How Grind Basketball Makes $200k Per Month on Shopify (Client Interview) transcript

I just recently took one of our clients from 100K months to 200k plus months selling out their store over three times with Facebook ads and I interviewed this client who is grind basketball and they were struggling to break past that 100K monthly Mark and they were averaging a 2X return on ads Spin and after joining the one-on-one mentorship we were able to take them to an 8 to 12x return and Adin in this interview we cover everything you need to know so definitely be sure to stay to the very end so you're in the mentorship and there's a lot to unpack but I'd love for you to share a little bit about your background and who grind basketball is and what they do uh so first I'm going to start off with grind um my husband he's the CEO of the company and he basically created this portable basketball shooting machine that was never seen before on the market when he first got into it um and basically what it does is it C captures your rebounds once you shoot the ball and passes it back out to you um and we were featured on Shark Tank Forbes um CNBC things like that um and so what I do is I do all the marketing all the content creating um I help with the website I do the SMS and the emails so that's pretty much everything anything related marketing with grind is what I do I love it and so you said y'all went on Shark Tank talk to me about that how is that experience so that was actually three years ago but it still it has a long lasting effect especially when they but uh so how we got on there was I applied behind my husband's back I didn't tell him cuz I didn't want him to be bummed if he didn't get in but uh so I applied behind his back and they got back to us and we went through the whole process it's a very long process with all the like kind of like interviews with everybody okay and then finally uh my husband went to go pitch in August of 2020 and then we aired in May of 2021 oh wow so almost a full year later yeah how long was the application process so there's interviews y'all go in person or would that be well with covid uh we just sent a lot of videos back and forth they ask a ton of different questions about the product and every step of the way they let you know that you're not guaranteed to air so there's that um but yeah there's a lot of paperwork a lot of contracts you have to sign um pretty lengthy process but definitely worth it in the end yeah that's amazing and so when that first aired what was that like what did youall end up doing oh oh wow so it was insane because of the website views of course you know they Skyrocket I think there was like 14,000 at one point of like Peak Performance of people on the website um surprised they didn't crash but um but yeah so that really like there wasn't since our product is like at the time it was around I think $1,500 um people aren't going to buy it right away but you can tell over time you know the SES started you know trickling in from that airing um and yeah it's just just help every time it airs it helps bring more people to the website and we're able to track them after that and they ended up they end up usually buying a machine yeah that's amazing and so y'all went so it aired and then after that y'all were just running what did y'all start doing marketing wise outside of sharktech yeah so we've been running Facebook ads and a little bit of Google ads um I do know that for Facebook it was really just broad targeting and then um also retargeting everyone who's visited the site um things like that but so it wasn't we we didn't hire an agency um we kind of just did it ourselves um so that's what we did at the time yeah and when y'all joined the mentorship is I believe it was in February yeah so you joined the mentorship in February and you were doing around what was it 100K months around that time yeah it was sometimes a little lower it would always fluctuate depending on what the market is at the time um I think like around like 120 was like a good month for us at the time um not including like the black and stuff like that but yeah that was during the time yeah and so yall joined and then we started optimizing the ads going over the landing pages all sorts of stuff right and then I believe you have sold out three times now since then yeah yes pretty much every time we get like a container in we sell out before the next one's able to get in and we don't stop like we don't put in uh like we don't put sold out we continue selling in it acts as if we're still so it doesn't affect us so people can keep buying it because like on a higher ticket item and you know people wanting to buy something they're willing to wait a little bit longer especially if it means just getting earlier in the K so like it's not even a pre-order it's just like they'll just keep buying and waiting yeah they that's awesome we had people wait up to like when we first launch we had people waiting up to like a year to get the product but now we're like I think when we started with uh working with y'all we they were like at a month waiting and now they're only waiting a couple weeks but now we're we're back on track for now and so you went from 100 Kish months to you know doing 200k plus months pretty consistently now yes yeah yes that's awesome and I remember like when we first you know started going through the ads it was averaging like a 2. 26x row ads and now it's like a 8 to 12x row at so a huge increase yes in the rois there and so what was like a big difference was it audiences creatives what was like a core thing would you say like being able to you know somebody right now is doing a 2X row as and wanting to communicate more effectively to their customers and like what they should do to be able to you know AFF a 5x their return that spend yeah so I think the biggest difference for us when we started working with y'all was just like the types of campaigns we're running like I said at first we were running like one broad campaign and then we would retarget the bottom of funnel people and that was pretty much it and now we're running about like five to six interests we have lookalike campaign like a lookalike campaign and and and then we're targeting our bottom bottom of funnel is going crazy right now just because we're able to get everybody yeah there's a lot so we focused heavily on getting more new customers in the door more eyeballs and then being able to convert everybody on the yes retargeting side so I mean it went from like you know 800 cost per purchase all the way down to like 17200 which is insane because what's the pricing on the product right now uh we're at 1995 we're on sale right now but typically it's around 2195 yeah and youall are doing like how many orders a week with that o um a week I would say I'm not sure I don't want to throw out a number I haven't looked at like the exact number I kind of just follow like what we're yeah the overall sales numbers um cool yeah so and then for the creative aspect so y' all had a few creatives yall running but when we really went through the account like we started you know talking about you know the video aspect actually having you know simple white backgrounds even of the actual product right rather than just some lifestyle shots and incorp those yeah and I I want to add like another I think Game Changer that you helped us with was like before we kind of used to follow like what the gurus were saying on Tik Tok and stuff but like you made us realize you know our product is Niche like we don't have to follow what they're saying like our product is different and so like one thing that we did change was we've made our uh our video ads longer to give them more information in one ad rather than having it super short and only giving them a little bit of information just we have a higher ticketed item and so that really does help yes that I'm so glad you brought that up because like when you have hire ticket items or you have something that needs a little bit more information behind it it's not just like your typical 1530 $50 product that's like hey you know this is lipstick you can see what it is and buy you know there's a lot more context that goes behind it like how does it work you know how big is it you know how long can it how many shots can somebody do all sorts of stuff right so you have to show all these different angles and a lot more educational content to really get somebody to understand what you're selling especially if somebody's going to be spending you know close to $2,000 right so yes that's like a huge factor and what I love is like what y'all are doing is like the videos on your landing page right A lot of people have very simple text information but y'all have a lot of videos you know showing how people are actually using y'all's product yeah one thing we do like to show is that it can be used on any type of Court pretty much anywhere indoors Outdoors wherever yeah no that's perfect and having those in add angles so many people forget to do that kind of stuff and like being able to demonstrate that multiple different audiences like you're going to see a much better you know overall conversion rate yeah the goal is kind of just to get people to think like oh like that kind of looks like my court and like then they can Envision the machine being in their Court 100% no that's super valuable and so like with higher ticket items a lot of times people think they need a super high conversion rate to be able to get crazy sales like you know under 1% conversion rate can be entirely normal if you're selling you know th000 2,000 $5,000 uh products whether it's ring or what yall are selling and I know that you know some of the tweaks on the landing page with the educational side makes improvements and then you transfer that over to the ads then next thing you know return ads sp's going up and what has the scaling process been like so far yes so um every month you know we've been trying to increase the ad spin on Facebook um we're about to start Tik Tok ads um of one of your I guess someone in your team Michael yeah he's going to help us with launching those so we're excited um at first we were a little scared because like oh are people going to buy $2,000 product on Tik Tok but uh we're going to see how it go so super excited about that we also have a few other small ticketed items so those will probably do well on Tik Tok Tik Tok ads right now are going crazy for so many Brands and so many people underestimate you know they think it's like a dancing platform or Their audience isn't on there or they can't sell higher ticket right and it couldn't be anything further from the truth like we had you know a client that was selling seat covers that are like $ to $300 and they're getting you know six and sevenx return Nats spin on Tik Tok selling to you know blue color working mels that are like 30 to 50 years old like buying off a Tik Tok most people would never expect like you know that audience to be there and buying and it's definitely happening so it's it's pretty crazy to be able to launch on there so I'm excited for that Avenue for yall than yeah and then we also have you know other ways of story scaling is we're going to well we're currently on Amazon I've been on Amazon a couple months now um but we will be launching on dicks soon too so that's that's awesome I love that and talk to me about like payment plans versus people paying in full like what's the breakdown there yeah so I was actually looking that at that a while back but like a majority I would say over 50% of our um customers actually use our airm or shop pay um over 50 yes wow okay and then I when I looked into it I would think that most people just go to where it has like zero interest but no like people are using like the full the full thing with interest on top of that to purchase the machine I think it's crazy because I I don't I personally don't like paying interest but um it turns out like more I think it was like uh it had like 73% of people who used the firm were going were paying interest on their payments which I wased to see yeah I I think a lot of people underestimate that as well like even on Lower ticket items too having a firm or shop pay or afterpay like these are big things especially with like somebody who's doing a million dollars per month around 40% of their sales were coming from being able to split up the pay payments with a firm so a lot of people do use that for bills or whenever they're trying to buy an item they'll like spread out their payments and end up checking out and if people don't have that they're missing out on a big opportunity there for sure and it's easier for like you know customers to be able to go to the site and have options like the more options presented the better for you know anyone to be able to check out immediately yeah and I actually recently negotiated some terms with the firm to where we're actually now able to offer before we were offering six months interest free but now we're offering 12 months interest free as well to help um that's amazing so talk talk about that some more because I think that's that's pretty interesting there so because yall are getting a bunch of sales through there and scaling up you actually went directly to them yes yes you had a conversation we like hey we want to offer this to our customers anything you can do that yeah U so basic basically um we did give like a small like a like what a small percentage but more than what we were because they make money off of every T every time there's a transaction um and so we just up that just a little bit which honestly to us was just like a couple of dollars like not that much to where it'll really affect us but we're giving more people the opportunity to not pay interest which will um pretty much help them you know purchase their machine because some people do look at it sometimes they'll message us and they be like hey like um you know the payment plans are just sometimes a little too much for them but I think this will help those people who were struggling to uh purchase the machine make the complete their purchase yes totally and just going back to the Facebook ads so images versus videos what's working right now yes so I was actually looking at that a couple days ago but our videos definitely perform much better but our images are not bad so yeah but um I think we had a couple of videos in the 30 row as just by like just those videos alone 30 extra turn ads yes on just video and then images uh they're still like around 8 to 12 row ad which is not bad so but the uh the videos do perform a lot better for us because I think people are able to visually see like what the machine actually does rather than just looking at a machine and seeing the bullet points totally yeah no that's amazing and so longer videos having you know educational content being able to have multiple creatives included with IM is for retargeting as well and then one more scaling what are the increments like you know is it jumping up by a th a day is it going up 100 no for us um I believe we scale like 20% every couple of days so it's only about um like around 20 15 to $20 for us a uh every couple of days just depending on how the ads are doing totally that makes sense and then special offers do you all do anything around that for holidays or anything related to that uh yes we will we'll probably drop a couple of usually we just drop images for those um and then sometimes we'll we'll actually put them in each uh campaign and that that works for us um at first I would think oh you just dropped maybe at the bottom photo like no Michael let us know like no just drop them in all of it and it they perform everywhere too perform great a lot of people over analyze that type of stuff or so Father's Day are youall doing a Father's Day Sale no no we are not cuz we currently uh we're just going to keep our Memorial Day wait was it Memorial Day that just passed yeah our Memorial um throughout this month and then we're gonna probably think of something creative to do for uh Fourth of July love it yeah so like a lot of times it's either you know picking specific holidays to do big offers so that way people don't get used to you know discounting like a lot of people miss out on that or they try to do too many offers and then everybody's always expecting it or they don't do enough so many people miss out on holiday it's crazy because you can get way higher return spin it's way more relevant and it gives the opportunity for like people who haven't seen you know a price drop or anything like that to have the chance to actually buy if they've been on the edge and like seeing all the ads yeah so it's crazy you say that because for like Memorial Day it's at the end of the month and so it was a pretty slow month um at the beginning of May and we were kind of like scared a little bit we're like oh like you know like I hope this Memorial Day just pops off you know this um and went crazy it czy I think we're from the previous year we were up I think 120% from the previous year that's insane I love to hear that yeah no that's amazing and so what are you all focusing on right now what's grind basketball's goal oh well right now we're starting to since you know we're able to grow a little bit uh we we want to work with nil athletes influencers things like that before big right now yeah it's big um and our first influence our first nil in influencer that we worked with it's going really well it's bringing a lot of people um to our website a lot of people to our page um our followers are going crazy one video we did with the nil athlete is at 400k uh views right now and it has like yeah and like 80 people have used the sound that we used for that video which we thought was crazy that's great and if any so for anyone who doesn't know what nil is it's name image and likeness and it's you know now College students can get paid as student athletes where previously they weren't able to so now you have the opportunity to work with you know lots of different personalities in the space and so that's what y'all are doing and how are y'all reaching out are y'all going directly to the university or are you reaching out directly to the students because every school has different policies now you know with all the cash grab that's going on there and being able to then leverage their name and ads or content or having them post and seeing the results from that yeah so actually the first athlete um her um person reached out to us first so that's how that works we've been getting a lot of people reaching out to us so it kind of like helps with the workload but then also we we pay attention to the basketball world so we know players that we want to reach out to as well um and so we will reach out to to them or their parents because sometimes we do happen to know their parents as well so we're reaching out to them first and um that helps a lot yeah no I think that's going to be a huge Avenue for yall like if tapping into that market that could easily scale up big time and then seeing if you can leverage those in ads that' be even crazier like those videos getting 400,000 views most people don't realize like a lot of sales can come from that yeah um one thing that we are trying to do differently than a lot of nil deals is that we're not really focusing on the product we focus more on the athlete and we kind of do like a product placement with them and that's kind of what people like see it you know because we don't want to come off as too salesy right which a lot of nio deals do and so we want to make it more about the athlete um helping boost their um name image and likeliness you know hopefully they helps them get better deals along down the road but um for the most part it's just focusing on the athlete and just having our product there to help tell their story yeah that's really big for us that's a super valuable point so not going directly for the sell just building up the overall awareness and then you know leveraging other channels to really guide people to the purchase process and that's good Discovery for yall that's great I love that and what are some of the things that you know you would recommend to people on the call who are looking to get better results right now um besides working with y'all um really focus on like like like you you have to I feel like you have to really know your product I feel like with us it's a little easier because we're all B like we all love everybody on our team loves basketball um and so we're all like really like we all love our product and we just want more people to be able to experience it but just getting so like when it comes to like running ads like also like don't just listen to the Tik Tok gurus and the YouTube gurus like I think if you're really lost on how to do ads you should definitely have somebody guide you like you and Michael y'all definitely help out a lot like there's times when I'm on the call with Michael and like if I ask him a question like oh why' you what made you think that or why' you change this and like he'll let me know and I'm like oh okay then I you know it helps me learn how to run the ads myself eventually yes and it just goes from two to four to 5 8 10 12x return announcement even 30X on some of your ads most people haven't seen 30X before that's like a really big number and it's like crazy that y'all are doing that but yall sell a really good product youall know how to educate the audience and y'all are seeing the you know rewards from that so that's awesome and so you've gone through the mentorship and it's been a few months and things have been scaling up what would you say what it's like working in the mentorship would you recommended to people who's it for oh yeah I I feel like it's definitely for people who want to have like an understanding of how ads can run for their business rather than just kind of like giving it to somebody else to run because they may not understand your product like you do you know so I feel like once you're if you're able to like learn how to run these ads um not saying they don't like won't need an agency eventually but like you can like know like how to really scale your business by yourself rather than just having somebody else do it cuz I feel like you know nobody's going to know your product better than you do especially if it's your business if it's your business um you you definitely need to be the person to learn how to do it first and then maybe eventually hand it off to somebody else you know because then you know what to expect I I totally agree if if you're a business owner and you want to you know run a business you got to be able to know how to clean the floors work the cash register run the accounting do the ads manage the team you have to do all positions before you can officially be you know scaling up and you know moving into hiring other people to really do the work yeah that's a big misconception people have you got to know everything before you can hire somebody to do because then you'll really know if they know what they're doing or not you know because they could say like oh you have three row ad you know you're doing great but like you know if you probably would have learned how to do it yourself you put probably could have realized like I can get like five to eight like you know if we do it this way you know but you'll never know unless you learn or try yourself it's so true I love that all right and where can everybody find y''s website if somebody's interested in basketball wants to check out your stuff wants to go buy a product yeah grind basketball.com is our or if you want to follow us Grime basketball uncore on Instagram perfect awesome well I appreciate you so much for joining me live and I'm excited to see where things continue to go we'll have to do another one of these in a few months once y'all are scaling up even further all right thanks thanks Chase thanks for all your help awesome thank you so much all right I hope you enjoyed that interview and if you're interested in joining the one-on-one ads Mastery mentorship just like am R did and was able to go from 100K to 200k plus months and sell out her store then definitely be sure to book a call below with myself and team to see if you qualify where we'll show you everything you need to know around your Facebook ads Tik Tok ads and help you get to where you need to be and achieve your goals and once again it's your favorite digital marketer here Chase Chapel cheers and bye all