Great Ideas Are Worthless Without Distribution

speaker-0: If the product itself and your materials and your assets are no longer a competitive advantage, what is? You know what's better than a lead? If I spend money, I get it back. My number one goal is always customers. But that doesn't mean that's what you need to do.
speaker-1: What are some other types of content that you think will work?
speaker-0: What you can consistently create is more important than what you create. Make the thing as good as possible.
speaker-1: I used to think that you build the thing first and then figure out how to get it in front of people. You build the product or service, then go find customers. Build it and they will come. But I'm starting to realize that those conversations with potential customers need to happen much earlier. The way that people respond to just the idea, before you actually go and build the thing, will tell you what to actually build, how to talk about it, and validate whether or not anyone cares enough about the problem that you're solving to actually pay for it. So with that, I'm excited to be joined today by Greg Rolette. Greg is the head of growth at Gromit, a product discovery platform that helps makers, inventors, and early stage product founders get their products in front of real shoppers. Before Gromit, Greg spent years in the media and video production industry, building shows and helping businesses tell their stories. In our conversation today, we discuss why distribution should start before the product is finished, how to find out if people will pay for an idea before you overbuild it, and have a garage filled with 10,000 products that nobody wants. And how to create a small and engaged customer instead of just generating more passive leads. If you get value from our conversation today, be sure to subscribe and share it with a friend. And now here is my conversation with Greg Rolette. Greg, thank you so much for being here.
speaker-0: Dude, Ian, appreciate it, man. It's gonna be a lot of fun.
speaker-1: Absolutely. So Greg, you've seen thousands of makers and inventors try to launch products, right? Probably all of them good ideas that solve a problem. But why do some products actually sell while others never really get traction?
speaker-0: Well, you said something in that is that that they solve a problem. And I think that that is actually the most important thing, right? If there if there's no actual problem that people will pay to solve, your product is never going to gain traction. And so I see so many inventors, people that have spent their, you know, years trying to develop a product. Maybe they spent their life savings on, you know, building prototypes and getting patents and finally making these products. And no one wants it. Like no one wants the thing. And so I think like the number one thing above all else, right? Before we get into marketing, before we get into packaging, before we get into branding is like, will someone give you money for this thing? And you know, it's why, you know, I've done a ton in the past with like things like the Kickstarters of the world and the indie go go's of the world. And, you know, in like the info marketing space, like you would sell it before you actually create it, right? Like, is there demand for for this thing? I think that is the number one thing that I think people need to think about is. Am I the only person in the world that has this problem? Am I inventing a problem that people don't even have, right? So now there's a ton of education that needs to come in before the product is sold. Or is there like this huge problem that people have? Like Gary Halbert, the old copywriter, used to say, like, what's the best way to sell hamburgers? Like, put it next to a crowd that is starving for hamburgers, right? Like put it in a place, you know, where people are getting off work and they are starving and they want hamburgers. Like that's the most important thing when it comes to having a successful product. So Solving a problem that other people will pay money for, hands down, number one thing that separates products from that do well with products that don't do well.
speaker-1: Starving crowd, hundred percent. I love that. So how do you encourage whether it's a product founder or a service based founder to kind of go out and do that initial research, right? Where you're selling it before you create it? Like what does that actually look like?
speaker-0: Again, I think one of the problems. So I came from the music music world, right? So when I was 18, I dropped out of school and decided I wanted to be a rapper and started like touring the country and doing all this stuff. But musicians, especially back then, this is like 30 years ago, you would spend all of your money and you would record this album and then you'd go to this place called Discmakers and then you'd order like 10,000 CDs and it would just show up at your house and you would go, ⁓ crap, like now what do I do? Right. You're like, holy crap, now I have to sell all of this stuff. And I think today that is like the most backwards way that that people can do things. ⁓ because it costs a lot of money, takes a lot of time. And you really want to know, like, do I have something here first? The same thing is true. Like, I was just at a pitch competition ⁓ with Kevin Harrington, one of the original sharks from Shark Tank. And all of these people come at him with like, Hey, like, I've got 10,000 of these now in my garage. Like, can you help me sell them? And he's like, So you didn't even ask anybody if they wanted this before you just went and got all of these widgets? And so I think there's couple things. Like one, it's never been easier to do research because you could just jump into Claude, Perplexity, Chat GPT, and start asking these things. You can look at, you know, are people searching for this? ⁓ are people in Reddit forums? Like, does this an actual problem that you have? You know, you can start with organic content. I think this is one of the biggest things you could do is film a video just being like, you know, hey, what's up? I'm Greg. And I got this big problem. Here it is. You know, and do you get comments? Or do people care? Is there any emotional connection to this? Shoot a bunch of videos. See if any of them connect. You know, I think one of the misconceptions is that competition is bad. Well, if there's a ton of competition, that probably means there's a lot of people buying the product. How can you innovate on it? How can you make it better? How can you make it more unique? How can you make it more unique to you as the person making it? So, and then the other side, ⁓ you mentioned it. I mentioned earlier with like Kickstarter is do pre-orders, right? I think pre-orders is one of the number one things that you can do to see if there is demand, but also to see if you're the right person to sell it, right? Like, do you have what it takes to go out there and like market it? You know, I started ⁓ you can kind of see it over my shoulder here, these sunglasses. So this is a sunglass brand. I started with my son. He's he was 12 at the time, he's 13 now. We started last or two summers ago on the road, he was in like all-stars, right? You see like the Little League World Series and stuff like that. It was in that, and we were at regionals in North Carolina, and then we were gonna go to the World Series in ⁓ in Indiana, and We started doing these videos like every day, like TikTok videos. And all of a sudden, he was getting a thousand followers, two thousand followers, five thousand followers, six thousand followers. And in every video, it was like, When can I get the glasses? When can I get the glasses? Like, when can I get like we were showing teasers and behind the scenes and like the whole process of building this? The day we released our glasses, we sold out in 24 hours because we had built up this demand for the glasses. And now you're like, Cool. Like, so we never had to guess that it was what people wanted. And so Anyway, I just gave like 10 different ways to do it. I think just pick pick one or two that are that are great to you. I mean, I I every day I'm sitting in Claude and I'm just like, hey, do some deep research for me. Figure this out for me. And then how do I like now go and validate that? Right. And I I think we live in a beautiful time where you don't have to guess as much as we did before. The second thing that's really, really difficult is sometimes there is gut and intuition because maybe it is a brand new category. Maybe you are playing in a blue ocean. Maybe you are trying to design something that has never been seen. Like, Sometimes you do have to go off your gut. Maybe you're riding like, you know, a biohacking trend or somebody that you're seeing in the marketplace, ⁓ a new superfood that's coming out and you want to take a jump or a leap into that. ⁓ there's a new technology that you want to play with. So sometimes you do have to rely on your gut, but man, I I think if you can't get somebody to say yes before you go and spend all of your money, you're gonna be in a tough position.
speaker-1: Yeah. And you're getting them to say yes to like in a lot of different ways, right? You're getting them to say yes by hey, just I'm gonna watch this video that this guy made where he's talking about this thing, right? That's them saying yes and saying, Yes, I'm interested, I'm gonna watch this video about this thing. Or getting them to say yes and say, Okay, yeah, I'll enter my email to get notifications and learn more about, hey, maybe potential future updates of when this product is gonna be ready. There's a lot of different ways that you get people to say yes before you ask them the big question of, Hey, will you buy? But I think everything that you just laid out there is brilliant. I think the first part of what you talked about is ⁓ really the the magic of a platform like Kickstarter because it gets you gives you the opportunity to like, hey, I'm promoting this product here on this platform. When this is ready, how many of you will actually buy? And people get to ⁓ sign up on that list. But I think another thing that you mentioned in there is there is a difference between the person that can come up with a great idea for a product and the person that can bring it to the market, right? Are you the right person that's going to bring it to the market? And you talked about the process that you and your son went through with the glasses of showing a lot of behind the scenes, right? That is a real ability to kind of have that creativity and that wherewithal to do that stuff, right? To create that content and put it out there in the world. Most people, I think, including myself, would just be like, all right, I'm going to wait until this is done. This is fully polished. And then it's just like, I gotta make a big announcement. Hey, sunglasses are ready. So what do you think makes somebody qualified or like what what does somebody have to do to effectively bring a product to market? Like what does that look like?
speaker-0: Yeah. So I believe today, so we're filming this like in summer twenty twenty six, that founder led startups is there there's no other way to go because usually we're cash strapped and resource strapped when we're starting a business, right? Like there are unicorn cases where maybe you've raised money, you exited another business and you're bringing in capital. But most people, when they're starting out, they got no money, right? They're broke, you know, or their capital is is in other places. And so you can't just day one say like, Hey, I got a sunglass brand, and now let me go spend five, 10 grand a day on meta and and create demand, right? If that's you, great, you don't need to watch this video. But I would assume most people are like, whoa, I can't, I don't have any money to spend on meta ads or whatever it is. So I think in 2026, founder-led content, especially organic content, is the way to go. And I'm not the only one preaching this. There's a ton of people that talk about this, but TikTok will show your videos for free if they're good. To a bunch of people, and you can create an audience literally overnight. Instagram will do the same thing, YouTube Shorts will do the same thing, short form video. And it's something that right now, like, you know, this is what my son and I were actually we're we we're changed a little bit and we're starting a backpack company. So every day he just got on summer break. So this is this is we're filming this on a Thursday. So he's four days into this series. Every day he pulls out his phone and he gives an update on here's what we're doing with our bag company. Hey, we just got the zippers in. Here's a cool little zipper. It's behind the scenes. If you guys want to know more about this, make sure you, make sure you, you know, like the page or follow the page or like whatever it is. And the next day he's like, man, I'm so excited. We just got this really cool bat bat pocket and it's going to do this and it's going to do that. And he's just every day, he's just doing something. And some days is doing nothing. He's just like, hey, like, here's something cool that I want to put in my bag. It's like a cool new like bat tape or something that's going to go in the bag. And this is how it's going to work. And like, but every day he's creating this. And so he's getting people to follow along on the journey. And I think that's what everyone can do. They want to see, they want to support you. Like, think about, like, again, I I do a lot of music parallels, right? Is that if you got to see Taylor Swift create her album every step of the way, which she does sometimes. She shows herself in the studio and this is raw and how I make the songs. And this is a lyric that I'm thinking about. What do you guys think about this? Now you're inviting people who are going to become your fans, your super fans, and ultimately your customers into the process of like, hey, I'm creating this this cup. What do you guys this? This is a really cool green. Or Do you guys want to see more of like a forest green or a winter green? Or like, what do you guys think? And just whether you care about their feedback or not, you're just engaging and and building this community so that when the cup actually comes out, someone's like, Yo, Ian, I saw that video where you picked that green color. Yo, I'm gonna buy one, right? And so ⁓ you know, just getting on camera, and I get it, some people's personalities don't lend themselves to camera as much as others, but I think in today's world, like you're gonna be creating media one way or another. Either you're gonna pay other creators to get UGC content or, you know, reviews or influencers, or you can do it yourself. And I think doing it yourself is gonna give you much more power and leverage because you you become the brand, right? You create you become the voice as opposed to like paying these creators to do it. So again, you know, whether you're gonna do ads, whether you're gonna do other kinds of like you gotta create media. There's no other way to come pro to create a brand today than to create media. So whether you're the creator or you're gonna pay someone else, I'd rather you just do it yourself.
speaker-1: Yeah. Man, Greg, you were coming on here dropping absolute heat. This is awesome. Like and the energy that you're doing it with is just ⁓ exhilarating. You're like, you're turning I was telling him I'm feeling sick before this, but you're turning this all around. I'm feeling better already. Yeah. So like what you're saying reminds me a lot of what a previous guest had said, which is his name is Ellie Borziglu, and he talked about this idea that the founder archetype has changed, where in the you know, late nineteen hundreds all the way up to the internet age, the Founder archetype was somebody who was just really good at the numbers, right? The accounting, right? They could do the back end leadership kind of old school baggy suit, jacket kind of leadership and business principles. Then it shifted into, okay, now we're in the internet age. Now it's the software engineer, is the founder archetype. Like that is the ideal 10X founder, looks like a software engineer, somebody that understands the code, somebody who can scale the product, right? And understands the product really well. Now he argues, Ellie argued that the founder archetype is changing again. Because of this code, the product, like all of creating all that stuff is just a lot more democratized where you don't really need a software development skill in order to create an amazing product. But it's being able to bring that product to market in today's world, which is done through content creation, is really the most valuable skill that any founder can have today. So in doing what you're encouraging, which is, you know, document the process, be really bad at it. For a while, right? Because you're gonna create a lot of content that nobody's gonna watch for a long time. But you just have to intentionally focus on getting better and better and better every single time. Like me with this podcast, right? If I go back and watch the first podcast that I ever did, it's horrendous. And I'm still, I'm sure I have a long way to grow as it relates to being a podcast host, but just try and intentionally get better every single day because I do think that you are learning the most valuable skill that anybody could have right now, which is the ability to bring products to market in today's content ecosystem.
speaker-0: Yeah, and I'll I'll go a step further that whether you want to call it content or not, I believe that the moat for most businesses today is distribution, right? So whether that's distribution through organic content on social, that could be distribution through retail channels, that could be distribution through partnerships, that could be, but like distribution really is the moat. How are you going to get your product in front of potential customers? Again, whether you're an agency, whether you're selling info, whether you're selling ⁓ you know, D2C products, whatever it is, how are you going to get your product in front of these people? Right. So You can be, you know, a very technical founder. Maybe you're an inventor who you like tinkering and you like doing the 3D renderings and all that stuff. You gotta find somebody who's good at distribution. Because are you gonna are you gonna license that? Are you gonna get it into retail? Are you going to be, are you building this to exit so you could sell it to another company that maybe has better infrastructure than you, but that's distribution, right? What is your distribution strategy? I think is the is the bigger. thing when you're thinking about bringing any product to market is, you know, is is meta ads. That's a distribution channel. Amazon and Amazon and that whole ecosystem is a distribution channel. There are, you know, on the product side, there's there's sites like ours at the Gromit. There's sites like Product Hunt. There's site like what is your distribution strategy? Because like you said, if anyone can create the app, it's who's better at marketing the app. It's who's better at getting that app distributed into places where people are going to say yes. And so, you know, look, like I'm a content guy. I think content is the way to go, but it comes easy. It's natural to me. If it doesn't come natural to you, like ads might be your distribution channel. You know, UGC content might be your distribution channel, but you have to think about how am I going to distribute this product out into the marketplace today and what's unique about how I'm bringing it to the marketplace? Because again, I say this when I speak a lot. I say that like literally everything can be copied. If you have a great website, right, for your agency and you got all this cool stuff and it looks amazing. Well, I can literally just take the URL, put it into Claude Design and say, make me this website, but put my logo on it. And in three minutes, I've literally cloned your website. If you have a really cool app, let's say ⁓ maybe you have ⁓ you know, some kind of a you're a Facebook ad agency and you're helping companies run their ads and you have a really cool like calculator that helps people to figure out their ad spend, I can literally go to Claude Code and be like, hey, make me a calculator like this, but put my branding on it. And you can have it in the app store tomorrow. So if the product itself And your materials and your assets are no longer a competitive advantage. What is? Well, it's you and it's your distribution. That's it, right? What makes you unique? What makes you different? What makes your product or service stand out in the marketplace? And how are you going to distribute it? That's really the only white space that there is today.
speaker-1: Yeah. So when you say distribution, can you explain what you mean? So it's it's the it's the actual getting the product in the customer's hands, right? It's like the actual shipping it to them, right? Distribution. Then it's also the marketing and like the how you're communicating and attracting clients, is that right? Like how you're kind of Yeah, I think
speaker-0: Think about distribution as like as like your channel, right? So you have organic distribution, you have owned distribution, and then you have rented distribution. So, you know, organic distribution would be like content, right? I'm gonna put a video up on TikTok and I'm I'm hoping that TikTok gods will show my video to people, right? So you know, any organic media that you create. Owned media is is my favorite. This is the one that I think that every business, like this is your email list, this is your SMS list, this is If you're old school and sending direct mail, you know, to people, which I still think is super effective. It's like I own this media and I know that if I send an email out, all my people are gonna get it. Now they might not all open it, but they're all gonna get it, right? So your owned media, your customer list, your prospect list, anything that you own and control. And then the third would be like rented media or rented distribution. So that's gonna be my product on Amazon. I don't own Amazon, I don't control Amazon, they can take me down at any point. Running meta ads, that's rented distribution because they can shut your ad account down or They can triple their prices today and you just don't have any control over that. You're renting it. Retail would also be like rented distribution. You're renting shelf space at Target or Walmart or CVS or Dick Sporting Goods like wherever, wherever that you are. So there's organic distribution, which is where you're creating stuff and you're putting it out on these platforms. There's owned distribution, which is where you ultimately want to get to. And that's the biggest, biggest play and the biggest opportunity. And then there's rented distribution. So those are the three channels that like I look at. And I think you do need to be using all of them. You know, you should be creating content that you're putting out there and trying to get distribution, which should drive people to buy your product or service or sign up for your email lists for your own distribution. And then yeah, you want to be in the targets and the Walmarts and the Amazons and the Gromets and the all these different rented dish distributed places, but ultimately you want to try to port them to to distribution that you own and control. The bigger your list is, the easier that it's going to be to sell the next product, to upsell them, to cross-sell them, to, you know, maybe promote an affiliate program, whatever that it is. But you're using these other channels to bring people into your Into your home.
speaker-1: When you're approaching the process of building out your own distribution channel, how do you think about that? Like how do you approach that project or that task? Like how do you think about that idea?
speaker-0: My number one goal is always customers. How can I generate a customer? Because I think that the customer is more important than just getting an email lead or whatever it is. So ⁓ I was telling you this right before we went live. So I had a video marketing agency and forever we ran Facebook ads to try to generate, ⁓ you know, they'd watch like a VSL, like a video sales letter. They'd watch like a 10 minute video of me saying, You need video because video is awesome and you should create video. Now book a call with me so I can sell you video. That's what most agencies do, right? Very expensive to get a lead. Very hard to convert that lead. Most people don't show up to the calls. The calls aren't fun for me. The calls aren't fun for the person, right? Like we we all know that model, right? It's not amazing. Webinars, same thing. You're spending money to get a webinar lead, you know, and very small percentage of them converted. So I was like, man, like, you know what's better than a lead? A customer. So we created ⁓ video marketing cheat sheet. So like it was an actual journal that ⁓ we sent out to people that had a 52-week calendar in it with prompts. So like here's a prompt. To start your business. And then here's a template or a format to like record your video. So it was a video planner. We sold it for like, I don't remember what it was, like seven to ten bucks, like somewhere in there. And so someone, instead of coming to a webinar or coming to a VSL, it was like, hey, do you want to create video? We'll literally tell you exactly what to say and how to say it and we'll mail this thing to your house. So now we would generate a customer. And then we had a couple upsells and things like that. Our goal on our marketing was to break even with this video planner. So if I spent $1,000 today, I wanted to make a thousand dollars back. I was breaking even. So now instead of spending money to get leads, I was spending money to generate a customer, but I actually was never losing money. Now, was it always exact math? No, I know I'm simplifying it for the sake of this podcast, right? But you know, essentially if I spend a thousand bucks today, I want to get a thousand dollars back. Now, the cool thing is now these all these people got our video planner in the mail. They used it. And then in the video planner like, Hey, do you want help filming and editing your videos? You know, call us. And so they would get the video planner. ⁓ you know, Ian would get it, he'd film his first video, he'd get his phone out. Well, then he would tag us, right? So we get marketing from that of like, Hey, I got my video planner in the mail. Hey, Greg, I just I just created my first video. We had like a Facebook community and stuff. And then they'd be like, Greg, I need help editing. Do you know how much easier that sale is at that point than trying to convince somebody on a webinar or a VSL? And then when that person came in, 100% profit. Like is obviously instead of like goods sold and like what it costs to deliver the service, but there's no marketing spend because they're already customers. So I implore people when you're building your own channel, how can you get somebody at some level to buy something from you? Right. And so ⁓ I mentioned earlier the backpack company I'm creating with my son Colt. So these are gonna be high end baseball bags. So most baseball backpacks are like a hundred to a hundred and fifty dollars. Ours is gonna be two to two fifty. So we wanted high end, we wanted luxury, we wanted like to step up in the marketplace, but we sell this thing called a glove loop. It goes on the outside of your of your bag and you just put your glove on it. It's to keep your glove like protected. All the cool kids in baseball are using them, but they're made really, really, really bad. And so we were like, Well, what if we did we gave them away for free? It was like free plus shipping. And we could just get all these people to get our glove loop. It's gonna be more badass than any other glove loop in the market. They're gonna get it and they're gonna be like, now I want the bag. Right. And so now I can spend money to get this customer to get this glove loop and they love it. And then I'm like, Hey, Ian, if you love that glove loop. Christmas is coming up. Do you want to get little Johnny a new bag? Boom. And they already know us. They like our brand, whatever it is. So we are finding ways instead of like join my email list to learn eight ways to pack your backpack better. That's the dumbest idea of all time. And I would never do that. But like that's how most people think is like, let me create this stupid ebook or like this report or whatever it is. And I'm like, dude, I just want them to buy the thing. Buy them the thing that's like, wow, this was, and we're making this glove loop to be the most coolest thing that they're gonna get in the mail. And they're gonna like freak out and now they're gonna want the bag at the next level. So owned media, I always wanna try to generate customers instead of, you know, just people that came in through a webinar or watched the VSL or whatever it is. Hope that makes sense. But that's that's how I look at it.
speaker-1: 100%. Yeah. I mean, somebody that gave you money, put their credit card in, bought a thing from you is so much more likely to do that again than somebody that just gave you their email list or gave you their email, whatever showed up to a webinar, anything. Like them get pulling out their credit card, pulling out their wallet, entering the information, buying something from you is the highest signal possible. So like that should be what you put as like the front door to your own media channel. Do you find that you are always thinking about ways that you can make that thing that they buy, right? That lead magnet purchase or that low ticket item. Do you have a name for that by the way? Is it lead magnet or what do you call it? Yeah.
speaker-0: I mean, it's been called like anything from like a tripwire in the old Ryan Dice, you Perry Belcher days to but like Dan Kennedy, when I used to work with him, we just called it a self-liquidating offer. So by by creating a self-liquidating offer, self-liquidation means if I spend money, I get it back. Right. Again, I want to get to break even on my marketing spend. So that's how I look at it. Make the thing as good as possible. Like that video planner, like it was if somebody used it, they fell in love with it. Like I used to have people send me like, Their whole thing with all fifty-two pages filled out and they're, you know, I was just like, they loved the thing, like this glove loop that I'm creating. Like, we're gonna create the best one in the marketplace. We're just gonna give it away at at cost so that we can sell the thing that we really wanna sell. But we we're creating the most don't cheapen out because you want that experience to be so awesome that they want the next thing. Because if this thing that was cheap, that was 10 bucks was so cool, what if I spent a couple hundred bucks? Or if we're an agency, what if I sign on as a 10 grand client or you know, whatever the high ticket is? Like If that first experience is so amazing, you know, I think most people, that first experience is usually meh, right? The emails are meh, the report is meh. Like it's just meh, right? I think that's most people's experience. So how do you overcome that? Come above like the line of like credibility and just blow them away with this inexpensive thing. Now you don't want to go broke doing it, like you can't you don't want to lose your shirt doing it, but at the same time, how can you make that experience good? And then the the other side is embedding. Sales channels into that free thing. So when we sent the video planner, there was a yellow post-it note on the front of the video planner that says, First thing, make your first video. As soon as you make your first video, watch this video. Right. And we sent them to like a VSL, right? So we still would like try to make the sale, right? We would still like point them in the right direction with the glove loop. We're gonna send a postcard with it that's like, enjoy this, but if you want the bag, here's a ten dollar off coupon like, you whatever it is. Like we're still trying to make the sale. We're in business, we want to make money. But make the thing as good as possible.
speaker-1: Yeah, make the thing as good as possible. And do you think that the thing it sounds like for both of these examples that you use, they're physical products. Do you want that self liquidating pro product to be your offer to be a physical product most times?
speaker-0: Yeah, so that's the world I grew up in was like get something in their hands, get them something that they can use. Like this is dating myself, but like 25 years ago, we used to do like mouse pads, like as cheesy as that is. But I would want someone to every day when they got to my their desk, I want them to see my mouse pad. Right. They see my my logo or whatever it is every day, right? A coffee mug, like things like that. Now I think physical, I still think is great because you get the address, you get, you know, you're you're able to text them order updates, like all that. But I do think we live in this really cool world where software is a front end, right? So can you create a tool? Can you create, you know, some kind of a report for them, some kind of something customized? There's these guys I used to work with in the used car dealer space, and they would do like this market grader analysis where, like, you know, they it was an app and you would like fill in a couple pieces and it would be like, you know, Ian, your store should be selling based on your market. You should be selling 60 cars a month. It looks like you're only selling 20. It was like a rater analysis thing. If you're a financial advisor, is there like a retirement planning, you know, tool that you could create for them? So, and I think today more than ever, it's never been easier to just go to a Claud Code or go to a Replit or go to a cursor and just, or now even like ChatGPT with Codecs is like, hey, I want this thing. And you don't even need to know how to do it. You're just like, hey, I'm a financial planner. I help people with their retirement planning. I want an app. Like, and literally that's all you have to say. And it will, you know, help guide you through the process. But I do think apps are one way or tools are another way. You just have to, again, make them useful. If they're a crappy tool, it's no different than having a crappy report. But I do think software today is a secondary way to to do that.
speaker-1: Yeah. Absolutely. I love the idea just 'cause I've never done it before. The idea of a physical product of some kind. I feel like I would geek out about that. The video planner idea is genius. I wish I would have met you four years ago when I was building my video marketing agency. I definitely would have taken that idea because that is brilliant. But okay, so you the idea of a software tools is Also in that realm, which makes sense. Cause like that's typically what I've done. Like I'll build like a, you know, custom GBT or like a custom tool of some kind and then like, hey, this is a complete solution to a narrow problem that when solved will unlock the pain that my core offer will solve. I've just never charged for it, right? Like I never charge any money for it. I would just give it away for free. So I think, yeah, charging like a low ticket, right? Like seven bucks, seventeen bucks, whatever for this thing, access to this thing, kind of gets them buying from you and it's kind of negligible. And they're gonna take it more seriously, they're more likely to use it. But yeah, I think the key thing there is like whenever you're putting your name on something, you need to make it as useful and as good as you possibly can. A hundred percent. I love it. Going back to your story, like kind of what got you into product in the first place? Like why did you make this shift? We were talking a little bit before we we pressed record, but like why did you shift from kind of the info product Dan Kennedy type world into buying grommet? Now you're in this physical product type space back in COVID. But like what what happened there for you?
speaker-0: Yeah. I think when you're in whether it's an agency space or even info space, burnout is like a real thing, right? Like 'cause you're always chasing the next offer. You're always chasing the next clients. You're always stressed out. Like right before COVID, I had at the I was running a video agency as I as I was mentioning, I had a studio in in Orlando and clients would come from all over the world. They would fly into Orlando and we would do a full day shoot for them. So this is like six, seven years ago. This is before short form content was like this is before Instagram reels and all that. But we were doing 30, 40 videos in one day. And I was producing them. I was coming up with all the ideas and like all the stuff. I was directing behind the camera. I had a full team, you know, of camera people. Like it was a it was high end, right? But it was really taxing. And towards the end, like, and this is not, I'm not knocking any profession, but I was mostly in the financial advisor, real estate, lawyer, professional services space. And I was just like, if I have to do one more day of learning about annuities and trying to make this sound exciting and like it really became a drag. And because it was me, like I had to be there to direct the video shoot every single day. And COVID honestly, like there was two things. Like one, now no one could fly in to Orlando to do the video shoots. And you know, we had a ton of refunds, like we a couple hundred grand in refunds. Like it basically like shut down our business overnight. I had always been like a supplement biohacking kind of nerd on that side. And so ⁓ decided to take some money and build a supplement brand. I think it's somewhere behind me. I don't know. But ⁓ built like a nootropic. ⁓ it was a a coffee creamer with like collagen protein and lion's mane and just really it was really, really cool. It did really well. And then an opportunity came up with some friends to acquire Gromit from Ace Hardware. And I jumped at the opportunity. I was like, this is awesome because it's a media company and it's a product company, which is where I came from. Like I was always in media in the info side, you know, creating media, media properties. And but now we have this product side. And I thought it was a really cool way to kind of marry the two. And luck, serendipity, good timing, right time, right place. You put yourself around good people and good opportunities come your way. ⁓ And but I thought it was a really cool opportunity to marry day one. We acquired three million buyers who had bought something from the Gromit. ⁓ we had 3,000 brands who were ready to list their products and get it built. And so, you know, we we acquired the company like August 1st, let's call it September 1st. We had our first newsletter go out. By October 1st, we were profitable on the acquisition. Like it was that fast. And then, you know, we spent a year building out the platform that we have today. And so ⁓ just Really, really excited because it was that media side of like we're gonna create emails, we're gonna create newsletters, and we're gonna create social content and we're gonna build this whole side. Also, we created a media company to for brands. So we have a a brand specific newsletter, ⁓ brand specific content that I that I create. ⁓ so we have these two media brands, one to attract shoppers and convert them, one to attract brands. ⁓ and then Gromit kind of sits in the middle. And so it was this really cool marriage of everything that I I'd been working on. And I will tell you that's like it's amazing. It's fun. Like you wouldn't believe the crazy stuff. Like I get sent every product that we launch on Gromit. The craziest stuff of all time. Going back to the first question I think you asked me, which is like, which ones, why do some do well and why do don't? And some you just get them and you're just like, who has this? You just made up a make believe problem that people don't have. And so just like, but anyway, yeah, that that was the journey is just kind of burnout slash got lucky from from that side.
speaker-1: That's amazing. I mean, that's just how the universe works sometimes. Like ⁓ just push you in whatever direction it wants you to to ultimately go. And this really does sound like the perfect opportunity for you given your background and your passion and everything that we talked about today. This grommet business sounds so freaking cool. I mean, like talk about a business that just has a never ending supply of content that you can build like you just have all these you have twenty buckets full of just innovative new product ideas, like that stuff crushes on socials. ⁓ So you you talked about like, okay, one category or type of content that you can create that you can help validate your product before you launch it and kind of build up that demand before it's even ready to go is that kind of behind the scenes, just kind of sharing the journey, like, hey, just got these new zippers in, right? Kind of building it up and promoting it. You could do this with a product that you're building, a book that you're writing, a service that you're creating, like whatever. You just kind of take people along on the ride of building this thing out, writing the book, building the products. outline in the service, whatever. What are some other types of content, like those categories of content that you think you can always go back to this well to create that kind of content and it will work.
speaker-0: Yeah. So I'll preface this. This is what I used to teach at the video agency. Is I was like, I believe in video, but that doesn't mean that's what you need to do. I think figuring out what you can consistently create is more important than what you create. Right. So for you, like doing this podcast, it's a way for you to meet cool people, learn cool stuff, and it's a repeatable format, right? Once a week or what whatever the cadence is, right? I think podcasting is great. Like I have a podcast again with my 13 year old son. We spent a year interviewing all the top baseball brands. We interviewed baseball lifestyle and plate crate and voot grips and like all these amazing brands. Guess what? He got to have relationships with all of them, right? And so do I. And I got to learn how the best baseball brands operate. So now, as we're going to create this baseball bag, I just learned how all the best companies in the on the planet do it, right? And they all obviously want to help a 13-year-old kid. So I think finding a medium that's going to help you that can be sustainable, I think is is super important. So that could be a podcast. That could be daily founder content. That could be going live, like doing, you know, TikTok lives or Instagram lives or YouTube lives. That could be once a week, you know, behind the scenes vlog style stuff. That could be you teaching ⁓ into the marketplace. The other side is it could be writing. If you act enjoy writing, Substack is amazing. X is amazing. Threads is amazing. So the biggest thing I would say there is like, if you don't enjoy creating it, people aren't going to enjoy watching it or reading it or listening to it. If you're not having fun, how is your audience going to have fun? Right? Like I energy is very contagious. So if you're on video and you're like, I created this phone case and like someone said I have to create a video, like it's it's right, like, or it's like, yo, guys, I just got this prototype in the mail. This is badass. Like, check this thing out. Like, you know, like find the thing that's going, you know. If you hate talking to people, you probably don't want to create a podcast. If you enjoy podcasting, And secondarily, you can create real relationships with all of your guests and the people that you have on. Podcasting is amazing. So find the medium that is going to work for you that you're gonna still want to do it. You know, I think you're like what 38, 40 something episodes into the show. Like find something that you want to do for 40 episodes or 80 episodes or 100 episodes. If you commit to daily video and after four days, you're like, this sucks. Don't do daily video. Find a find a different format that More matches your your personality. Also, your schedule. So, like, we chose podcasting for my son initially because he's in school, he ⁓ is a base competitive baseball player, we're on the road every single weekend. We're like, we have one to two nights every week where we could schedule the podcast in, and then through what I do for a living, I'm able to get it edited and all that. It just fit like if he had to create daily stuff, we would quit after a He's got school. He's got a project. He's got a homework. He's got a test. He's got, and I I get it. You probably, you know, some of your listeners have kids and they have a family or they're caring for a a mom or a dad or a grandparent or whatever it is. I get it. It's life. So what is the the piece of content that you can create? ⁓ you know, I think right now, like if you're seeing on TikTok, Instagram, like car videos, if you have a day job and you're driving to the office every day, when you park or when you get into your car, like, can you just pull the phone out and talk for 60 seconds in the car and you're just yapping to the camera? Like, is that a format that's gonna work for you? When I used to podcast, this is before video podcasts were a thing. I would on the drive home from the studio every day, I would just talk into my phone. I had a little microphone that popped out. And on my drive home, I would just be like, All right, so I talked to Ian today, dude. We had this great podcast. And he asked me this question about what makes products work. And, you know, I started talking to him about solving problems. And I would just yap to my phone, right? And turn it into a podcast. So the biggest thing, find the format that is going to work for you that you're willing to stick with is more important than a trend. It's more important than organic short form is cool today. Guess what? In some point short form is gonna be replaced by the next thing. And that's gonna be replaced by the next thing. But so do what works for you, not what's trendy, I guess, is a is a better answer.
speaker-1: Sir. That was great. I ⁓ a hundred percent agree with that because I've tried to do a lot of things. Like I tried to do a newsletter, I tried to do like the scripted short form content, I tried to do that stuff just because that's what everybody else was doing and that's kind of what we did for our clients back in the day. It's just like I thought that's what you had to do, but I just hated doing it. So I never did it. Right. So then I was just doing nothing. So you really do have to find the things that you enjoy in some fashion. Like the everything's gonna be there's gonna be work to everything, right? There's work to prepare for these conversations, to prepare these questions for this podcast, whatever. There's also the work of sucking in the beginning and just being like terrible. I don't wanna do this again. I'm so nervous. Like I don't wanna do it. But yeah, it's just doing the work of sucking for a little bit and then, you know, you get through it and you can stay consistent with it because there's part of you that really enjoys it and ⁓ Yeah, like you just have kinda gotten better over time. But that that's inevitable, right? You're gonna suck in the beginning of doing literally anything. Amazing. So if you don't already have some kind of like maker university on Gromit, I feel like that would be really freaking cool on that platform. Like you could have content where you talk to some of the successful launchers. Like, is that something that you already have on the platform?
speaker-0: Yeah. So in our dashboard, like we we educate them so much. Because again, as a new brand, like there's a million things you could do. Right. And same thing with like the people you talk to. There's a million things you could do. And so we just try to find like, all right, what are some small wins that we could get? And so I think to to answer the question of like, what is ramit? Why should a maker be there? Is like, I believe today, like we this is what we've been talking about this, you know, the last forty minutes or so is like getting discovered today is really hard. Distribution is really hard. When especially when you're launching a brand new product, you're resource strapped, you're cash strapped, but you have to get some initial traction. Gromit solves that problem of the initial traction. And so what we are is a product discovery platform where we have three million shoppers, 2,000 products, but every single Thursday, so today we're recording this on a Thursday. Every week we push five to seven brand new products out onto the Gromit. And we send an email to three million people and we say, Hey guys, we just put up five new products. They all started zero, zero upvotes. Zero like equity on the platform. And we say, you guys, shoppers, you guys go tell us which one is the best. And they tell us who's the best by two things by either upvoting it, right? So ⁓ think of it like product hunt. ⁓ you know, they give it an upvote and that moves it higher up the feed, or they purchase it, right? And they say, you know what, Ian, I love your phone case so much. I'm gonna upvote it and I'm gonna purchase it. And so for brands, I mean, you hear this all the time. If only more people knew about my thing, you know, it would be the next big thing. And we're like, cool, prove it. So every week we launch five to seven new products, we put them on display in front of millions of people, and the best products win, right? The products that the marketplace deems as these are the coolest products. They get more exposure. They get access to more ⁓ newsletters that we send out to put you in front of other shoppers. And then we have a partner network where we partner with publishers like ⁓ Brad's Deals and CBS Deals and the New York Times and the New York Post and ⁓ Washington Post, BuzzFeed that run articles all the time that are like 14 weird pet gizmos you can only find on the Gromit. So we help these brands that first to get that initial traction and then to start scaling. And it's all performance based. So they pay us nothing to apply, nothing to launch. You only pay us after we generate a sale for you. So it's all performance based. There's no risk. There's no reason why you wouldn't want to do something like this. Or I tell brands this all the time like, they're like, well, why would we do that? And I'm like, well, you could just go to, you know, give Zuckerberg a couple grand and see if he sends you any traffic and see if that traffic converts. Or We can put it in front of three million people. You don't pay us anything unless we drive a sale for you, right? And it doesn't stop you from being on Amazon and from running meta ads and all that. And it's a great platform to go from, you know, zero to launch for many brands. So it's a really, really great platform for that new and emerging brand that really wants to see, like, hey, you know, does a larger audience, a mass market audience, want this product?
speaker-1: Yeah. Incredible. Kind of a weird question that came up when you were into giving that answer. But do you think we'll ever reach kind of a moment where we plateau on the available good product ideas that exist out there? Like will we ever kind of s will it ever plateau? Will we ever be out of ideas?
speaker-0: I sure hope not because one is again just with this AI. Like I'm I'm I like AI, like I'm in favor of it. But with it is going to create new opportunity, right? Jobs that are getting replaced are going to get replaced with new things because there's going to be new problems, right? The world is going to have new problems. I'm going to need something to clean my robot that cleans my house, right? I'm going to get, you know, a Tesla robot that comes and cleans my house. Well, I'm going to need someone to come and do maintenance for that robot. Or he's going to need a cup holder, right? Like whatever I'm making this up. But like as things evolve. Everything changes and there's always going to be new problems which create new opportunities. And so I sure hope not because I'm a believer in human creativity and human innovation. And like that's the one thing, especially in an AI-driven world, that is going to be the only differentiator. Is like, do you have something creative? Do you have something that's human that can help to stand out? Because the robots are going to do your taxes. The robots are going to do the research. The robots they are, right? For most people, they already are. And so That human creativity and innovation is the spirit that I think is going to hopefully shine through in this new AI robot weird world that we're about to be in.
speaker-1: Hopefully, yeah. I mean, it is the magic of the world, the magic of the the universe in which we live. So I hope that that would be the thing that's optimized and held the highest, not standard, but highest regard. ⁓ but yeah, I think a hundred percent I agree with you. I think that if you answer yes to the question that we'll run out of ideas, you'll say that we're gonna never have any problems. Like the day that we run out of problems is the day that we stop having new innovative ideas and products and services, right? And I don't think that will ever happen. I think it's just something baked in us that we're just ever, ever evolving improvement machines, right? It's just like a part of our DNA, a part of what we are is looking and identifying problems and figuring out solutions and going and making that happen and like just moving forward. And I don't think that we're ever gonna just run out of problems or ever just like kick our feet back and be like, ⁓ I think we're good. Maybe that's just maybe the American identity and the American philosophy. I just don't think that we'll ever stop, right? I think it'll just be a constant process of trying to improve, but It's gonna look a lot different. The future's gonna look a lot different than the past, no doubt about that, as it always has. But ⁓ Greg, thank you so much for the time. I really, really enjoyed this conversation. I have one last question for you. It's a recurring question that I ask every guest, but before we get to that, how can people get it in touch with you? Or like where do you want people to show their support for you?
speaker-0: Yeah, I think the two places I'm most active are Instagram and LinkedIn. And I'm just Greg Rollette on both. ⁓ so make sure you do that. And I think the the biggest thing I think for for Ian and myself is like if you got value out of this episode, screenshot it and share it. Right. Like tag us on Instagram and tell people to go listen to this episode. That is the best thank you that I can get is, you know, hey, I heard you on this podcast. You and Ian killed it. Like that would be the number one thank you. So screenshot this, share this, and and hopefully, you know, more people can get some value out of it. But yeah, Greg Rilla on the socials and and share this episode for sure.
speaker-1: Amazing. We'll have all the links to Greg's social media accounts in the description. So be f be sure to connect with him and and ⁓ follow there. And ⁓ yeah, look forward to seeing all the screenshots out there. But ⁓ anyways, last question. Greg, if you had a giant billboard that everyone in the world could see for ten seconds, what would it say and why?
speaker-0: This kind of goes back to a quote that I usually answer in this this spot. And it's you can't save souls in an empty church. And it's by David Ogilvy, one of the the advertising legends. And I genuinely love this because so many people have an idea. And this goes back to the root of our whole conversation is ideas are worthless until they're distributed. And so you can't save souls in an empty church. If you had the cure for cancer, you wouldn't keep it to yourself. You would want to shout it from the rooftops and get everyone to know about it. And so You know, you can't help anyone if no one knows that you have the solution for them. And so yeah, you can't save souls in an empty church. It hits hard for a lot of people because so many people think it's the idea. They protect their idea. They don't want to tell anyone about it. They want to protect it and keep it to themselves. And I'm just like, no, tell as many people as you possibly can. Bring people along for this journey. If you want to help people, you have to get that church full of people. You have to get that email list full. You have to start getting generating customers. You have to learn these things. That's not always fun for people. Most people like especially in the product side, the inventor world that I'm in now, they didn't get into business to learn how to do Facebook ads. They didn't get into business to edit videos and cap cut till two o'clock in the morning. They didn't invent their product, you know, to figure out distribution strategies. They they got into business because they wanted to tinker and create this widget, right? But the problem is that widget doesn't do anyone good if no one has it. And so the more souls that you can feed through your product, the better it is going to be. So 10 seconds, hopefully it gets a little more. Little more airplay than that, but you can't save souls in an empty church.
speaker-1: Amazing. Greg, thank you so much for the time.
speaker-0: Ian man, this has been super fun. Appreciate man.
speaker-1: Thank you for listening to my conversation with Greg Rolette. The main thing I took away from this conversation is that distribution is not one channel or one tactic. It is a system a business uses to get in front of the right people and turn attention into customers. Greg broke it down into a way that I found useful, where you have organic distribution, owned distribution, and rented distribution. Content, partnership, marketplaces, retails, ad, email lists, customer lists. They all play a different role. But the part that stuck with me is that the owned distribution gets stronger. When you are creating customers, not leads. Somebody who has already paid you, even for something small, is in a very different relationship with your business than someone who has only downloaded some free thing that they're never going to look at. That is a useful lens for any business, physical products, services, coaching, software, or media. The question is not only how do I get more attention, is how do I build a channel where the right people can find me, trust me, buy from me, and keep hearing from me and want to keep hearing from me. If you want to get connected with Greg, you can find the links to his social medias and all of his contact information in the description. And if you run a coaching program, course, or mastermind and your clients aren't completing the work or engaging with your ideas the way that you would want them to be, download the free program execution system toolkit. It shows you how to install what I call execution infrastructure so clients actually follow through, engage with your ideas, and get results. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you in the next one.