content all day. I nerd out about it and I think it's just a missed opportunity for these new brands.

Dan (36:49)
100%, I hear from clients and potential clients when we talk about this stuff, time is an easy excuse, right? It's an easy excuse to say I don't have enough time. It's kind of like not going to the gym or name another priority in life and it's like, I don't have time, but it's like you live once, you gotta make time for this stuff. I think it comes down to, time is an easy thing for people to say. I think it also comes down to fear. A lot of people are,

Greg Rollett (37:10)
You do.

Dan (37:19)
nervous about being on camera, on video, promoting it, being promotional. And I think that throws a lot of people off. I think the other thing is the compounding interest you're talking about, which is 100 % I'm on board with. It's like, pick a habit and do that thing over and over again, and then look back a year or two years later and see how much value that was. But people don't see it when they're starting out. They want the quick fix, right? And they want the meta ad.

that they think is gonna get them to a 5X ROAS within the first week of running it. And all of a sudden they spend a hundred dollars and they get a thousand dollar or $500 and they just keep reinvesting. It's like, yeah, you know, things aren't exactly like that. There's a lot of stuff that has to go into marketing, especially paid advertising that where you need to get the whole machine running and it doesn't happen in a week or two. It takes a while for that stuff to get dialed in. So organic content like you're talking about is super important. Even if you're hiring the agency to run paid advertising, having that organic engine up and

running can just amplify that. And what's really nice is brands can leverage organic content. you know, Gary V talks about this a lot where it's like run a lot of organic content and then find the stuff that pops where you see the standout performer and then amplify that.

So you can leverage organic as kind of a testing engine to amplify your other content, which is, yeah, I think that's awesome. So I love the idea. And when you're talking about where it's repurposing is, you know, that's what's cool about starting with video because you can start with long form video. You can pull it into short form. You can transcribe it. You can run it in all these different ways. So I love the idea of doing that, you know, weekly interview where, or a webinar where you're just creating long form content and then you can chop it up, slice and dice it.

like shoot once, edit, know, spend a few hours like, or ideally have somebody do this who is an expert in it. And then next thing you know, you'll have, you know, 50 pieces of content and that can take care of your content for the week. And then you can focus on other things. Okay, so lots of awesome tips there. So I know you're given a lot of different strategies for early stage startup brands, but let's see if there's any others we can tease out of you. So if you were starting at the beginning with a new shop,

business and you want to go from zero to your first million in revenue on a shoestring budget and I'm sure lots of clients are coming to the Grommet because they're in that phase where they want to grow quickly but they don't have large budgets, how would you do it? What would your framework look like?

Greg Rollett (39:47)
man, we really talked about a lot of it, which would be, and so the interesting thing, so these sunglasses over here behind me, so this is my 11 year old son, we started this business about a year ago, so we are, literally in Shopify every day building that business with him, in addition to helping all, like, so I'm in the trenches, I do this, and so we create content.

every single day, right? Like he creates a video, we get it up, we share it, like that is our number one strategy is organic social content. And that drives the majority of what we're doing. We take the best ones, we turn it into paid and we run paid. The second thing that we've done, and I already talked about this, it's partnerships. But what we've done is we go, so we have a sunglass brand, it's for athletes. So we go to a lot, we're in Florida, we go and you guys have these in North Carolina too, we go to a lot of minor league baseball games and we go to top prospects who are on the rise and we get glasses into their hands.

and we get them into their hands. He takes pictures with them. First round draft pick for the Cincinnati Reds, first round draft pick for the Detroit Tigers, first round draft pick for the Philadelphia Phillies. They're all, it's so cool, eh, because it's a great time for him, right? Like he has a great time doing it because he's like, I get to meet my heroes and instead of me like begging them for an autograph, I'm like, hey, I brought you something. And they open it up and they're like, my God, they're so, they put them on immediately, right? Now they're wearing them. He takes the picture, boom. Now we got Instagram content. We got a page for the site. They share it on their Instagram and like that has,

Again, that's the partnership. That's all it is, right? It's what I talked about earlier It's finding the communities and find the partnerships from that side and then we're leveraging like sales channels, right? So things like Grommet things like Amazon things, you know the places that that we're going to be in and Those are the three kind of pieces that that we look at the other thing that we haven't talked about that I think is the big multiplier to get to that million dollar number is offer strategies and I think this is very Underlooked at for an early brand. They're just like I have this box of stuff and it's 20

25 bucks, right? Like that's not an offer and that's not gonna get you to that million as quick as possible. It's like, yeah, I got a box of stuff for 25 bucks, but you can get three of them for 60 and get free shipping. And now I've almost tripled my average order value and I'm gonna get to that million much, much quicker. So with everything that we do, have, you know, sunglasses are, you know, $39 a piece or they're three for a hundred. Almost everybody takes the three for a hundred. Well, guess what? That got us cash quicker. It gets more inventory out the door, returning inventory faster. We're able to go reorder more inventory faster. And so

Your offer strategy and how you can increase your average order value needs to be at the top of your list as early as possible. The easiest way to do that is through bundles. And I get asked all the time, they're like, Greg, I just have one one skew. How do I create a bundle?

You put more of the same skew in the bundle, right? Like it's not rocket science. It's like for us, it's like, well, we have different color glasses and stuff, but it's like, get more glasses. Like I learned this in the supplement industry and the supplement industry, you try to get people on auto, auto ship, auto bill. So like everyday Dose, like they have two models. One is let's get you to buy it every month and it's just auto bill. Every month you get charged 30 bucks a month and they send you a bag of the product. But what you find out is like, all right, the average customer only sticks around for three months.

So what if instead of getting them on auto bill and they cancel after three months, what if I can get them to buy a six month supply right now, right when I got them. So let me sell six tubs of rise upfront. Let me get all the cash upfront. I don't have to worry about them canceling and then using a rebuild and all this. Like let me just get the six months upfront. I get more cash. I get more inventory out the door. That is the fat like

figuring out your offer strategy and how you increase average order value and turn your inventory faster to me is the fastest way to get to a million dollars. And I think that most people, most early stage brands are just like, well, I just created a widget and it costs me $10. So I'm to sell it for $30. So I want a three X margin, right? Like that's not a strategy, right? That's just like, that's napkin math. And so to me, that is under looked underutilized and that's, what's going to get you to those dollar points faster. And it's going to allow you to go on that Facebook live.

or that webinar or whatever it is and be like I have a special offer just for Dan's audience today because you guys are listening today look we usually sell these sunglasses for you know 40 bucks a piece you can go to the website you could buy for $40 right now but for fans of Dan we have a coupon code it's called fans of Dan and you can get three pairs for a hundred bucks so you're saving so much money by hanging out with us like now like now you got people stoked you got people excited and you're making more money for the same sale that you were going to get at the of the day I'm also like I love doing webinars

and selling, so like I'm a salesperson at heart, but I think that you have to figure that out in order to get to that dollar amount faster.

Dan (44:18)
dropping tons of knowledge. love that you are helping your son learn about business and you guys are bonding over it. That's wonderful. So what is the name of the brand for people at home who'd be interested in some of those sunglasses?

Greg Rollett (44:29)
Yep. So

it's a Arete Shades R E T E shades .com. means excellence, but it really means being the best version of yourself moment to moment to moment. And as an athlete, like that's what we want to be, right? We want to be the best version of ourself right now when it matters this play, not the next play, not the past play. This play is the only one that matters. And so every time you put your shades on, it's a reminder to be the best version of yourself moment to moment to moment. So super cool. And we're having a blast with it.

Dan (44:56)
I love it, I love it. We'll link to that in the show notes for sure along with some of the other products that we mentioned in this. And let's move a little bit away from e -commerce and talk about some just general like life tips and other fun stuff. So what's one thing in life that you do better than most people and how do you do it? And this could be anything from cooking eggs or...

you know, drawing or gifting during the holidays or anything. What's one thing that you're just like naturally good at and how do you do it? What's your secret of success with it?

Greg Rollett (45:27)
Man, I it's funny. I've done a couple shows today and like I have this ability to speak on camera on cue unprompted and it's something that I've done forever. It's like the media side of just like, Hey, there's these scissors. Can you create a script for us? And I'm like, all right, cool. So, Hey guys, have you ever had a problem with like, and I can spit that out in like two seconds. And they're like, I've been banging my head for weeks doing this and you just got on camera and pitched my product better than anybody else on the planet than, than we could. It's just the

I love...

Sharing products with people and ideas with people and like being that's I will be your champion. I will be your salesperson I will I will hype you up better than than anyone else and it's just something that I love to do It came naturally like it's I didn't go to school for it and go to a class for it just I just like I can see I can see what they can't because they have these like blinders on of just like no It's just a scissor. It just cuts. I'm like, no, it doesn't you know what? really does is it creates the thing that hangs and this Happy birthday and they wake up and they see it in the next morning they're like

How did you just think of that on the fly? And I was like, I don't know, man. Like it's just, I see it, you know? So I don't know. That's a fun one that comes to mind.

Dan (46:37)
Great, awesome. So you're going straight to like end of like final benefits that are bring out the emotional side and not just the feature that people are looking at. Is that sort of what I'm trying to tease at?

Greg Rollett (46:48)
That's it, and I think the

ability to do it on camera, because we talked about it earlier, I think you said it, it's like people are scared, there's a little bit of fear, there's a little bit of, I'm just like, man, go to that camera with confidence, like become, like I do this, it's called the ego equation, that most people's ego is greater than their mission or their vision, and I'm like, you have to flip it, because once you care so much about the outcome and why you created the product, it's why founder, you talked about earlier, like having that founder story, that brand story, when you believe in that so much, you're like, my hair's a little bit out of place, so I

record today. Like who cares if your mission is up here? You have, know, when you care more about your hair, like that's an ego problem. Like you have to flip it. So being on camera and just having the utmost confidence in that what I'm saying right now is going to benefit the person on the other side. Like I don't know, I'm just, I love doing it and I think I'm better than most people at it. It's like my own confidence and my own abilities.

Dan (47:42)
Well, you're killing it here and you know what's great is it's completely aligned with your mission of the Grommet right now where you can hype up other brands and get really cool products into the world. So that's fantastic. Okay, so now we're going to move on to speed round. So each answer about 30 seconds or less and we'll just run through a few of these. So what's one of your most recommended books?

Greg Rollett (47:49)
Exactly.

There are two, Marketing to the Affluent by Dan Kennedy. I think people need to learn how to sell to people that actually have money. And then I love everything from Steven Kotler. And that's what we talked about earlier, flow state stuff, right? So he's got a really good book. It's something, The Rise of Superman. think it's all about like X games, extreme sport athletes and how they lock into the flow state so fast and how other people can do it too. I love that book.

Dan (48:26)
Awesome. What's an under the radar product or brand you've used and liked but most people don't know about?

Greg Rollett (48:32)
Every single product on the Grommet. Man, there's so many cool ones. I have to think of something right off the top of my head. I am in love with this brand right now, KNKG. They make bags and backpacks. They are under the radar. They are so cool. I literally just have boxes of them right behind me. I just bought two new duffel bags. I'm about to do a ton of traveling. I wear the backpack every day. KNKG, awesome brand.

Dan (48:34)
you

Fantastic. What's one thing you'd love to see Shopify in?

Greg Rollett (49:02)
Ooh man, I know they just made some updates to it, but the cart page, I would love more flexibility in the cart page. Like I wanna be able to do more in the cart. I wanna be able to do, I know they've added some abilities to do like upsells things like that, but I want bump offers. I want to customize the cart. I want more control over the cart.

Dan (49:23)
Awesome, All right, this is the last one. Speed around. What's one tip you use to stay motivated?

Greg Rollett (49:29)
man, it's easy, it's a family.

Right? Like I got three noisy kids like right behind me. Like that's why I do what I do. and it's why like I wake up every day is like, I want to give them a good example. Like I work out every day in the backyard. It's right on the other side of this. And I work out at home because I want them to see me doing it. I see they see me doing these videos and like all this stuff, running the business with my son. It's like, I want them to see it in action every day. So, and I know they're not going to get it today, but over the next 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, they're going to be like, man, like that was a really good place for me.

to get grounded and learn about life. So yeah, the family, that's easy.

Dan (50:05)
being the example, fantastic. All right, so Greg, where can people connect with you to learn more?

Greg Rollett (50:10)
Yeah, so myself is just at Greg Rollett on all the socials, LinkedIn and Twitter is where I'm most active in like the D to C kind of space. If you want just, you know, cute baseball photos of my kids, it's at Greg Rollett on Instagram. And then thegrommet .com. Love for you guys to check it out. Not just the product side, but if you have a product, we'd love to launch it on there if you are a Shopify brand, which you probably are because you're listening to the Shopify Happy Hour. And then I think the biggest thing for me, and I mean this, is if you learned anything today that Dan said or I said, screenshot.

this and share it on social. It's like the number one thing that you can do. And also leave a review. Like you gotta leave reviews of podcasts. But if you're like, hey man, I love that nugget, screenshot it, right? You know, right there, tag Dan, tag myself, and let us know what you you learned from this episode. That's like the biggest thank you, like on the planet, is like, hey, I learned so much from this that I want to share it with other people.

Dan (50:59)
It goes back to that feedback, right? that feedback in the digital world. So that's an awesome tip. Thanks for sharing that. So great. Thanks much for first off helping early stage e -commerce brands get discovered, being their hype person, like you're talking about, sharing your expertise and insights with our audience. Also being a really cool example for your family and everybody listening to this and for joining us on the Shopify Happy Hour.

Greg Rollett (51:23)
Dan, thank you so much for having me and Happy Happy Hour to everyone. Cheers.

Dan (51:28)
Cheers, cheers.