Episode Summary
In this episode of the 7 Figures and Beyond eCommerce Marketing Podcast, host Greg Shuey interviews Brittany Harvey, the founder of Vonu, a baby brand known for its innovative multi-use lounger designed to aid infants with tummy time, reflux, and gas relief. Brittany shares her diverse professional background, from education and PR to entrepreneurship, and her journey of building Vonu alongside her experiences as a new mother. The discussion centers around the strategic use of VIP groups on social platforms to foster community engagement, address customer concerns, and drive business growth. Brittany emphasizes the importance of authentic interactions within these groups, choosing the right platforms, and leveraging customer feedback for product development and marketing. She also touches on challenges faced, such as low engagement on Facebook, and how shifting to Instagram helped create a more dynamic community. Throughout the episode, Brittany provides actionable insights on setting up and nurturing VIP groups, highlighting their role in building loyalty and receiving valuable customer input.
Key Takeaways
- VIP Groups as a Growth Strategy: Brittany discusses how VIP groups can be powerful tools for eCommerce brands, fostering deeper engagement with loyal customers and providing a platform for community-building, feedback, and exclusive offers. These groups help brands connect with their audience on a more personal level compared to traditional marketing channels.
- Platform Selection Matters: Brittany initially started VIP groups on Facebook but found limited engagement. By transitioning to Instagram, she discovered much higher interaction levels, highlighting the importance of selecting the right platform based on where your audience is most active.
- Authenticity Drives Engagement: Sharing personal experiences, asking for feedback, and discussing broader topics beyond the product can significantly enhance engagement in VIP groups. Brittany emphasizes being relatable and open, which encourages community members to participate more actively.
- Leveraging VIP Groups for Customer Feedback: Vonu uses its VIP groups not just for community interaction but also as a research tool. The feedback from group members helps shape product decisions and improve customer satisfaction, demonstrating the dual utility of these groups in both marketing and product development.
- Managing Inactive Members and Detractors: Brittany outlines her approach to handling inactive group members and addressing potential detractors. She maintains a welcoming environment without removing inactive participants but takes action against unreasonable behavior to protect the group’s positive dynamic.
Episode Links
Greg Shuey LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-shuey/
Brittany Harvey LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brittany-harvey/
Vonu: https://vonubaby.com/
Episode Transcript
Greg: 0:27
Shuey. Hey, everyone, welcome to the 7 Figures and Beyond e-commerce marketing podcast. I hope that everyone is just having a fantastic day and are ready for another great episode, and I’m really excited about our guest today. Her name is Brittany Harvey and she is the founder of a baby brand called Vonu. Did I say that right?
Brittany: 0:48
You did. That’s perfect.
Greg: 0:50
Vonu no, it’s Vonu, okay. Vonu has developed an innovative multi-use lounger for infants that really help them get used to tummy time and help them with reflux and gas relief. Honestly, brittany, I wish this existed. 13 years ago, when we had our son, he was the king of reflux. For the first eight months of his life. He was always spitting up, throwing up that kid. He wore a permanent bib and it was always soaked, and it was an interesting time. So I’m really excited about our topic today that we’re going to be going through. We’re going to be talking about how to grow your e-commerce business by creating and cultivating VIP groups across different social platforms. This is something that you may or may not have heard of before, so we’re going to talk specifically about how your brand uses these groups to engage with loyal customers, customers with questions, content creators, etc. In order to fuel growth for the business. Brittany, thank you so much for being willing to spend some time with us this morning.
Brittany: 2:00
Yeah, thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Greg: 2:03
It’s going to be good. Yeah, thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here. It’s going to be good. So, before we jump in, would you just take a few minutes and introduce yourself to our listeners and share a little bit about your personal story and how you’ve gotten to where you are today?
Brittany: 2:17
Yeah, of course I wish I could tell you that I had like a very singular background in something and then jumped into entrepreneurship. But the truth is I’ve kind of dipped and dabbled in a lot of things over the years. So one of my degrees is in political science, the others in education. Yeah, I thought that I would be kind of an admin in education, so I’ve always wanted to work with kids, be around kids. I did that for a few years, worked in admissions at a top private school in the Midwest, and then one day my boyfriend now husband came in and was like I want to start a restaurant in Jamaica and so we moved to Jamaica for a few years and we started the restaurant. We came back right before COVID hit and once that happened I worked in another company that he had previous to the restaurant and we worked on some things. We’ve done some companies here and there projects. And then we moved to North Carolina and I decided I wanted to give PR a go and I got into the PR industry and worked with some big names Lexus, I worked with them on Black Panther, we worked with Parkwood, which is Beyonce’s company, entertainment company for tour, and did some things around that it was super fun.
Brittany: 3:36
But then I had a baby and the traveling stopped and the momentum stopped and I was home and just really like settling into motherhood. And so Vonu, which actually originated as a company called Burpley, which you know that was short lived, but it was basically a one time company. At that time we invented this lounger and it coincided with my daughter’s own issues and struggles with gas. And so once we got it off the ground and realized that this is going to be more than a one product company, because as a parent you know, the challenges just keep stacking. It’s not just like fix the gas and now we’re good to go and we realized that. And so we really try to take a common sense approach to parenting challenges and we continue to expand our SKUs.
Brittany: 4:29
The company, and with that we changed the name to Vonu Von actually means hope and nu means new, so new hope, which is what children are. And yeah, that’s how we landed here today. Right now I’m actually in our warehouse, which is super exciting. It’s still new to us. We were fulfilling out of our garage for almost the first year. We just hit a year at the end of August and we’ve had this warehouse for about three months, and so it’s super exciting to see the expansion in something physical like a warehouse, and then also in the workload and the product skews and all those things. So that’s where we are today.
Greg: 5:07
Congratulations. That is exciting and maybe a little bit scary, to get a warehouse.
Brittany: 5:13
Every single day.
Greg: 5:17
Every single day. I love it. That’s cool, cool, cool. All right, so let’s kind of jump into our topic here VIP groups. So some people probably know what these are. Other people may not. I mean, I had a pretty good idea when we were talking about the topic, you know, before we got this scheduled, but can you just start out by explaining what a VIP group is and why they’ve been valuable for you and why they are valuable just for direct-to-consumer brands in general?
Brittany: 5:51
Absolutely so. A VIP group it can be many things, but basically it’s just a group on a lot of platforms you can use that you create to kind of foster community engagement, discounts, any of those things. But the center of it is your brand and you’re kind of welcoming people on a more personal level into your brand, your brand’s mission, aesthetic, all of these things, the information you’re trying to get out about your brand, rather than sending out an email to your email list of thousands of people. It’s a more intimate gathering of people who either already resonate with your brand, have questions about your brand, just depending on how you orient your VIP group.
Brittany: 6:36
For us it was pivotal. As a new mom, a first-time mom, I found myself frequenting a lot of forums, a lot of groups, even trying to stay in contact with other women I knew who had recently become mothers, and just those like 2am text messages about you know whether it was breastfeeding or sleep schedules or what may you. They were super helpful for me. So I knew when I started Vonu that these intimate settings were going to be super helpful for new parents, new moms and dads, you know, as they purchase our products or have questions or interact with us. It’s really been a place for us to kind of foster that community engagement with, like I mentioned, customers, people who are considering becoming customers, as well as content creators for us.
Greg: 7:29
That’s cool. Did you start these out of the gate or had you built up some sales first?
Brittany: 7:36
So we built up sales first, just because we wanted to be able to invite people into the group who had authentic experiences with our company, with our product, whether they were great and everything turned out perfect, or they got the product and they weren’t sure how to use it. There was an acclimation period, all of these things. We invited those people into the group initially because we wanted the newcomers or new customers to have a soundboard to ask questions and it wasn’t all coming from me as the founder, so we didn’t start it initially. We probably started our first group about six months into the company and for us, like luckily, we saw some rapid growth. So six months for us, we had a really good foundation of all types of customers who had the lounger for all uses and then after those six months, we started the first group and then about 90 days later we started the second group and the difference really was that we just use different platforms for each group we can jump into later.
Greg: 8:41
That’s cool, cool, cool. Um, out of curiosity about how many customers was that over six months that you invite? Did you invite them all?
Brittany: 8:51
No. So if we would have invited them all, it wouldn’t have been intimate at all. Um, there were thousands of customers by that point, and so how we went about it is kind of like you know you’ll have thousands of customers. Well, not all of them are super active on social media. Not all of them care to engage in a small group.
Brittany: 9:11
Not all of them really have anything to say, it’s just I needed this product, I got it, it worked and I moved on with life. Like, especially with the new right, it’s very difficult to expect engagement from our audience base, given the fact that you’re kind of in the trenches the first two years of parenthood and so it’s like to expect people to want to be on their phone and want to engage with you about your product can be difficult. How we went about invitations originally was like people who commented a lot on our content, who, like, seemed genuinely interested in us, in me and my daughter. I was very front facing when we originally launched and people would follow me on my personal platforms as well as the business platforms engage, dm, comment. So those people got invites. People who created content for us. There were people who got their lounger and just posted, you know, without us asking, took pictures and tagged us. Those people got invites. And then there were people who we just kind of put it out there on our stories at least once a week.
Brittany: 10:20
You know we have this VIP group. This is what we do in it. If you’d like to be a part of it, send a request, we’ll let you in and welcome, and so that’s kind of how we went through that selection process.
Greg: 10:31
So you probably started with a few hundred, I would imagine.
Brittany: 10:34
Yeah, so actually we started with just 100 and then, yeah, and it’s grown from there and you know, people will get the lounger and they’ll gift it to someone or recommend it to someone, and then they’ll invite that person into the group or just people who have purchased from us and follow us on Instagram and kind of see that call out to them Like we have this VIP group, feel free to join.
Brittany: 10:58
This is what we do in it. And so the first 100, we started on Facebook, actually, and some of those first 100 included friends and family who had purchased and we were just like explaining to them what we were trying to do with the VIP group and why we would appreciate them, if they genuinely had something to say, to drop it in there so other people who were not our friends and family could see that, like we’re real, this is real. We’re not just trying to get you to buy more stuff while you’re in the group and let’s have, like, some real conversations while we’re here.
Greg: 11:33
That’s cool, all right. So you know, if a brand’s listening to this, they’re like, okay, I want to, I want to start, I want to do this. This sounds like a good fit. What are the first steps that they should take when setting up a VIP group? Are there specific platforms you recommend? Is there a specific way that you structure these? Could you maybe help us understand that a little bit better?
Brittany: 12:00
Yeah, definitely. So first things first, I would say, decide what your purpose for your VIP group is going to be.
Brittany: 12:07
So there are VIP groups where it’s just like we put exclusive discounts in this group and there isn’t really conversation. It’s more just about we offer these people exclusive discounts with, you know, the hope or expectation that they might post something or be excited about it enough to tag us share it with people they know. So there’s that style. There’s the style where it’s purely community building and you just want to have conversations with people and it might start off as more something to do with your personal branding and then you end up developing a product off your personal branding. Those are usually good fits for that right, because you start up a community based on who you are, what you do, what you believe, how you share things, and then you add a product into it.
Brittany: 12:51
There are also groups that just focus on content creators. So it’s more like business and versus community building, where you just want to work with people who will create content on your behalf for a product that they enjoy or believe in, that you’re gifting them most of the time, and so once you decide those things, then you can kind of orient after that. So for us it was kind of all of the above and we decided from the jump we wanted all those types of people to be in one group, and then we decided our platform. So our original platform we started the group on was Facebook, and going into that, we believed that Facebook would be the place that a lot of moms gather and spend their time scrolling, and so it would be a seamless thing. They just get, get you know like any other facebook group.
Speaker 1: 13:45
Basically they get notifications.
Brittany: 13:47
They come in, comment, have anything to say, share anything, what have you? Um, we later realized that our demographic is actually more instagram based, so created another group. Yeah, I wasn’t expecting that. I’m not sure why, because I think sometimes I’m like, I’m like as if I’m not the average mom, right, like I’m 30 years old, I’m a mom, and sometimes I’m just like no, like moms are older than me, they’re going to be on Facebook and I still haven’t realized. No, like you’re the mom now, like I would.
Brittany: 14:23
I would say my generation in terms of millennials, are functioning more day to day on Instagram and probably TikTok, and so that was something we realized pretty early on and added a second group on Instagram and have seen way more engagement, like exponentially more engagement than Facebook, and so that’s just to say you know, pick your platform wisely and if you’re not seeing the engagement, go ahead and add on another platform to see if that’s the reason why we have our Facebook VIP group. Still, it’s just not as as popping, I guess, as the Instagram group, and so we still post in there and there are still people who ask questions in there and, honestly, it seems to be people who have bought the laundry as a gift Um sometimes grandparents even which is cool because we can cater more of our content and conversation to that demographic and how they can be of help or whatever to their grandchildren while using the lounger.
Greg: 15:32
Got it. Do you ever worry that those platforms might disappear and you might lose your groups one day?
Brittany: 15:37
So no, I rarely worry that meta will disappear, I just think that. So I think there can be glitches with the group, absolutely, and something can happen, god forbid, um. But we do try to collect emails so people who are in our groups we do, like I said, because we offer discounts, because we offer um kind of like e-guides to certain things, that will be free and you just have to give us your email so we can send you the e-guide.
Greg: 16:08
You have first party data on them.
Brittany: 16:10
Exactly. We always try to prompt that interaction at some point because, I mean, everybody knows that first party data is invaluable as a company, as a company specifically that caters to children who are growing. So there will always be a product in the pipeline like no matter your child’s age. So that’s definitely a priority of ours at all times.
Greg: 16:36
Got it Cool, all right. So once you’ve started to build these groups up, you’ve got, you know, a hundred was was your initial target. I’m sure they’ve grown bigger than that. Uh, how do you keep these people engaged, like, how do you nurture and maintain relationships with them, um, and make sure that they don’t just go dark on you?
Brittany: 16:58
Yeah. So I would say that’s kind of the easy part, um, putting yourself out there, putting information out there. I guess the scary part is our is it going to be reciprocated? And so like things like today, when I got to the office and I was setting up for our conversation, I just took a quick selfie, dropped it in our vip group and was like, hey, I’m to be on a podcast this morning. Wish me luck. I hope everyone’s having a great day and if you’re not, let’s reset our intentions and and finish the week off strong and so just little things like that that make the group myself as the founder more personable.
Brittany: 17:39
I try to do those things. I tried to ask questions. There was an article yesterday in the New Yorker where the cover art was a bit controversial and in the mom world it was basically like a cover art and it looked like nannies in the city were taking care of children more than their parents were. Like that was kind of what it was working to evoke and so you know we had conversation about that. It’s not always so product focused for us. Now there are some groups where the way you’ll engage is that you drop those discounts weekly or those specials or those free resources and people will take advantage. And that’s kind of the summation of the interaction in those groups. It’s just a little bit more developed because, you know, as I shared, I wanted it to be a real space for parents. I spoke, I focus on mothers specifically because I am one and so it seems easiest to relate to mothers and so you know we just share things like that. And because Vonu’s focuses on kind of developmental things, we share information about that or questions that we have as mothers.
Brittany: 18:54
Concerns Our group, you know it can be product focused, but not always, like I mentioned. And then sometimes you know we get new products in or we get samples in and I’ll just snap a shot, share it with the group. You know which patterns do you like of these lounger covers that we’re considering releasing and I’ll do a poll and see which ones they like? Or do you think we missed the mark on on these pattern covers? You know what would you have liked to see that we didn’t end up going with and get feedback there, how you know how’s your baby doing this or that Like, what’s something you’re looking for that you’re not getting like with your interactions with your child or your baby, just things like that.
Brittany: 19:38
We ask for a lot of feedback, we ask for a lot of participation and people have shown up and done that and it’s formed decisions for us. And this is something I actually got from Hush Blankets I don’t know if you’ve heard of them, yeah, but yeah, based out of Canada, and they spoke a lot about how they would call their customers on the phone in those early days and get the feedback good, bad in between and then actually act on it, and so that’s something that you know I take seriously as the founder and as somebody who kind of has boots on the ground at all times, I consider, like these groups, you know my boots on the ground and so it’s really cool to get that and it allows them to stay engaged as well when they don’t feel like they always have to say good things or they feel like they don’t have to be honest, there’s really none of that in our groups.
Greg: 20:32
That’s awesome. I love that you’re using it for research. It’s one of the big things that we do here at our agency. We lead with research, specifically customer research, and you’d be surprised at how many brands I talk with who have never, ever, tapped their customer base for any kind of research or insights. It’s it’s mind blowing, and so I love that. I love that you do that. What do you do if, like, a group of people just kind of go dark on you? Do you worry about it? Do you remove them from the group? Like, how do you, how do you handle that?
Brittany: 21:05
So we don’t remove people from the group unless they’re like instances which haven’t happened for us. But this is kind of like our rule of thumb. If it does, you know, if somebody is like so it’s fine to come to the group with an issue, Don’t mind that at all.
Brittany: 21:26
We usually we try to address the issue in the group setting because that’s where it’s been brought you know, whatever the issue is, and then also, like I would dm them to further address anything like if there’s something going on with the product or their experience and, um, you know, if that doesn’t solve it. Basically, people are not being reasonable.
Greg: 21:45
If they become a detractor, they need to go.
Brittany: 21:48
Exactly, exactly. That’s probably our only rule of thumb. If somebody is just not active, we don’t remove them, because you know, as a new parent, as a mom, I completely understand. Like there are times where it’s like six weeks I’m just like under out of it, like you’re exhausted, you’re tired, you’re frustrated, and this one thing sets you off Exactly Like my kids going through a leap.
Brittany: 22:13
then the household gets the flu and then I’m trying to meal prep and we’re trying to get on a workout and it’s just like you look up in six weeks, they’ve gone by. And look up in six weeks, they’ve gone by. And yeah, last thing you’re worried about is a product’s vip group, and I get it, I get it, so they don’t get removed. Um, but sometimes you know, we’ll try to lure them back in. Like if we realize somebody was in often speaking and um was very like engaged and they’re gone, I might send them a personal d DM and just be like hey, just checking in. Like, are you okay?
Greg: 22:45
Are you still there?
Brittany: 22:46
Yeah, and you know some of you a part of it. The selfish part is for Vonu right, because they’re part of our group and they were someone who who had a lot to say, but the other part is just humanity. Like I noticed you’re gone, Like I hope you’re okay, Don’t worry about us, but you know I hope things are going okay and you just needed a break.
Greg: 23:06
That’s awesome, cool. So, as you’ve done this for the last six months, like what are some of the biggest problems you’ve had or biggest challenges that you faced with this approach?
Brittany: 23:27
So, I think, the biggest issue that we ran into was that initial one where the Facebook group just wasn’t doing well. I will post daily, sometimes twice a day, and I just was the most.
Greg: 23:34
I was not doing anything.
Brittany: 23:36
Yeah, the most I was getting was like a like or a heart or whatever the case was, and it was definitely being like and also being pushed down on my priority list, right, because?
Brittany: 23:47
I wasn’t getting the reciprocation and, as a founder, it’s like our company is so small and it’s growing so fast. I can’t really waste time on things that aren’t yielding any type of result, and so that was difficult for me. And, you know, after just like having the thinking about it, we moved to Instagram and you know, like I said, the engagement has been exponential comparatively and it’s a way like more fun, I guess, experience for lack of better phrasing, better phrasing, but I would say that was one of our bigger challenges. The other one, I think, knowing what type of interaction?
Brittany: 24:34
people are looking for in these groups and kind of molding your content and your information around that. So I think initially I was posting in the groups just to get something out there daily, have something to say.
Speaker 1: 24:49
And.
Brittany: 24:50
I think that led to losing some of my personality and authenticity in those early days and to which there wasn’t much response.
Brittany: 25:02
And so, I think, realizing that at the end of the day, these are moms and parents who just happen to buy our product, you know, outside of that interaction, that transaction, they’re regular people going through similar things, living, you know, in different areas of the country where different things are going on constantly, and so I opened the floor to just more general conversation and what happened was I shared my fears and my worries in terms of just daily things.
Brittany: 25:39
We had an incident where our daughter choked and it was like a serious choke and we had to call 911. Luckily, we were both prepared with the knowledge of like first aid, and so we were able to like clear it and thankfully she was fine, but like obviously the scariest moment of our lives and so sharing like those incidents, like you know, just take like I just want to put this out there this happened to us Like please, if you can, take precaution with certain things, because you know it wasn’t something that we thought she could choke on and you know, just putting that out there and for some people that’s great, right.
Brittany: 26:18
They they feel more empowered with like knowledge and other sharing experiences and those precautions. Some people it’s like they’re already anxious enough and that’s kind of triggering and they might not be the best fit for our group because we do talk about some of those things we talk about. You know our concerns. If our kids like kind of have like flathead in one area, are they getting enough tummy time, should I take them to our pediatrician? Like I’m concerned about that. And then also reassurance, right, there’s moms in there who have been through these situations already, have three, four kids and they’re like so glad everything’s okay. Or my third kid did need a helmet, it was very Been there, done that.
Greg: 26:58
Here’s what you should do, yeah.
Brittany: 27:00
Yeah, exactly, and that’s been super helpful. I think today in you know, the Western world we live such singular lives. We’re not often in a close vicinity with family, with elders and with parenthood. We miss the mark a bit with those relationships in that proximity, because it provides so much value. So just having older moms in the group, older women in the group who are able to share some of that knowledge, those remedies, their experiences, and then it just kind of brings you back down to earth, Like okay, like this isn’t, this isn’t it. For me, it’s not over. My, my six month old kid isn’t going to remember that I didn’t realize they were crawling yet and they crawled off the bed. Like they’t going to remember that I didn’t realize they were crawling yet and they crawled off the bed Like there wouldn’t be okay.
Greg: 27:51
That’s funny, cool. So how do you measure the success of this?
Brittany: 27:56
So for us, um, the measurement is a bit wonky, right, it’s not always just sales or numbers. So for that part, we do offer affiliate codes to some of our moms who are super interested in sharing the product with people. But we don’t want them to feel like they’re just doing something for nothing for us doing something for nothing for us. We want to compensate them for their time if it yields results, and so we offer the affiliate codes, and for some women it happens really well. I think we did this a few weeks ago. We sent out like 10 affiliate codes to moms who wanted it. One out of 10 has read over $1,000 already with her affiliate code, and the other nine we haven’t seen anything with. But that’s fine.
Brittany: 28:49
Pretty standard, right yeah yeah, exactly, and it’s a super easy process.
Brittany: 28:54
We use social snowball for that for affiliates, and they kind of pump out these codes for us and they take care of all the setup in terms of as soon as you know those sales hit, they get their percentage and the customer gets their discount, and so it’s it’s kind of a after setup, a hands-off experience for us, which is great because we don’t necessarily need another thing on our plate, but it does, um, give the moms who are participating a feeling of like, okay, my time here is valued and you know, if it yields results, I get compensated, and that’s great because no one is more busy than a new parent and time being more valuable.
Brittany: 29:37
And so that’s one of the ways we can measure is how those affiliate codes do. And then the other way is really engagement. Like we try to just keep people engaged. And then, lastly, if we’re offering discount codes, if we’re offering free resources, we’re able to track that level of engagement. You know conversion with those codes and those emails. So that’s pretty much how we measure it. We don’t set a lot of expectations on ourselves in terms of the VIP groups, just because it’s not something that I want to put that level of, I guess, severity and responsibility on, because I feel like we’ll end up back in the situation where things aren’t actually growing.
Brittany: 30:25
Our community isn’t growing because we’re worried about metrics and it really doesn’t take a huge investment from us right, like we’re already on these platforms.
Brittany: 30:35
Our customers or future customers are already on these platforms. We spend the money on meta to attract the audience and that’s the investment there. But as far as the groups like these are things I’m doing when I have the moment of downtime in my day or, you know, my daughter’s taking her nap and I can just hop in those groups and engage and no one’s expecting. Like every day at 8 am we’re having this conversation. You know we want people to be on the live and we don’t really associate that level of pressure with our VIP groups. I think some companies have seen success with mapping out metrics. I think it would be for a much different demographic than what we have, where I think you would find that valuable.
Greg: 31:20
Interesting, cool. Do you guys use post-purchase surveys at all to be able to kind of let people self-select where they came from?
Brittany: 31:27
Yeah, so we do use post-purchase surveys and then we also contract to a certain extent in terms of, like you, know, meta and Google ads and emails you know email campaigns and things like that and then kind of our landing pages. We’re able to learn, like, what reason they came for based on the ad they interacted with. So we do pay attention to all those metrics.
Brittany: 31:54
I would say our post-purchase surveys aren’t as strong as they could be at this point, but you know we’re a year in and we’re a very small team of four people that work full-time on Bonham, and so to be that small, it’s like sometimes post-purchase surveys aren’t at the top of the list of priorities. It’s more like infrastructure inventory content getting out Managing the new warehouse.
Greg: 32:24
you know bigger fit.
Brittany: 32:26
Yeah, exactly Exactly Seeing who’s going to unload a semi coming to my house at 2 am with 20 pallets of inventory to get in my garage.
Greg: 32:37
So fun yeah.
Brittany: 32:40
It’s been a thrill.
Greg: 32:42
So where do you see the future of this strategy going? Like, I don’t see VIP groups going away. I mean platforms come and go, so I would imagine adoption of new platforms, but where do you see this going over the next few years?
Brittany: 32:56
Yeah, I definitely see softwares getting into the business of VIP groups. I would not be surprised if there’s someone in the next year emailing me asking me do I have time for a demo Like how to better organize your VIP group, how to automate things, things like that.
Greg: 33:18
Hey, you’re giving me a new business idea right here.
Brittany: 33:21
Yeah, I know, I’m kind of as I’m saying it out loud I’m like whoa, maybe that’s something you should work on. Yeah, so I I definitely don’t think they’re going anywhere. I think they’re here to stay. I’ve seen brands like dad gang, uh, the hat brand, who have just like crushed it with vip thousands on thousands of people in their groups commenting under their meta ads, like just like building a loyal following. I think gone are the days of e-com and DTC using just social media organically to kind of build that cult following.
Brittany: 33:57
I think it’s gonna take a little more effort and I think with Gen Z it’s like we’re kind of rewinding in a way. So it’s like they’re not so much interested in what your appeal to the masses. You know they want to be spoken to on a more personal level and you know the oldest of Gen Zers are becoming parents as well now and so, with that thought in mind and how they want to be spoken to, it really is more of in a VIP group manner. Even if you have a dozen VIP groups which, as someone who runs one, sounds like a nightmare, I think that those pods with maybe a designated ambassador of the brand so it’s not you and every group might be able to, to speak to those people more, and I think it’s a thing of the future, not the past. Like I don’t see it dying out in any way, I just see it expanding and becoming more popular, platform specifically being created to integrate with those groups and provide maybe some automation, Like I mentioned. That’s where I see it going.
Greg: 35:07
Very cool. Well, you’ve shared a lot with us today. I really appreciate it. Do you have any final words of wisdom that you want to share with our listeners?
Brittany: 35:15
I wish that I could share some really cool saying that would like the mass audience and, you know, would leave them wanting more and following me on my platforms. But I think the reality is, with entrepreneurship, it’s just hard and it’s a lot of work and you have to be committed. You know, when you start a company, when you started the IP group, when you sit down and work on an email campaign like you have to be committed to the details on an email campaign like you have to be committed to the details you have to be committed to the sacrifice. You have to be committed to learning and continuing to grow and assessing data, and I think that it’s never ending right? Oh, I do have one saying and this applies to art, but I apply it to entrepreneurship it’s like the project is never finished, we just run out of time. To entrepreneurship, it’s like the project is never finished, we just run out of time.
Brittany: 36:06
So it’s like every time I look at something, I’m like we’ll send it out, and I’m like, oh my God, I wish I would have done this, I wish I would have done that, and it’s like I didn’t finish it. I just ran out of time, like the deadline was over and the campaign needed to go out and that’s where it ended. And I think that’s what entrepreneurship is like Nothing’s ever finished, you just run out of time. So, with that in mind, I just try to do my best on each thing and and get it out there for the world to see.
Greg: 36:32
That’s amazing, that’s fantastic. I also would probably add to that is like focus, right. Like pick your two or three things and focus. If you get stretched too thin, you’re going to run out of the time. Right, you’re not going to finish the projects, you’ve just got to ship stuff. So I like that. That’s a great stopping point. Thank you so much.
Brittany: 36:54
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Greg: 36:57
I really enjoyed that discussion. So, for our listeners, we really appreciate Brittany. We appreciate everything that she shared with us. I hope that each of you had a chance to be able to pull, you know, a couple of really good nuggets out of this that you can then take and start executing. So, as always, take what you’ve learned here and make a plan and then take massive action against that plan. Thank you everyone.
Brittany: 37:29
So much for joining.
Greg is the founder and CEO of Stryde and a seasoned digital marketer who has worked with thousands of businesses, large and small, to generate more revenue via online marketing strategy and execution. Greg has written hundreds of blog posts as well as spoken at many events about online marketing strategy. You can follow Greg on Twitter and connect with him on LinkedIn.
