1008: H-Hour: Unleash the Secrets of Direct-to-Consumer Success with Greg Potapenko

Robert Plank 0:05 Hey, and welcome back to the podcast. We're here with Greg pota panko from H dash, our dot agency. And Greg is an award winning marketer who helps DTC brands grow. He's all about paid search, display social. He's an econ brand founder, and he helps Army veterans become vet printers. And so we have a lot to talk about with Greg as far as just the secret to his success and how to shortcut that process and so much more. So Greg, glad God was speaking with you,

Speaker 1 0:37 Robert, thank you for having me on the show and glad to be here to help other entrepreneurs level up.

Robert Plank 0:44 Yes. And we all need that. We need that consistently and constantly, don't we? We need that constant encouragement. There's always more problems to be solved. And so what problem do you saw what happened? You just really passionate and fired up about what you're doing?

Speaker 1 0:59 I like launching and growing brands online and using my digital marketing experience and skills, primarily in the direct to consumer markets.

Robert Plank 1:11 And so direct to consumer, what is that? Exactly? Yeah,

Speaker 1 1:14 so basically, everything that's not b2b, so we're selling to people, not people in businesses, which is more of the b2b place. So that goes from selling physical products through a point of sale like Shopify or another type of online store. And on other end of the spectrum could be generating leads for home services, insurance providers, loans, and even did apps and software aimed at the end consumer, so think about apps on your mobile phone or different utilities on your computer? Those are the kinds of things we've been doing over the years. Well,

Robert Plank 1:55 sounds like fun. And I can imagine how you doing all this, these things, being in all these spaces, really, like can ignite the creativity, right? Because you're just you're jumping into all these, these different niches and all these different solutions. And you might even see, like some of the overlaps the commonalities. So like, what do you see in common as far as when the these these brands succeed? When you put out like an ecommerce product, and it flops versus when it does great? Like, what's the deciding factor? What does it take to build a business that thrives?

Speaker 1 2:29 Yeah, I mean, it kind of evolves over the years, as the market and the consumer matured with the behavior online. So even something that was, quote unquote, successful two or three years ago may not be necessarily as effective these days, I mean, the fundamentals, they kind of stay the same, you got to have great product that solves ideally, a problem or meets the need of the target customer, you have to be a decent storyteller. And you got to make sure that you can master at least one source of traffic, whether that's paid ads, or content creation, or affiliate deals, what have you. But I think those are the main three fundamentals that kind of over the years have stayed true.

Robert Plank 3:20 Wonderful. And so speaking of storytelling, you're in all these different spaces? And is there one that jumps out for you like, as far as for storytelling purposes today, for us to understand your unique skill, and the problems that you solve? Is there like one particular project, that would be a lot of fun to unpack and talk about?

Speaker 1 3:42 Um, well, there's, in terms of having fun, we did have a story about a product that we launched for, I guess you could summarize it for people who own guns. So just kind of diving both feet into that market and learning about that market, especially being a Canadian. With the market predominantly being based in the US, as you know, us, is really passionate about their firearms. So I ended up just kind of drinking from the firehose and learning everything about the industry and then doing fun things like going and exhibiting the biggest firearms trade show in the world called SHOT Show in Las Vegas and meeting people from different publications that I before was only seeing on bookshelves and bookstores, and now we had like, ads and editorial articles and those publications. So that was like the fun part just kind of like getting the story the word out about the product into into the real world and actually getting out of the comfort zone online. You know, the Facebook ads and all that and just getting into the offline world, like actually standing there for you know, three or four days, shaking hands, or showing people in person how the thing works, and then meeting reporters, bloggers, TV personalities, what have you been getting getting out? In the offline world that was actually like a really fun journey.

Robert Plank 5:09 It does sound like a lot of fun to go from just like sitting at the computer screen and dealing with like ads, the landing pages, images, the copy. But then when you're actually there in person, there, it's easy to forget how it's such a huge world out there, right that there are some people that are like just celebrities within their industry, and like household names, and like always recognizable, but if you're just outside that niche, if you're not a gun enthusiast, you wouldn't know who any of these people are. But then within it, it's just like they have these huge followings, you just you never would have known just because the world is so big, and there's so many people and just so many little little bubbles out there, set up on the internet. And so I can see how that can be a lot of fun. And it can be like an outrageous adventure, especially in the gun and world. Because, as you said, We're crazy, right? Like, there's all sorts of gun enthusiasm as far as like, there's the prepper angle, or like, the government will take my guns angle, or just, it's my right as an American or, or there's like the, I just want to blow stuff up and shoot it. So I can see how it's just like, it makes it, it makes it more than a job more than a business. It makes it kind of a passion just to jump in and have a lot of fun in these sort of areas. And so you also mentioned about how important it is to like master one source of traffic, like you said, like if it's, you know, Facebook ads or content or something like that. And just from hearing that I can, I can assume that. It's because things always change. And you have to always, like every day kind of be like staying on top of things and monitoring things. But that's just what comes to me. And so why would you say like, why is it so important to master like one source of traffic and really get it dialed in versus just kind of being on the surface? Well,

Speaker 1 6:58 I guess I should throw a small caveat in front, because I'm mostly dealing with kind of brands and entrepreneurs are more in the starting out phase, or like going from like zero to one one to two phase, not necessarily like you know, Blitzscaling to the moon. So while you're still fairly small, it's very easy to spread yourself too thin and kind of lose focus on you know, we intrapreneurs are guilty of it all the time with the shiny object syndrome. So you hear people Oh, you have to be omnipresent, you have to be this, you have to be that even in my story, you're gonna hear that we were at the trade show and doing magazines and TV to be completely frank, and 90% of sales for that product came from one channel, Facebook ads going to one point of sale Shopify store, and everything else was just kind of, you know, elevating and amplifying, and kind of, you know, the ripple effect of things. But at the end of the day, it was predominantly from my team's ability to create those advertisements, placed them on Facebook, and optimize the campaigns and optimize the sales funnel on the Shopify store, really to kind of do the bulk of the heavy lifting. And especially when you're starting out, I think mastering one channel is going to get you going and allow you to get earn the capital that's required to invest and then you can hire you know, creators, agencies are team members that can help you scale to other sources of traffic, right. So that's, that's kind of my philosophy for I'm just observing and dealing with the different campaigns, brands or clients.

Robert Plank 8:33 That makes a lot of sense to have that focus. And that, and we might not always see that from the outside looking in, right, because you see someone like you said, they're on their phone, and they're on all these channels. And we don't know that this particular company, they're making all their money from these ads on Facebook going to this particular offer. And the rest is all just kind of like there and experimenting. And it's kind of like second tier versus what is actually making money. And so you're seeing that the reason for that is because if you're just starting out and you you're the only employee or that you only have a few employees, if you if you try to make all the all the advertising work, he just wouldn't because you'd run out of time in the day so better to focus on just one channel and really get that dialed in. So speaking of growing and scaling a business how's your business doing like as far as like the growth of it and like the the struggles, the challenges, can you tell us about as you are advancing your company and getting bigger likes to like, what's going on with you? Have you had any like problems or hobbies you feel like sharing?

Speaker 1 9:38 Oh, what's the problems? I mean, the trajectory was mostly upward since we started like, you know, over 10 years ago, I was building and growing slowly then we had like a couple of years of rapid growth and a few years when we didn't make any money in last couple of years specifically, was put really tough to be honest with everything that's going on in the recession, the changes in tracking algorithms and consumer behavior shifting and whatnot. So, you know, kind of was able to grow the agency to, you know, seven figures run rate per year, from, you know, the early days when I was just, you know, in a Starbucks on my laptop, and you know, making a few grand a month to, you know, actually running like a half a million dollar a month, budgets and more. And same thing with ecommerce, we were able to scale initially from like zero to, you know, a couple of million a year, and just like, under two years, and that all kind of came to its peak a couple years ago, like just after you know, COVID, then the last couple of years actually have been tougher to let go a few team members, or to close a couple of econ brands down like last week, I just sent a whole shipment of leftover stock to charity, because we just was moving for, you know, months. So yeah, there's periods of growth in those periods of, I guess, learning.

Robert Plank 11:07 And you hear that a lot with, especially with the E commerce companies where it's just, it's high risk, high reward. And sometimes you have to make those painful decisions of saying, Okay, well, I need to get rid of my inventory, or this fad has changed things, or COVID, has changed things. And I just, I really appreciate you being honest about some of these failures. But I also get from your answer is that you're really dialed in with the numbers, right? You're mentioning about how, like, you were at this level, and you want to get to that level. And so that's, that's really helpful to hear in general, just about, just like knowing where you want to go and knowing what those harsh numbers are. And so when you are when you see all these companies, right, and you say that, you know, some succeeds, some fail. What's the difference? Like, do you see like, a huge mistake being made that really like causes a lot of companies to fail lately? Um,

Speaker 1 11:59 so there's, I guess, stuff you see in the news. So a couple of recent examples, I made a couple of posts about them on social media is like these crazy like eating nine figure companies in the DDC space. So like, there was Hello below the $200 million a year, diaper brand that went bankrupt. Last week, there was disco, which is, I think, eight or nine figure, men's skincare brand that went bankrupt. And basically, they they have grown too quickly. They have overspent on certain things, and paid advertising and other other things and kind of miscalculated their margins and they overextended themselves. So that's like, I guess, one one mistake where I've observed from outside looking, of course, it's very easy to judge when you're not the person in the arena, as Teddy Roosevelt said, but yeah, it's kind of obvious in hindsight, oh, they spent too much they overspent on client acquisition, they hide too many people on a small scale, I guess, again, dealing mostly with what I deal with day to day with like smaller entrepreneurs just starting out recently or it's usually comes down I guess, to product market fit. So it's, it was fairly easy before to promote like a okay product with good marketing and you could still make a buck winners. Now, I think the the margins got squeezed and all of the mediocre players or average players are getting squeezed out and only the best of the best are left. Those are the best storytellers with you know, really good products, really great customer service. Like a lot of puzzle pieces have to live for you to be successful. So yeah, I think it's basically comes down to knowing your numbers, like your budgets and your cost of doing business. Having great products or services that solve real problems for real people and actually listening to the customer making, you know, both before and after, so that's the customer support after the sale, but also listening to them before coming up with new features improving common, you know, I guess things with with the products that people want to see change those kinds of things.

Robert Plank 14:15 Okay, so and you're going to so much to think about and recently the kind of the overarching phrase that pops into my mind as you're mentioning all this is don't wish it was easier wish you were better. So as say Amazon increases their fees or percentage or this the E commerce competition just becomes so much it's easy to just give up or to quit and move on to something else. But you're saying that the those companies was brands that are still succeeding heavily in the E commerce space are the ones that just have really taken it seriously, really gotten things dialed in. They know what their numbers are. They're there if they're growing. They're they're taking all the factors into account but not just growing and miss understanding their margins. And then as far as their product itself, they make sure that there's this good product market fit. They're good storytellers. They're good with the customer support both before and after. And so this is a very helpful, a little bit of a mental checklist for us to think about whether we're starting out in E commerce or just trying to debug the system and trying to figure out like, where are things going wrong? Maybe going back to some of these fundamentals here that you're mentioning, but on a quick podcast, such as this one, we can only get so far right, we can only get a few little stories and tips and advice from you. And if someone wants to take that next step, if they say, Okay, well, Greg seems like a guy that can help me grow my DTC brands, and maybe he can help me with the storytelling or with the advertising or something. How does someone know if they're a good fit for you? And what can you do for them? And where do they go to get that help?

Speaker 1 15:54 Yeah, so if they're like ready to go, like you said, oh, I need help. Right. Now, of course, the the website that you mentioned in the beginning, the agency website is H dash, our h o u r dot agency, is where you can get a complimentary strategy session with me. And that will determine whether we're a good fit to work together, or at least I'll point you in the right direction. If you also are a military veteran, then I invite you to join my free Facebook group called enlisted to entrepreneur, where we have over 500 veteran entrepreneurs from US and Canada and some of the allied nations like Australia and the UK, where we share information, there's a ton of pre recorded content. And we're actually working in a live event in Canada soon for, for that community. And if you're not ready to kind of jump in, I invite you to just follow me on social media, you can find me with my first and last name on most social media platforms, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, what, what have you and just consume some more of my content, see what my daily life is like and see if that resonates with you. Exciting.

Robert Plank 17:05 And so we mentioned that that Facebook group is enlisted to entrepreneur, if you're in the armed forces to one of these allied countries, I can definitely see the value in that because everyone kind of speaks a similar language. And if you've been in the armed forces, and you made it and you made it through boot camp, and all the all the discipline and all the rigmarole that sets you apart, right that that means that this group, it consists of many people who have just gone through the work and gone through all the kind of step by step and they're good people in there, I imagine. And then to do that one on one call that Greg mentioned, that's H dash h o u r dot agency, and it messed me up a little bit, because when I first heard you say that I was thinking like, oh is H dash, o u r. So there's two H's, it's H dash, ours and like our the de dot agency, and then the social media that she mentioned there, Greg, like Instagram and LinkedIn, etc. That's Greg pota. Panko and we'll spell that out. That's p o TAPENKO. So that way, you've gotten your your curiosity piqued a little bit from Greg about some of his really helpful initial advice about what you can and should do about your ecommerce brand. But knowledge and advice only gets you so far right. You also need a little bit of a plan, strategy, motivation, a deadline and some of those and also help because you can't do it alone. We keep on mentioning that in our conversation. So your help can and should come from Greg. So go to H dash h o u r dot agency to get that chat started with Greg and as we're winding down our conversation here, Greg, I find it really helpful to ask for a quote or lesson from my guests and it can either apply to like your overall philosophy or what we talked about today. So what just jumps out at you want to ask for a helpful quote or lesson from you?

Speaker 1 18:57 Yeah, I think just going to bounce off of what you just said is that you have to surround yourself with the resources is going to help you execute on the knowledge that you receive from consuming you know, the content such as you know, from your show and whatnot. And those resources. Part of that is the community that you have around yourself so that's your your family and friends that support you and also others who can lift you up to where they are where they have been through. So that's the type of mastermind or just a networking group I really think that everybody should get from behind the computer like reset and get out and network with like minded individuals or those that you aspire to be like that have been where you want to go. Fantastic.

Robert Plank 19:47 They say if you want to go fast, go alone if you want to go far go together. So I think you hit the nail on the head as far as needing these, these mentors, coaches, mastermind family support system whatever form it takes, get that help get that team H dash our dot agency and thank you so much Greg for showing up blown our minds giving us some really great advice. I really appreciate you.

Unknown Speaker 20:11 Thank you for having me.

Robert Plank 20:17 Thank you for tuning in to the marketer of the day podcast. marketer of the day is managed by dF why a podcast clean your 12 podcast boosters at Def Why podcast.com/free